Trees grow a new layer of wood every year. Due to changes in growth speed through the seasons, annual growth usually comprises two layers: an inner layer, called earlywood, which is lightly coloured because the growth is rapid early in the growing season and the new wood is less dense and thus lightly coloured; and an outer layer, called latewood, which is darker and denser. The process is actually not dissimilar to the way varve or ice core patterns are formed. When a tree is felled this biannual growth can be seen on the cross-section of the trunk in the form of rings. From this view it is also possible to distinguish the sapwood from the heartwood, that is to say the young wood closer to the bark where sap flows, and the old wood forming the core of the trunk respectively.

The thickness of the tree-rings depends particularly on climate and factors such as rainfall, temperature and sunlight. Favourable conditions for growth result in a wide ring and vice versa. Trees growing in the same region will have similar tree-ring patterns, because of their mutual response to climate changes.

Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is a method of determining the age of wooden objects, based on their tree-ring pattern. The idea in a nutshell: you have an object of unknown age but with visible tree-ring pattern and you compare it, like a fingerprint, to patterns developed on akin tree species grown during a known period under similar climatic conditions, until you get a match, ring for ring. This process is called cross-dating and, depending on the state of the undated wood, dendrochronology in theory can provide annual or even sub-annual resolution. The technique works only with clear annual growth rings; tropical species where annual ring boundaries are not visible or orchard trees whose growth is dependent on the ardour of the gardener rather than Mother Nature herself are not suitable for cross-dating.

The ‘fingerprint database’ against which you compare the tree-ring pattern that needs cross-dating is called reference or master chronology. For a specific tree species and region, it is produced by overlapping the ring patterns of successively older timber, starting with living trees of known chronology and progressively superimposing older timbers from buildings or even archaeological sites to gradually extend the chronology into the past. The pattern to be matched is the relative increase and decrease in ring width year after year.

Dendrochronology has found numerous art-historical applications, ranging from panel paintings to antique furniture. It is necessary for the wooden object to contain an adequate number of clearly visible rings, usually no less than sixty, and there must be a master chronology for the particular tree species and geographical area or you might end up… barking up the wrong tree! The application I myself find most intriguing is the dating of stringed instruments of the violin family – violins, violas, cellos and double basses – an application that instrument appraisers, sellers, players, authenticators and purchasers alike are gradually starting to acknowledge.

The back, sides and neck of stringed instruments are typically made of maple or sycamore, which are not suitable for dendrochronological investigation, but the front of the belly is usually made of Norway spruce, which is ideal for the technique. It is a lucky coincidence that wood with optimal acoustic properties, such as spruce of good quality without defects, knots and whatnot, is also dendrochronology-friendly. On the other hand, heavily restored instruments, patches of transplanted or later wood, painted year rings, dents, scratches, varnish that obstructs the wood grain, send dendrochronologists climbing up a tree…!

To obtain the desired symmetry on the front of the instrument, the craftsman starts with a wedge of wood, split from a cylindrical slice of tree trunk and with the oldest growth at the thin end of the wedge. This is split down the middle and the two half-wedges are opened like a butterfly and joined usually along the bark side of the wood. Therefore symmetrical ring patterns should be displayed on the two pieces with the youngest growth rings towards the centre. More than two pieces might be used in larger instruments, such as double basses.

Dendrochronological findings are used as an adjunct to information about the instrument based on styling or labelling criteria and historical records, and although dendrochronology can obviously not identify the maker, in some cases it can prevent erroneous or fraudulent attribution. Proof that the tree was still growing when the attributed maker was already deceased, for example, is somewhat suspicious. Dendrochronology provides the terminus post quem date of manufacture – the date after which the instrument could have been built based on the youngest identifiable tree-ring. Depending on the completeness of the sampled timber (if a significant amount of sapwood is preserved) it is possible to determine the date the tree was felled with some accuracy. Uncertainty in this estimation is however introduced because of the removal of an unknown number of outermost rings during the planning process prior to joining the front pieces. Even if the felling date is determined accurately, wood stored for many years before use or reused wood from older structures can introduce errors in the cross-dating, which are further amplified in cases of wood imported from another climatic region, if the wrong reference chronology is used.

How would you like to take a peep at the workshop of a master violinmaker? Have you seen The Red Violin? I’ve always felt a bit disappointed they didn’t show the early stages of the construction of the violin. Apparently tree-ring dating can provide information not only about chronology, but also about the technique and working habits of the luthier, which could indirectly help support or refute an attribution. Examples of this are: the way the pieces are joined at the centre of the front piece (bark to bark, bark to core or a combination), whether the front pieces are from the same wedge or not, use of common trees and exchange of pieces between makers, the provenance of the wood and the amount of time it was kept in storage for seasoning.

Although I love a fireplace with a crackling fire during winter, I have to admit that next time I have a fire to stoke, every log I throw will probably feel like burning a piece of history…

This year’s repertoire includes Manon (June 1^st), Madama Butterfly (July 4^th) and Cendrillon (July 13^th), with a special hum-along treat (Humming Chorus from the second act of Madama Butterfly) at 7pm on July 4^th conducted by the Royal Opera House.

When: 7:30 pm, on June 1^st, July 4^th and July 13^th

Where: Trafalgar Square, London and many more locations

Entrance: Free

More information

Bookworms with an open mind for comic fantasy and a taste for word-play will love Jasper Fforde’s novels featuring Thursday Next. With One of our Thursdays is missing, discount the sixth novel of the series, rx just around the corner, it’s a good time to go through the BookWorld ABCs before gulping down the new book. Summarising Jasper Fforde is impossible and literary scandalous because all the quick plots and puns are lost, so this is just a taster of the story so far.

It’s 1985 in an alternative England. Illegal cheese trafficking is a booming business, travelling from London to Sydney via Gravitube is just a forty-minute DeepDrop through the centre of the earth and the annual migration of genetically re-engineered mammoths causes havoc in the streets. In this England literature is paramount and there is a whole division in the Special Operations Network dedicated exclusively to literary crimes.

