Anyway, I realised that the bus I was on went fairly close to a shop that I'd been meaning to go and take photos of for a few years, so I jumped off and walked the distance (just over a mile) to where the shop is. I'm very glad I did, because I discovered that the shop in question is closing for good at the end of July. After 50 years of trading, the owners are retiring. I can't help but wonder what's going to happen to this fabulous signage:

No one seems to know if the owners deliberately gave their shop such a provocative name, or not, but you can't help but love it, especially when this camp statue is but a few metres away:

There's some other nice signage nearby, too.

Friday night at The Miller.

The estate's been on my list of things to visit for a few years but I kept putting it off. Going there last week was a completely spontaneous decision, which was probably poor planning on my part, as it ended up taking the best part of three hours just to get there. The second half of the journey took the most time. Turns out there's no direct bus from Lewisham station and I wasn't really up for walking through a couple of miles of unfamiliar backstreets so I had to get a bus to Eltham and then double back around on myself on what turned out to be the Slowest Bus Ever (although I was intrigued to see a sign for an ice well as we passed through Mottingham, having visited the one at the Canal Museum).

All the streets in the estate are named after Arthurian characters. Mordred Road is also home to a gorgeous magnolia tree which will probably get torn down along with the houses (and also at least one very grumpy cat).

Even the church is a prefab — with some pebbledash.

Ironically (and annoyingly), once I finally got to the estate, I stayed less than ten minutes because a man started following me down one of the streets while I was taking photos, trying to chat me up. He only disappeared when I went away, even though I probably would have been willing to talk to him if he'd had more to say than "hey baby hey baby" all the way down the road. It might even have been interesting if he actually lived in one of the prefab houses.

It's annoying I wasn't there very long, though because, on top of wasting so much time trying to get there, I didn't get that many photos. Oh well, there are loads of pictures all over the internet. See more from Sarah McIntyre, Nothing To See Here, hereWW2 Talk, BBC News, and Urban75.

It's a nice old red brick building, designed by Norman Shaw (the architect of Albert Hall Mansions in Kensington) , covered with pretty scalloped tiles.

There's a pretty blue plaque, put up in 1949, which you can only see if you're standing on the front steps.

Nowadays there are several households in apartments, but the top floor is being used by artist John Aldus, who is the first artist to use the studio space for some time. He has all sorts of lovely objects on display in various nooks and crannies, so I spent a happy 40 minutes or so taking lots of photos. (I didn't post them all online because too many seems intrusive even if he did open his home to the public). There were lots of tiny houses all over the place, including the top of the wardrobe, above the flat door, and on a shelf by the stairs. At the top of the stairs was a fabulous mirrored minibar.

I wanted to stay for cocktails and lunch on the balcony, and spend lots more time browsing through art books and interesting nicknacks.

But I had to get on a bus to the next Open House, Sky House. This is a penthouse apartment, built in the 1980s but only made liveable in 2009. They were a bit iffy about people taking photos (even though there are photos in that link), so I only took a few to give a sense of what it's like.

This is the view from next to the main door, looking through the main living space, with the bedroom at the far end (behind the piano). All the walls are basically glass, so there's a lot of light, even though there are a lot of shelves on one side.

This is the view from the other end — you can see all the shelves.

There's a little workspace in the middle of the corridor, which isn't the most spacious of offices, but this is the view, looking towards the BT Tower and Centre Point.

The views were pretty amazing all around, really. Here's the view towards Hampstead.

Final stop of the day was no-house near Holloway. This was the one with the longest queue (almost an hour), but it was also the most disappointing.

The exterior is a modern block with cedarwood — apparently the frame can be built in five days. (There were some photos showing them putting it up.) It stands out a lot amongst the Victorian houses (despite their claims to make something that would fit in), but it has a pleasing external design.

Inside was disappointing, though. Its stark white walls and floors made it look cold and somewhat clinical, almost unfinished. There were some groovy chairs though.

The bathroom was probably the big talking point, with a sunken bath and a huge window that could be opened onto a small corridor where there was another huge window. Because the bath is sunken, no one can really see inside unless they're very tall.

This is the view from the corridor.

And this is the view from in front of the bathroom mirror.

There were some clever designs in no-house (I especially like the fact you can build it in less than a week), but I think I'd have to see it with some different decor ideas before I could actually want to live there. (Unlike John Aldus' flat, which I wanted to move into straight away.)

