Or, in Polish, grzybobranie. Like all good Polish families, at this time of year we'd head off into the woods just outside London in search of mushrooms. Our favoured spot was Oxshott Common (51°20'29.37"N, 0°22'1.37"W). Mixed coniferous and deciduous forest, with pine and oak predominating. We'd park (usually early on Sunday mornings following a rainy autumn Saturday) on Sandy Lane, and start combing the undergrowth for mushrooms. The forest floor, covered in pine needles, fallen leaves and moss, would have a particular smell that meant mushrooms would be around.
The ones we looked for were prawdziwki - porcini, a mushroom that is readily identifiable, safe (there's a lot of poisonous ones out there!) and tasty - but quite rare. We'd be lucky to return home with more than 20. Our mother would marinade (in jars) or dry them (on a string).
The interesting thing about mushroom picking is that British people don't do it. When combing the forest for them, we'd occasionally come across other people doing the same - they'd invariably be other Poles, or French or Italian restaurateurs, seeking the best wild mushrooms with which to flavour their recipies. For Brits, mushroom = champignon, the white, farmed mushroom, which wild mushrooms beat for taste by a country mile.
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Friday, 10 October 2008
Libraries
I loved libraries. My father would take me regularly, we'd choose books to borrow (once out of earliest childhood years, they'd mostly be about planes, trains, cars, trucks, buses, tanks, wars, etc). Two of the three public libraries that we'd use then are no longer there.
Ealing Central Library was housed in a former stately home, Pitzhanger Manor House. It ceased being a library when the Ealing Broadway Shopping Centre was opened in 1984. But back inthe 1960s it was a grand place to come, and where I acquired my reading habit. My father and I would come here on Saturdays to exchange books. At first, the Children's Section for oversized books about the world, science and technology, nature and history. Once I outgrew these, I loved books about WW2 warplanes, their colour schemes and camouflage.
I also loved the This is... series of cartoon travelogues by Miroslav Sasek (later on in life, I'd buy several of these books over the Internet for my children to enjoy as my brother and I once did).
Right: My brother (then 18 months old) and I, then nearly seven, poring over Sasek's This is Paris.
Closer to home, within walking distance, was the West Ealing Library on Melbourne Avenue, demolished in the 1970s to make way for Sainsbury's and other shops. A real shame, I loved the atmosphere of that Edwardian building, well-lit, with large skylights. Men would come hear to read newspapers in silence. I remember the smell of well-thumbed books and floor varnish, the shelves full of Large Print Books (in the days before cheap reading glasses), and of course the shelves where the aeroplane books were. Indeed I can conjour up the precise atmosphere or klimat just by thinking back to that place; precisely. My mind is there in every detail.
The third library in Hanwell, on Cherington Road, is still there. Next door to the children's clinic it was, to where my mother would push my baby brother in his pram for his check-up and NHS orange juice, cod liver oil and gripe water. The atmosphere at the Hanwell library was essentially similar to the West Ealing Library, with pale blue doors and window frames, skylights and the same layout and smell.
Public libraries, I fear, have dumbed down today.
Ealing Central Library was housed in a former stately home, Pitzhanger Manor House. It ceased being a library when the Ealing Broadway Shopping Centre was opened in 1984. But back inthe 1960s it was a grand place to come, and where I acquired my reading habit. My father and I would come here on Saturdays to exchange books. At first, the Children's Section for oversized books about the world, science and technology, nature and history. Once I outgrew these, I loved books about WW2 warplanes, their colour schemes and camouflage.
I also loved the This is... series of cartoon travelogues by Miroslav Sasek (later on in life, I'd buy several of these books over the Internet for my children to enjoy as my brother and I once did).Right: My brother (then 18 months old) and I, then nearly seven, poring over Sasek's This is Paris.
Closer to home, within walking distance, was the West Ealing Library on Melbourne Avenue, demolished in the 1970s to make way for Sainsbury's and other shops. A real shame, I loved the atmosphere of that Edwardian building, well-lit, with large skylights. Men would come hear to read newspapers in silence. I remember the smell of well-thumbed books and floor varnish, the shelves full of Large Print Books (in the days before cheap reading glasses), and of course the shelves where the aeroplane books were. Indeed I can conjour up the precise atmosphere or klimat just by thinking back to that place; precisely. My mind is there in every detail.
The third library in Hanwell, on Cherington Road, is still there. Next door to the children's clinic it was, to where my mother would push my baby brother in his pram for his check-up and NHS orange juice, cod liver oil and gripe water. The atmosphere at the Hanwell library was essentially similar to the West Ealing Library, with pale blue doors and window frames, skylights and the same layout and smell.
Public libraries, I fear, have dumbed down today.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Trumpers Way
Across the Boston Road lay exotic territory; Trumpers Way (cul de sac). Now lined with new housing and an industrial estate, in the 1960s it was a rough place unclaimed by development. Scrapyards behind corrugated iron, guarded by noisy alsatians, unkempt back gardens, the fields behind Elthorne Park. By the time I was ten, and in possession of my new bike (a Hercules Jeep).
Then there was the bridge over the Grand Union Canal. It is said that Barry Ricketts climbed on to the parapet and walked across like a tightrope walker, a 30 foot drop to the left of him (no one from my class was there to witness this, but such was the legend). On the canal there stood (and from Google Earth, still stands) a huge warehouse building, towering over the terraced houses of Humes Gardens and Studley Grange Road. The atmosphere was beautifully Edwardian, especially at twilight.
Across the canal, Trumpers Way ran onto the railway line, where the road came to an end. Here was (before Dr Beeching and his cuts) a station on the old Great Western Railway spur from Southall down to Brentford. Long gone as a passenger line, the spur served in the late 1960s as it does today a waste disposal site.
Then there was the bridge over the Grand Union Canal. It is said that Barry Ricketts climbed on to the parapet and walked across like a tightrope walker, a 30 foot drop to the left of him (no one from my class was there to witness this, but such was the legend). On the canal there stood (and from Google Earth, still stands) a huge warehouse building, towering over the terraced houses of Humes Gardens and Studley Grange Road. The atmosphere was beautifully Edwardian, especially at twilight.
Across the canal, Trumpers Way ran onto the railway line, where the road came to an end. Here was (before Dr Beeching and his cuts) a station on the old Great Western Railway spur from Southall down to Brentford. Long gone as a passenger line, the spur served in the late 1960s as it does today a waste disposal site.
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