Thursday Next is a literary detective, investigating the mysterious theft of the Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript. While she’s on the trail of Acheron Hades, a malicious villain, her aunt and uncle are kidnapped. Mycroft Next, her uncle, invents ingenious devices of more-often-than-not equivocal usefulness. He and his wife Polly have disappeared while testing the Prose Portal, which allows real people and literary characters to travel respectively in and out of any book the portal is connected to. It’s soon revealed that Hades has stolen the portal and kidnapped Mycroft. He deviously leaves Polly trapped inside Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils as leverage for blackmailing Mycroft into operating the portal. Hades’s plan is to hold literary characters for ransom. First, a minor character from the stolen Dickens novel disappears from all editions in print and his body turns up in the real world. Then Hades steals the original manuscript of Jane Eyre and kidnaps her; without Jane Eyre the favourite classic ceases to exist. Thursday goes after Hades in a chase that ends inside the novel. There, aided by Mr Rochester she manages to kill Hades during a fire that destroys Thornfield Hall, injures Mr Rochester gravely and kills his mad wife. Thursday cannot resist intervening to prevent Jane from following St.John to India (the lukewarm end Charlotte Brontë had written) and instead mediates her return to Thornfield Hall.

In this alternative England Goliath Corporation, a corrupt multinational company, pulls the strings. They erase Thursday’s husband, Landen, from existence and blackmail her to release one of their top executives who has been (justly) imprisoned inside Poe’s The Raven. At the same time Thursday discovers Jurisfiction, the BookWorld’s own police force for maintaining the integrity of fiction. They have charged her with Fiction Infraction for changing the end of Jane Eyre and she has to appear in front of the magistrate from Kafka’s The Trial. Thursday seeks the help of Mrs Nakijima, who has been running a profitable business for years bringing tourists into Jane Eyre, to teach her how to bookjump without the Prose Portal. Her first bookjump is into the Great Library, a colossal library holding all books that will ever be written. Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat, the librarian, informs her that despite her upcoming trial she has already been accepted as a Jurisfiction cadet and apprenticed to Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham is quite a character and, when she doesn’t need to keep appearances for Great Expectations, wears sneakers, is well known to the real-world traffic police for serious driving offences with her Bugatti and carries a gun. Once Thursday gains some confidence in her bookjumping skills, she goes inside The Raven; Goliath predictably double-crosses her, but Miss Havisham rescues her spectacularly. With trouble everywhere in the real world, Thursday, who is pregnant with her still-eradicated husband’s child, decides to seek refuge in the BookWorld.

The Great Library doesn’t contain only published novels; all unpublished novels are also shelved in twenty-six sub-basements known as the Well of Lost Plots. Under the character exchange program, Thursday substitutes a secondary character inCaversham Heights, an unpublished detective story. She makes her home in a flying boat docked next to Nautilus, together with two generic characters who attend St. Tabularasa’s school until they develop personalities and form physical characteristics. Thursday’s diverse training for Jurisfiction continues. Killing Verbisoids (parasites that eat grammar) with irregular verbs, feeding the Minotaur (yoghurt rather than people!), attending Jurisfiction meetings at Norland Park in Sense and Sensibility, helping Miss Havisham chair a Wuthering Heights rage counselling session and classes in bookjumping using the ISBN positioning system are an integral part of her curriculum. The real world is still haunting her and things take a turn for the worse when senior Jurisfiction members are found dead. They had all been testing UltraWordTM, the upgraded Book Operating System which transforms words into pictures inside the reader’s head. Text Grand Central, the Intelligence of the BookWorld, is pushing the deadline for the upgrade of BOOK v8.3 into UltraWordTM and promises that reading will become an unprecedented experience with the new system that operates on a thirty-two-plot architecture rather than the old eight-plot per book. Some Jurisfiction members are sceptical about the upgrade, since an older upgrade erased the library of Alexandria. Thursday discovers several downsides of UltraWordTM which TGC was trying to cover up, saves the day and becomes the new Bellman (head of Jurisfiction).

A couple of years pass and Thursday decides it’s time to return to the “Outland” with her toddler Friday. The Council of Genres, the BookWorld’s government, doesn’t accept her resignation and suggests that while in the Outland she tries to capture a runaway fictional character, Yorrick Kaine. Hamlet joins Thursday, wanting to find out if the Outlanders really think he’s a major ditherer, as rumour has it in the BookWorld. In the real world there’s a lot of excitement about St Zvlkx’s resurrection. His worshippers believe he’s a 13th century saint whose prophesies are always very accurate, but in reality he’s a rogue time-traveller and his Revelations are nothing more than bets he placed centuries ago with astronomical odds. In the meantime, Goliath Corporation are seemingly trying to change their profile and have established an Apologarium fully stuffed with professional apologists. They bring back Landen, although he flickers on and off for a while, until his uneradication holds. Goliath are also major supporters of the rising politician Yorrick Kaine, whose preposterous plans to become dictator and whose campaign against Denmark and anything Danish (Andersen, Blixen, pastries, Hamlet) find surprisingly little resistance. He uses the Ovinator, stolen from Mycroft, to make everyone around him behave submissively like sheep. After Thursday manages a spectacular and impossible win for Swindon’s croquet team in the World Cup, the earnings from St Zvlkx’s betting book are enough to gain control of Goliath. Without their financial support and with the Ovinator destroyed, Kaine soon loses power.

Fourteen years later Thursday seems to have settled into a low-key family life, with a husband and teenage kids, a mortgage and a carpet-fitting business. Her adventures have been published into a series of novels, warranting her a mediocre celebrity-status and her own stalker. Motivating grumbling Friday to get out of bed and pursue a career in the Chronoguard (the SpecOps department dealing with temporal stability) and knitting dodo-cosies for her twenty-nine-year old dodo, Pickwick, is all she has to worry about. Or not? The carpet fitting business is just a cover and her SpecOps work continues as hard as ever together with Jurisfiction. Ever since her adventures were published, Thursday has two fictional alter egos: Thursday1-4 (featured in the first four novels) and Thursday5 (featured only in the fifth novel). Thursday1-4 is cruel, arrogant and violent, with a taste for guns and black leather. Thursday5 is caring, compassionate, girly, pacifist, vegetarian and a naturist who loves yoga. In Jurisfiction Thursday finds herself in the awkward position of having both Thursday1-4 and Thursday5 apprenticed to her at the same time. The first mission of the three of them together is Piano Squad; there are only fifteen pianos in the BookWorld and they need to be juggled between books. Things start to unravel from then on. Thursday fires Thursday1-4, who seeks revenge by marooning Thursday in the Outland and taking her place in the Council of Genres. There Thursday1-4 approves interactive books and Pride and Prejudice is going to be the first classic to be turned into a reality show with the Bennets as ‘housemates’. Thursday manages to take some control of the situation, but not before Thursday1-4 and the fifth novel of the series are permanently erased.