More photos of Sunday's Open House here.

The first place I visited was Centre Point, the iconic office block above Tottenham Court Road station that was built in the 1960s and scandalously left empty for many years because the property developer refused to rent it to anyone who wouldn't take the whole building. 
 
Centre Point has always been one of those buildings I was curious to see inside, and I never took advantage of the times friends have worked there, so it was good to finally get a chance to nose around inside and to admire the view from the top floor. 

To be honest, the interior wasn't all that exciting (it is a corporate office building, after all), but I did like the pattern on the floor. 

And the view from the 33rd floor is pretty spectacular.

Being so high up provides ample opportunity to spot things you'd never usually see, like grass roofs or construction sites usually hidden behind hoardings. I spotted a ghost sign on Oxford Street that is usually obscured by a combination of building angles and wood hoardings. (It's for W Heslop, about whom I have yet to find any information.) 

The bar looks nice too, but to drink there you have to be a member — applying for membership doesn't come cheap and apparently you have to be vetted by other members before you're accepted. They can keep their boys' club, but I'll still be envious of the views.   
 

The second venue I visited was the Royal Astronomical Society, where we were given an extensive of the building. A very extensive tour: it took two hours, because our guide stopped beside every single portrait and artefact, and proceeded to give us a long-winded explanation as to how it had ended up at the RAS. 

To be honest, I was too knackered to pay much attention, especially as being stuck in a tiny office room with 25 other people isn't my idea of fun, so I missed much of what he was saying, so I spent a large chunk of it sat on the stairs admiring the engraved window.

We did get to see a piece of Isaac Newton's tree, though, and some pretty amazing pre-Galilean books, and a nice lunar globe. 

Two hours is a long time for a tour of a small building, though, even if the tour is peppered with interesting anecdotal tidbits, so I'm not sure that I'd recommend the Royal Astronomical Society at next year's Open House. I'd definitely recommend Centre Point, though.

See more photos from Centre Point and the RAS here. 

It's a great place, full of character, and full of characters. While we were queuing up the entire cafe was being regaled by a jolly woman about her very busy life, and the two women behind the counter had more than a few comments to share.

The best thing about the place, besides it apparently being a great place to people-watch, is the original vintage decor. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos in the front of the cafe because I didn't want to intrude on people having lunch, but there are two other rooms. One is a converted passageway, with beautiful green tiles and a red-and-black checkerboard floor.

The other is a slightly grander dining room, looking more like a traditional pie-and-mash shop (although I didn't notice pie-and-mash on the menu). There's also a little smoking area out the back, which I didn't explore.

As well as the beautiful green tiles, there are other great period details, like this old ad for Nosegay Tobacco (no snerking at the back!), which is found in the window of a phonebox. Yes, a phonebox. No phone that I noticed, though.

Then there is this beautiful illuminated advert for 7-up, which is impossible to resist. It's slightly different on both sides:

viewed from outside

viewed from inside

As for the food, my ham omelette was standard caff fare, although not unnecessarily greasy, and the chips were very good; crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. When I ordered my cappuccino (with slight dread as caffs often fail to provide good coffee), I was asked if I wanted a strong one, and it was perfect: it tasted almost like proper Italian cappuccino. And the staff were so friendly, I instantly felt at home. The only drawback is that it's only open on weekdays, so you can't go there for a weekend fry-up, but if you fancy bunking off during the week, it's well worth the journey to the end of the Victoria line.

Instead, one thing I decided to do was go and check out this year's Serpentine Pavilion. (It is hard and shiny and very very red and the cafe is expensive and there's not really much more to be said about it. I also popped into the Serpentine Gallery as I am wont to do when I am in the area, but the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition was pretty dull.) When I got off the bus outside the Albert Hall, I noticed that there was an exhibition of Roman Cieślewicz posters at the Royal College of Art. I'd been interested in seeing it but I thought it had already closed, so that was a nice surprise (it closed at the weekend though).

The exhibition was good fun. Cieślewicz had a varied career, designing book covers and film posters in Poland in the 50s and 60s, as well as working for all sorts of magazines and institutions when he moved to Paris. There was a strong use of collage which I found quite inspiring and I was looking forward to going home and creating something, when I came into the last room and found a collage workshop taking place. So I collected some printouts of various source images, sat myself in a corner with some scissors and glue and got my art on!