The rest… in the bookstores from February 22nd. Information for book signings can be found here.

Everybody knows SANTA CLAUS. He is a cheerful, ‘well-nourished’, white-bearded old man, wearing a red coat and trousers trimmed with white fur, half-moon glasses and black leather belt and boots. What is less known is that this much-loved figure originated by combining elements from the tales of Saint Nicholas, Odin and Father Christmas.

Saint Nicholas was Bishop of Myra in the 4^th century. From the far-away land of ancient Lycia in the east Mediterranean, his reputation soon spread out as that of a remarkable person who was infinitely generous to those in need. The anniversary of his death is commemorated on December 6^th. It is his gift-giving and child-loving trait that probably led to the fusion of the tales surrounding this historical figure into the character of Santa Claus. According to legend, there was a poor man who was unable to afford dowries for his three daughters, meaning that they would consequently remain unmarried and be destined for a destitute life of hard labour or prostitution. St Nicholas heard about the old man’s plight and, wishing to remain anonymous, under the cover of night he tossed a purse full of gold through an open window on the night before each of the girls came of age. The story goes that there were stockings hung by the fireplace to dry and the purses ended up inside. True or not it is impossible to establish, but it makes a nice story!

More elements of the Santa Claus character are found in the Dutch figure of Sinterklaas (meaning Saint Nicholas in Dutch). A staff, long white beard, red bishop’s robes and a red mitre featuring a big golden cross constitute his trademark look. He rides a white horse and on the evening of December 5^th he brings gifts to well-behaved children and takes away to Spain the naughty ones. According to tradition children leave a shoe with a carrot, sugar or straw for his horse near the chimney at night. There is an obvious connection to Saint Nicholas, but there are also features that might be derived from Odin, the Norse god who brought gifts or punishment across the winter world flying on his eight-legged horse. Wearing a blue cloak and with a beard long and white, he was inseparable from his spear and his black ravens kept him informed of what was happening around the world. Children liked to leave food for his horse by the chimney. It is not at all unlikely that after the christianisation of the Germanic peoples, some of the features of Odin were transferred to Sinterklaas.

Father Christmas is a British holiday figure dating back to the 17^th century. Emerging as a reaction to the Puritan disapproval of the Christmas feast, he was the personification of the spirit of Christmas joy and benevolence, and advocated the merry celebration of Christmas; a celebration during which people could gorge themselves, drink alcohol, dance and sing to their hearts’ desire. Notably there is no mention of gift giving. Father Christmas makes a famous appearance in Charles Dickens’s novella ‘A Christmas Carol’ as the Ghost of Christmas Present, a genial man with sparkling eyes “…clothed in one simple deep green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice…”.

All these traditions crossed the Atlantic with the colonists and after a lot of mixing and adding and stirring, for which America offered the ideal fertile ground, the figure of Santa Claus was born. The rest is history!

Santa Claus has a taste for MINCE PIES and it is customary for little children to leave him a glass of sherry and a mince pie by the chimney on Christmas Eve. The predecessors of what we call today mince pies were already a popular Christmas dish during the Tudor times, but giant evolutionary steps have been made since then! Centuries ago a mince pie would have been a large pie filled with a mixture of meat, dried fruit and spices, possibly a Middle Eastern influence brought back home by the crusaders. Various meats were used, such as lamb, veal, partridge, pigeon, hare, pheasant, rabbit and mutton. The addition of spices such as cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg is said to be symbolic of the offerings of the Three Wise Men. Mince pies originally had oval shape to represent the manger where baby Jesus slept and a small doll made of pastry was placed on the top. Over the years the pies became smaller, round and the meat was completely replaced by fruit mince. They are often star-topped, representing the Star of Bethlehem.

The number of legends surrounding the origins of the CHRISTMAS TREE is so overwhelming, with word of mouth blurring the facts and many tales fiercely contradicting each other, that it is tempting to follow a pragmatic approach and close the topic by saying that evergreen trees had a central role in winter celebrations long before Christianity. However, in the spirit of narrating tales and Christmas approaching (Ebenezer is not my second name!), here is the most popular early story relating to the Christmas fir tree. At the beginning of the 8^th century a missionary was sent to Thuringia to convert the population to Christianity. This monk, no other than St Boniface, cut down the tree of Thor near Geismar (an oak tree sacrosanct to the Germanic people) as an act of challenging the old gods. According to legend, a fir tree sprouted from the roots of the oak tree and St Boniface declared it to be a holy tree. As for the first decorated outdoor Christmas tree, there was a delightful story on the news about it the other day. Apparently there is an ongoing debate between Riga in Latvia and Tallinn in Estonia about the first Christmas tree. So this year the mayor of Tallinn sent the mayor of Riga a small Christmas tree to congratulate him on the 500^th anniversary of the Riga tree, with a reminder that the Tallinn tree is celebrating its 569^th anniversary. So I choose stay out of this and stick to the St Boniface tale!

Every year millions of CHRISTMAS CARDS are exchanged in the UK alone and they are an integral part of our Christmas festivities. It came as a surprise to me that this is a relatively new custom. The first commercially available Christmas card was sent by Sir Henry Cole in 1843 and was designed by John C. Horsley. Sir Cole was a prominent and multitalented civil servant, best known today for his instrumental role in the development of several landmark establishments in South Kensington, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Perhaps, trying to comply with the custom of the time, Sir Cole found it impossible to send Christmas greetings to all his friends and acquaintances with individual hand-written messages (I would completely sympathise!). Or perhaps he was eager to promote the newly-established cheap “penny post”. In any case, he commissioned a London publisher to print him a batch of Christmas cards, which just needed to be signed and sent. Greeting cards had already been in use for hundreds of years before, but not Christmas cards. The card was a triptych, with pictures of feeding the hungry and clothing the poor on each side and a happy family around a festive table toasting the card recipient in the central panel. The leftover cards were sold for one shilling each and my guess is that nobody at that time could possibly foresee how keenly this custom would be embraced by the future generations!

KISSING UNDER THE MISTLETOE is a Christmas custom with pagan origins. Admittedly, there is nothing romantic about mistletoe as a plant; it is a lazy shrub that prefers to survive by growing roots on the barks of host trees and feeding from them. The Druids considered mistletoe growing on oak trees blessed and sacred, and integrated its use into their rituals as we find out from Pliny the Elder. Because of its mystical powers, it was believed that mistletoe could bring good luck to a household and ward off evil spirits; this is how the custom of hanging a branch over doorways and windows started.

What does this have to do with the kissing tradition, you ask? There are stories for every taste out there, but my personal favourite comes from Norse mythology. After Balder, the favourite son of Odin, started having dreams of death, his mother and goddess of love Frigg tried to protect him by extracting from all living and non-living entities on earth the promise that they would never harm her son. She omitted the mistletoe though and the story goes that Balder was in the end killed by an arrow made of mistletoe. Everyone was devastated by his death and Frigg’s tears became the white berries of mistletoe. In a typical happily-ever-after style Balder was brought back to life through divine intervention, and Frigg declared that from then on only a kiss, as a token of friendship and love, and no harm would await anyone who stood under mistletoe.

With Christmas falling so closely to major pagan sacred days, it is no wonder mistletoe became associated with Christmas celebrations, despite the banning of the early Church. When the custom of kissing under the mistletoe found its way to England, a proper etiquette was established (of course…), requiring a berry to be picked every time a kiss was exchanged and the kissing to cease when there were no more berries left.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

For weekenders who are after the alluring atmosphere exuded by an old lighthouse, but not particularly happy with the idea of forgoing all the comforts of a luxury hotel, the Corsewall Lighthouse Hotel is a good solution. Situated at Corsewall Point in Scotland and overlooking the North Channel, its beacon has served as a warning to ships approaching the mouth of Loch Ryan since 1817. The lighthouse became fully automated in 1994 and the lighthouse building itself, a 34 metre-high white tower, is listed, but the former lightkeeper’s accommodation is now operated as a four-star hotel and restaurant. It is possible that you will spend your entire stay with your nose glued to the hotel’s window-panes admiring the view, and that you will not want to part from the relaxing and friendly ambience of the establishment. After all, this is a hotel of distinctive stature, so to speak, and nobody can blame you. If you do venture outdoors though, you will be rewarded with majestic views of the Scottish coastline, which you can enjoy in combination with some local sightseeing, cycling, hiking, golf and wildlife watching.

Young (and young at heart!) people who would like to combine a relaxing weekend stay at a charming, wave-crashing cum seagull-crying lighthouse setting, with a ton of fun activities to choose from, would be thrilled with the West Usk Lighthouse. Built in 1821, the lighthouse overlooks the Bristol Channel and offers breathtaking views of the Severn and Usk Estuaries. It was decommissioned in the 1920s and today it operates as a comfortable and shabby chic B&B. All accommodation is within the lighthouse building itself, which is unusually short and wide in circumference for a lighthouse, and a stone, spiral staircase in the centre of the property leads to the wedge-shaped first floor rooms. The fully restored lantern room offers a panoramic view of Welsh countryside and sea, and one of the fastest tides in the world can be heard rushing towards the foot of the building twice a day. Originality is not limited to architectural features. With a Dalek at the bottom of the staircase and a wishing well in the basement, a 21 ft Mongolian Yurt in the courtyard, a Rolls Royce to drive you around, whispers of paranormal activity and crop circles, all combined with a very long list of fun activities to choose from (ranging from aromatherapy to Russian Tank driving), in all fairness originality is a gross understatement! Have a look at their very friendly website if you don’t believe me.

If you are looking for an elite, cosy and romantic place to spend a weekend away from it all, then the Great Orme Lighthouse cannot possibly disappoint you. It was built in 1862 and faces the Irish Sea from the Great Orme, a limestone headland in North Wales. Apparently because of its location, on top of a 100 m wave-lashed cliff, there was no need for the usual tall and narrow lighthouse stance to make it visible at sea and as a result this lighthouse has the unusual appearance of a fortress, featuring dressed limestone outside and pitch pine panelling inside. The beam was deactivated in 1985 and today the building is operated as an elegant, family-owned B&B. Accommodation is within the lighthouse building, with the names of the rooms indicating their original use: the Lamp Room, the Telegraph Room and the Principal Keeper’s Suite. Yes, there are only 3 rooms available, so it is recommended to book very early in order to avoid disappointment. A lot of the original furnishings are strategically scattered around the rooms, like the portholes and pine shutters for the telescopes, the ladder leading to the roof and the glass panelling of the lamp room, adding to the feeling of history beckoning to you when you stay there.

Finally, for families or large groups of people, if you do not mind hiring self-catering accommodation, you might want to have a look at Burnham High Lighthouse, an 8-storey tower in Somerset promoted as a self-contained let, and the Old Higher Lighthouse in Portland, offering a cottage almost next to the lighthouse as a long-stay holiday let. For hostel-like accommodation bear in mind the Portland Bird Observatory and Field Centre in Portland, whilst if you are willing to travel the extra mile you might be interested in self-catering lighthouse accommodation up north in the Shetland Islands. By the way, The Old Lighthouse at St. Anne’s Head in West Wales is available both to let and for sale, if you really like lighthouses that much!

If the idea of staying at a lighthouse brings out the child in you, you ought to know that you won’t be able to just sneak into the lamp room at night and play shadow puppets across the Irish Sea of the English Channel! My understanding is that lighthouses providing lodgings have deactivated beams, which in this case is a great pity, don’t you think?

Regardless of season, pilule weather and occasion, illness the sensation of a frozen dessert titillating the palate is delightful. Whether it is ice cream, sorbet, sherbet, frozen yogurt, granita or parfait, those of us with a sweet tooth find it practically impossible to politely refuse a tempting offer… for more!!

Most popular of all is undeniably ice cream. A typical ice cream mix contains milk and cream, sweeteners, sometimes eggs and of course flavouring. This mixture is briefly heated and homogenised before it is subjected to rapid freezing. Surrounding the bowl containing the mix with a medium at subzero temperature achieves swift removal of heat from the mix. Cooling the mix in this way ensures the formation of only small and uniformly distributed ice crystals in the cream, while at the same time, vigorous stirring further prevents ice crystals from forming into large clusters. But most importantly, churning is necessary in order to trap air bubbles in the mix while it freezes. Ice cream is effectively foam that has been stabilised by freezing the liquid and therefore air bubbles are necessary in order for the final frozen product to be ‘scoopable’ rather than ‘sawable’! Various frozen desserts are made from different mixes-for example, sorbet and granita mixes are based on fruit instead of dairy products-but the preparation is very much the same.

The history of ice cream is laced with intriguing stories about its eastern origin and nobility-exclusive hush-hush formula. Some of these stories are probably true and without doubt some are just charming fairy tales. However, rationally speaking, making ice cream is as close to chemistry as one can get on a white apron and toque, probably too close for comfort! Therefore, because the ingredients and way they are processed are all so specific, it is highly unlikely that someone could get it right by chance, at least not before scientists deciphered certain chemical processes. Most importantly, the low temperatures needed to freeze the ice cream could not have been easily achieved before, some 400 years ago, culinary circles got wind of the scientific discovery that salted ice induces considerably more cooling than ice alone.

I hope that the reference to chemistry will not intimidate any curious ice cream fans from making ice cream at home. It’s not difficult and it’s fun! But it would be better to avoid improvising and stick to the recipe, unless you understand well the underlying molecular processes. For example, you might be tempted to make ice cream without any sweeteners in order to reduce the calorific content. I recently learnt that this would not work so well, because the sweeteners are not just for taste, but they actually lower the temperature at which the liquid mix becomes solid (freezing point) and thus prevent it from becoming rock-hard in the refrigerator. Adding alcohol has a similar effect, but with a few extra drops you can easily cause your mix not to be able to freeze, because of the extremely low freezing point. Have an extra sip or two if you must, but leave the mix alone! If calories are not a problem and you feel like making an exceptionally rich dessert using only cream and no milk, you should reconsider because it’s the fats in the milk and not in the cream that facilitate the incorporation of air bubbles in the mix. You could end up with a very dense product that requires a drill and lots of muscle to break through it!

A vast assortment of ice cream flavours can be found around the globe nowadays, adapted for different cultures, climates and tastes. Growing a little tired of the typical vanilla-chocolate-strawberry trio, I turned …East and looked for inspiration. Here are some ideas for ‘ethnic’ ice creams that are usually received well by Western palates.

Matcha ice cream is a very popular ice cream in Japan and other countries of East Asia. Very refreshing and very… green! Matcha is the emerald-green tea powder traditionally used in the Japanese tea ceremony, but you don’t need expensive ceremonial-grade matcha to make ice cream. Red bean (azuki) ice cream is another very popular Japanese ice cream flavour, as well as Okinawan sweet potato, cherry blossom (for a limited season) and the nutty-tasting black sesame (goma) ice cream. Japan is also famous for strange ice cream flavours, so if you are feeling adventurous, this is the country to look for truly jaw-dropping tastes!

Kaimaki ice cream is a luscious ice cream, made with mastic and salep and is very popular in Greece. The ingredients are unique and give it a very distinct flavour. Mastic is the crystallised aromatic resin harvested from the tree pistacia lentiscus, mainly growing on the Greek island of Chios. Salep is a flour produced by grinding orchid dried roots and is used as a thickening agent for this ice cream, giving it also distinctive elasticity. Kaimaki ice cream is served with syrupy sweets, such as kataifi, or for something… ehm… lighter it goes well with sour cherry syrup and Aegina pistachios. Kaimaki ice cream is very similar to Turkish ice cream.

Kulfi is the Indian version of ice cream and is very popular in that part of the world. The technique for making kulfi is slightly different from ice cream in that you need to let your milk mix simmer slowly in an open pan until about a third of the water has evaporated, while you continuously stir. When the mix is ready, it is not churned during freezing, but instead it is frozen solid. Kulfi is a very dense frozen dessert that takes a long time to melt and can be eaten with knife and fork. Popular ingredients to add flavour and texture are pistachios, mangos, saffron, cardamom, rose water, cinnamon, almonds and malai (clotted cream).

If you are not after exotic flavours, but you just crave for something different, The Parlour Restaurant at Fortnum & Mason in London might inspire you! Their strawberry with balsamic vinegar and walnut with maple syrup scoops were so good that I still regret not trying stem ginger with honey as well!

So, whatever you do, stick to the recipe and… happy summer!

The novel consists of a series of letters and notes exchanged mostly between the central character, Juliet, and others over the course of a few months in 1946. Juliet is a successful authoress in her early thirties, living in the gloominess of the bombarded post-war London, feeling rather restless, seeking for love, lacking inspiration and subconsciously longing for a fresh start in life. A member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society comes across a second-hand book once owned by Juliet and writes to her a rather reserved but extremely dignified letter to ask if she could help him get hold of more material from the same author. She is a fresh, completely unpretentious and cheerful correspondent, encouraging replies and more correspondence from the people of Guernsey. Mostly farmers and fishermen and feeling quite isolated from the rest of the world, the islanders are simply thrilled to discover someone so uncondenscending to whom they can express, in the most delightful and candid way, their strong opinions about books, authors and every other matter conceivable. Juliet soon uncovers, piece by piece, a fascinating story and makes a life-changing visit to Guernsey to learn more and meet her new friends.

Apart from the immediate sense of exhilaration, the element that drew and locked my attention to this book in the long term was the ingenious way the narrative spotlight is passed from one character to the other. Depending on the sender of the letter, there is an amusing change of storytelling style and pace, page after page. Even letters by correspondents frugal in their use of words are complemented by information dispersed in other letters, so that the need for the reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps never feels arduous. The epistolary style of the novel combined with the fact that the presence of books is so prominent everywhere has certain similarities to 84 Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff: all correspondents – whether authors, publishers or readers – have in common their fondness of books and they form friendships through letter-writing that was initiated by literary enquiries. Compared to other books about books, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society might not be as autobiographical as 84 Charing Cross Road, nor as hysterically funny and surreal as the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde, nor as heartbreaking as the Book Thief by Markus Zusak, but it combines just the right dose of all these ingredients into one lovely book.

As I was reading through, I could not get The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by Gerald B Edwards out of my mind. That is not simply because both storylines concern the Island of Guernsey while it was under German Occupation, although the prominent sense of historical background and geographical location in both books undoubtedly triggered the connection. It is mainly because the picturesque Guernsey that emerges from the pages of G. Edwards, could not be any more perfect in its provinciality, insularity and superb detail, as the natural habitat of the Guernsey people we meet in the pages of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It is very easy to imagine Ebenezer and the other members of the Literary Society being neighbours, quarrelling in loud Guernsey patois, gathering after curfew to listen to the wireless and deceiving the Germans in every way imaginable. In addition, the characters in both books are presented to the reader in similar detailed plainness, which, at some subliminal level, strengthens the associations made between them. Ebenezer, being an old fisherman who has spent all his life on the island, could not have anything but a raw and blunt narrative style as he recounts his life’s story, despite his unambiguous astuteness. Similarly, linguistic ornaments in the letters written to Juliet by members of the Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society would be out of place. To this effect, the wonderful prose of M. Shaffer and A. Barrows immensely strengthens the credibility of the letters. In fact it is thanks to the prose, that the detail in which the characters are defined is not in the least restrained by the fact that the story is told via letters only. A few, carefully-selected words are enough to provide a vivid picture of each Guernsey correspondent, even when they do not write about themselves, but rather about village news and gossip. The authors have succeeded in everybody’s unrefined and natural way of speaking almost literally be vocalised through their letters.

All in all, a book highly recommend to everyone with a love for books and reading. A splendid leisure book, that will both entertain and stimulate thoughts.

It sounds simple. Honeybees make honey from nectar they collect from flowers. We take it from them and eat it. There is nothing simple about honey production, though. The bees put a staggering amount of labour, patience and teamwork in this task. It is of course their main food source, but really, what a hard way to earn a living! So, lets talk about the whole ‘production chain’ behind a jar of honey…

The chain starts with forager worker bees making endless trips to bring nectar back to the beehive. With their particularly acute sense of smell they are able to target suitable flowers from meters away. They will visit 50-100 flowers during each trip and store the nectar into their ‘honey sacs’ for as long as they are airborne. Once they are back to the beehive, they hand the nectar over to standing-by crews of young worker bees and they hit the road again, so to speak.

It is then the turn of the beehive bees to join forces in order to transform the nectar into raw honey, through chemical processes taking place in the course of repeated ingestion, digestion and regurgitation. At the same time, other teams of young bees are responsible for building hexagonal cells from beeswax. Once the raw honey is of satisfactory quality, it is spread over empty honeycomb cells and is left to dry. To speed up water evaporation, the bees beat their wings to create a draught in the beehive. Cells with ‘ripe’ honey are then sealed with wax caps and this honey is expected to last for a very long time, since the low water content prevents any further fermentation.

This cycle is meticulously repeated by the little busy creatures during the bloom season and it is extremely painstaking, with the average worker bee producing just half a teaspoon of honey during her lifetime. In fact, for the production of one kilogram of honey, the bees of a beehive need to collectively fly the equivalent of several times around the world to gather enough nectar! And of course, not to forget that the pace of this work is quite fast; think of the tempo of Rimsky-Korsakov’s the Flight of the Bumblebee!

As the bloom season comes to its end, it is the beekeeper’s turn to ‘rob’ the bees and collect the honey. Modern beehives consist of a rectangular box, inside which several removable frames are hung in parallel. The bees fill these rectangular panels with honeycomb cells, resulting in flat honeycombs that can be easily removed-encased as they are-for inspection without destroying the beehive. The hive boxes usually consist of two ‘floors’ with the lower level mostly accommodating the pollen storage and breeding and housing needs of the hive, and the top level housing the honey storage. This architecture makes it easy for the beekeeper to remove the honey with little disturbance to the bee colony.

When it is time for honey collection, the hive is fumigated and the smoke makes the bees remarkably non-aggressive, so that they can be simply brushed off from the honeycomb panels. The beekeeper leaves enough frames in the beehive box to ensure that the bees will have enough food, and after checking that there is only honey in the frames that have been removed, he uncaps the honeycomb cells with a knife and spins the frames in a special device to separate the honey from the honeycomb with little damage to the latter. Some filtering is usually needed to remove pollen and other floating particles and then this pure delicious raw honey is ready to be poured into jars and consumed.

I realise that my family belongs to those lucky people who have their honey supply coming directly from a beekeeper and therefore can ask all sorts of questions regarding the origin of the honey and sample it before buying. Even better, we know where the beekeeper lives, his car plate number and his whole extended family, so he knows better than to try and cheat us!! The other day though, as I ran out of honey for my slice of bread, I had to get some from the supermarket and I was confronted with an overwhelming variety of honey jars to pick from and very little to go with, other than the information on the jar and the appearance of the honey inside. I bought jam in the end…! But I did ask around afterwards for ways to recognise good quality honey.

Best quality honey has low water content (under 20% and as low as 14%), which prevents fermentation and makes it last longer. Honey retains the aroma and taste of the flowers the bees have collected the nectar from, and as a result honey produced from a single floral source is considered premium honey and the most valuable. To produce this sort of honey the beekeeper will have to move the beehives to areas where bees will have access to mostly one type of flower, and be willing to harvest half-full frames at the end of the specific blooming season.  Bits and pieces of wax, sugar crystals, yeast and other impurities commonly occurring in raw honey, although not appealing to the eye, do not diminish honey quality and might in fact enhance its nutritional benefits and medical properties. On the other hand, certain kinds of processing that involve heating, while they do improve the shelf life of honey and give it a more clear and clean look, they generally lead to a degradation of flavour and quality. Honey adulteration is also a common problem and unfortunately it is not easy to recognise adulterated honey visually.

Apart from their key role in honey production, bees are a very important part of our ecosystem, because of their contribution to the pollination of flowering plants, a process without which a rather large percentage of our food supply would be jeopardised. An alarmingly steep decline in the honeybee population around the world has been noted during the past few years, occurring in the form of the mysterious disappearance of all the worker bees of a beehive. Although the reasons are not fully understood and it is possible that man is not to blame in this case, it might be educating for all of us to pause and think for a moment how much more than just honey we stand to lose if honeybees disappear from the face of earth…

Peruvian Pink Salt is brought to us from the Sacred Valley of the Incas in the Andes Mountains of Peru, slowly carried on the backs of donkeys down the steep descent. In breathtaking scenery where time seems to have stood still, warm water from a spring fed from an underground ocean oozes into terraced ponds and from there the salt is hand-harvested after the water evaporates in the sun, repeating the same cycle for some 2,000 years now. The crystals have a subtle pink colour – due to trace minerals such as iron – and high moisture content.

If alpine destinations are not really your cup of tea, why not dive together with the dolphins of the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Kona in Hawaii, for some Deep Water Sea Salt? Pure seawater is brought from a depth of 2,000 feet below the ocean’s surface to enclosed spaces where it dries in the sun, without having ever been directly exposed to the pollutants of the environment. This salt consists of moist and snow-white flaky crystals, is extremely pure and rich in trace minerals, and (the good news!) has very low sodium content, making it suitable for a healthy diet.

Hawaii also produces the widely known Red Alaea Sea Salt. From ancient times, the inhabitants of Kauai Island had discovered that a very special salt was forming through sun evaporation during the rain season, when Pacific Ocean water infiltrated with washed-down alaea (red volcanic clay), became trapped in the shoreline tidal pools. This salt has been used since then in sacred ceremonies and healing rituals. Alaea salt is full of goodness and captivating looks, being rich in iron oxide, nutrients and trace-minerals and full of vibrant colour.

Marsupial friends can be visited by proxy via the south-eastern Australian Murray River Salt, worth buying not just because of its superior flavour, but also as an (admittedly symbolic, rather than substantial!) environmental act. Under the Murray Darling Basin there are large quantities of naturally saline water. Although the Basin is flushed by the snowmelt descending from the Alps via the Murray River, salt is making its way into the soil and the groundwater, causing agricultural, ecological and economic concerns. Using the saline water of the Basin for salt extraction improves the environment and produces an exquisite salt at the same time. Murray River salt flakes are crunchy, with a warm peach colour, due to the red pigment of algae that inhabit the brine.

Although salt is inherently related to water, the very popular Himalayan Salt will convey you to a place where you can keep your feet completely dry! This rock salt is from Pakistan and is mined in the Khewra Salt Mines. It is essentially prehistoric sea salt, from seawaters that existed when our planet’s ecosystem was still perfectly unspoiled. The colossal geological phenomena that led to the formation of the Himalayan Mountains and the disappearance of the Tethys Ocean, simultaneously resulted in huge quantities of salt being buried and crystallised deep within the mountains. Himalayan salt is usually light pink, but the exact colour varies depending on mineral content.

Another exciting salt originating from Hawaii is the shiny and (literally!) coal-black Lava Salt from the island of Molokai. This salt, similar to the silvery Cyprus Black Lava Salt, is produced by blending local sea salt with purified black lava rock and activated charcoal. These salts are very rich in minerals and have detoxifying properties. Apart from all these benefits though, isn’t the idea of bringing both exotic Hawaii and a tiny hint of Earth mantle to your plate, with just a single pinch of salt, simply fascinating?

Japan might be surrounded by water, but due to the damp climate Japanese salt is quite rare. Nazuna Salt is produced at the Kyushu island of Japan, inside pyramid-shaped solar houses where it is left to crystallise in dishes made from cypress wood. Jewel of the Ocean is another Japanese salt, produced from mixed deep and surface seawater to achieve a potent mineral content. Evaporation through the sun and the wind and further dehydration in ceramic, hand-made pans inside glass hothouses yields this beautiful salt. The name is derived from the appearance of the salt crystals, which are reminiscent of gemstones, both in terms of looks and quality. This salt is very difficult to find on the market.

And for a more local trip, how about Cornish Sea Salt? It comes from the pristine turquoise waters around Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula, where salt was produced by the Celts as early as the Iron Age, by boiling seawater in clay pans over open gorse- and hazel-wood fires. Today though, saltwater is steam-evaporated in very modern and environmentally-friendly facilities and the salt is hand-harvested from evaporation pans. The resulting crystals are brilliant white and flaky and – due to the natural way of processing the Atlantic seawater – this is one or the purest sea salts you can find, retaining all of its minerals to the full.

I hope reading this helped you banish those negative thoughts triggered by the bad weather outside! If not, maybe you should try carrying some salt in your pocket for good luck and also throw some over your left shoulder, just for good measure!

For inquisitive cooks: Salt Traders, Beyond the Shaker, Salt Works and Tuareg salt caravans.

The name of the person who first put together a pair of spectacles has been lost in obscurity, however according to Italian documentation this first pair appeared in Pisa at around 1286 AD. It simply consisted of two magnifying glass discs, each mounted on its own frame with a handle, and then the ends of the two handles were hinged together in an inverted “V”, forming in effect a pair of riveted eyeglasses. The tremendous significance of this simple discovery did not go unnoticed. Riveted spectacle production and sale was soon established in the island of Murano and later flourished in Florence from the 15^th century on, thanks to the very skilful and experienced glass craftsmen employed in these areas. Spectacles were predominantly worn by scholars, artisans and monks (primarily to correct long-sightedness, but in some cases also short-sightedness) and were a symbol of scholarly status and wisdom. However, once printed books became available to the public in the 15^th century and even more so when the first newspapers appeared in the 17^th century, the popularity and demand for spectacles rose so dramatically, that spectacles were actually sold by peddlers in the streets.

Riveted spectacles were difficult to keep in place though, because they did not have side-arms and as a result they had to be hand-held from above or balanced on the nose. Not a big problem for solemn monks copying scripts in the tranquillity of a monastery library I would imagine, but certainly terribly inconvenient for more physically active wearers with straight noses! Riveted spectacles became more comfortable when the rivet was substituted by an arched nose bridge which, although heavy and stiff, made these bow spectacles more easy to rest and fit on the nose. Later on, the addition of layered slits gave the bridge extra elasticity. Nuremberg-style nose eyeglasses, made of a single piece of wire with round lenses became very popular from the 17^th century until early in the 19^th century.

All these types of frames however lacked stability. Throughout the centuries different ways were improvised for holding the spectacles in place, for example by fixing them on hat brims or wigs, but spectacle wearers would have to wait for about five centuries until a truly practical and functional way of securing eyeglasses in place was found. The London optician Edward Scarlett started offering temple spectacles in 1727, with short and rigid side-pieces pressed upon the temples and ending in loops for securing the spectacles with ribbons tied at the back of the head. A further development to this design came in 1752 by another London optician, James Ayscough, who invented double-hinged temples, which were more comfortable to wear, putting pressure neither on the nose nor on the temples. ‘Modern’ temples following the curve of the back of the ear appeared only after the middle of the 19^th century. Martin’s margins were very much in style in England in the second half of the 18^th century. These spectacles had horn or tortoiseshell inserts placed within the eyewires of a normal frame, thus reducing the size of the lenses and hence the exposure of the eyes to light. The lenses were often tinted for further protection from excess light, which was considered to be harmful to the eyesight.

It seems though, that the fashion-aware and self-conscious European aristocracy did not find all these sorts of eyewear elegant or stylish enough and would not tolerate all the fastening problems that accompanied them. So, in the 17^th century the short-sighted members of the upper class showed a preference for perspective glasses instead of spectacles. These were single lenses that were hung with a cord around the neck for safekeeping. A quizzer or quizzing glass was popular among men and women alike from the 18^th century onwards and it consisted of a single lens that was held in front of the eye with a short, decorative handle. The lens could be round, oval or rectangular, but the popularity of this sort of vision aid wore out after the middle of the 19^th century. At that time the monocle, which had already been introduced by the Prussian antiquarian Baron Philipp von Stosch in the 1720’s, rose in popularity and remained the gentleman’s favourite choice until approximately the middle of the 20^th century. A monocle is usually a circular lens, either framed or rimless, attached to a string, with the other end fastened to the wearer’s clothes. Contrary to the quizzer, the monocle is slotted in the eye socket, and it is very stable and comfortable to wear when it is custom-manufactured to exactly fit the individual’s eye orbit. The monocle was not simply used to improve vision in one eye, but was a status symbol and conveyed an aura of arrogance and superiority among the members of the gentry. Although nowadays health insurance policies usually do not cover monocles, when vision correction is needed in one eye only there is no particular reason why it could not be provided by a monocle.

Another fashionable kind of spectacles during the second half of the 18^th century, especially in England, France, Germany and Italy, was scissors glasses. Roughly speaking these were like inverted riveted glasses, held from below, but with longer and curved stems and they almost always had round lenses. They were worn both by men and women, with a chain or ribbon through a ring located just below the hinge to secure them around the neck. Early in the 19^th century however their use became rare, and ladies were delighted to start holding lorgnettes instead. These consisted of a conventional spectacle facade, which was held in front of the eyes by a lateral handle. Lorgnettes were as much a piece of jewellery as a vision aid and the handles were highly decorative, often also double-functioning as a case to fold the lorgnettes into. Lorgnettes were made popular at the end of the 18^th century by London optician George Adams Jr. and then at the beginning of the 19^th century Robert Bretell Bate introduced a further innovation: a hinge at the bridge controlled by a spring mechanism allowed the lenses to spring apart or fold flat into a single eyeglass, making the lorgnettes very portable. Towards the end of the 18^th and beginning of 19^th century, fashion reverted to a style of spectacles without side-pieces, which were held in place by pinching the bridge of the nose and were thus very appropriately called pince-nez. There was a huge variety of styles available and different mechanisms to provide elasticity to the nose bridge, for example by using spring clips that terminated in nose pads or by using a flexible piece of metal to make the bridge. These eyeglasses were very popular in the middle class for men and women alike.

The frames for all these different eyewear designs were made of various materials, with wood, horn, bone and leather being more popular in the early centuries, whilst brass, copper, silver, gold, steel, tortoiseshell, baleen, mother-of pearl and ivory were favoured in the later centuries. With spectacles used not just to assist eyesight but quite often as fashion accessories, it goes without saying that exquisitely decorated frames, reminiscent of jewellery, were not uncommon among wealthy wearers. And of course with the fabrication of plastic a whole new era in frame styling dawned.

Nowadays, when it comes to ophthalmic frames, we are completely spoilt for choice. In fact, we have come to think of frames not simply as a way to secure the lenses in the right position in front of our eyes, but also as an extension of our personality and a way to complement and enhance our facial features. A mixture of state-of-the-art scientific and technological expertise, fashion design and advanced craftsmanship guarantees the production of stylish, comfortable and functional frames. Effectively, an endless variety of frame materials, designs and colours are available today, warranting that there is something to suit every taste and every face. “Whatever…”, I hear my optician mumble under his breath… Oh well, maybe I should ask him for a pair of prescription lorgnettes-this would certainly make his day, n’est-ce pas?

To discover more visit:
musEYEum
British Optical Association Museum
The College of Optometrists, London