This poster is the first piece I glued down, though it wasn't my first collage idea but more like my third or fourth. The other ones weren't working for me because the pieces were all printed on different-coloured paper and some were awkward sizes and it wasn't as coherent as I wanted. But once I started on this piece it came together really quickly. (the colours came out a bit weird on the camera but it's too big for my scanner!).

After that, I made this one, from just four pieces — see if you can spot the individual elements.

I also took some photos of some of the other collages because I thought they were brilliant.

This fishman was made by the women running the workshop. I later found out one of them was Natsko Seki whose illustration has made the design-blog rounds a few times recently. (The other woman was from Finland but I didn't find out her name.)

This one was done by a teenage boy who kept making it bigger and bigger until it was about half his size.

It's a shame I can't give anyone a proper credit for the rest of these

And here's one last picture, a remixed version of my first collage poster. I ran it through Plastic Bullet when I was feeling bored, and this was my favourite result because it looks like it was taken underwater. Plastic Bullet is fun for that.

I'd like to make more collages now but while I have a box file full of clippings, I don't have any engravings like the ones I used here and they're fun to play with. Anyone know a good resource for copyright-free illos? Most of the sites I've looked at have truly awful search funtions and it takes ages to find anything even remotely interesting or useable.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Mayfield Lavender Farm in Banstead. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this part of England was the centre of the world's lavender production, before urbanisation and cheap French imports did for it, so it's nice to have some back again in the same area. The farm has quite an interesting history. It's a lovely place, just on the edge of London; two fields of purple flowers, leased from Sutton council.

There were so many bees that the constant buzzzzzzing began to sound like noise pollution similar to planes. Strangely, it didn't smell very strong when I was there — must be one of those weird things where the smell is so distinct and potentially overpowering your brain switches it off so you can recognise other things over the top of it. Odd.

Inevitably, I took some photos. So here they are. If you click on them, you can see them at a bigger size.

little fat bees getting drunk on pollen

spot the baby

See the whole set here. They've started harvesting the lavender this week, but there's still a bit of time to go and see it before the end of August. It's worth a look.

A few days ago, I went to The Complete History of Food, presented by Bompas & Parr. Despite the fact that the title was a bit of a misnomer (there was nothing "complete" about their history, and, given that it was sponsored by a cognac company, it didn't really feel much like a history of food), it was an entertaining and unusual night out with two of my best pals, Nikki and Billy. (Apologies in advance for the poor quality of my photos, but the light was very dim in there, and I only had my phone.)

We started in a dark wood-panelled room, which had the ambience of a gentlemen's club after hours, or perhaps the room where the body was discovered in some Agatha Christie murder mystery. (It was clearly a library, although the bookcases were mostly empty.)

There, a chatty young man gave an introduction on what we could expect to see later. He claimed that he was "The Doctor" (although I didn't spot any bowties or extra-long scarves), and that he would prescribe our first cocktail based on the medieval elements of Humours.

Our "prescriptions" were indicated by coloured stickers stuck on our lanyards and, after a rather cheesy recorded introduction, we were sent off down a darkened staircase to find the next room. At the bottom of the stairs we went through a doorway, only to find ourselves having to jump onto stepping-stones through a flooded basement. "Be careful, there are eels in the water, and they're feeling a bit frisky tonight!" warned our guide for this part, but we made it through the room without incident, and boarded the wooden ship at the other end.

As you might imagine, walking across a flooded room filled with eels to drink in a wooden ship moored in a cellar should be a singular experience, and it certainly was. The ship was very dark, mostly lit by candles, with the sound of waves washing up against the hull. There was a jar of leeches on the bar, and for one brief moment I worried that they might be some bizarre ingredient in our cocktails, but fortunately that was not to be.

The three of us had been given different prescriptions, which gave us an opportunity to try three of the four cocktails on offer. I'd been diagnosed with an excess of phlegm (not far off as it happens; my sinuses are always stuffed up) and my prescription was supposed to boost my yellow bile (lovely). My "Choleric" cocktail was a fruity mix of cognac with rose-water, although I must admit I didn't detect much of the rose flavour as it was overwhelmed by the huge amount of ice in my drink (hmmm… since when did they have ice cubes in medieval London?) and the slightly salty flavour of the rather boring amuse-bouche that came with it — a piece of toast with artichoke and red cabbage. Although it was tasty, it looked and felt more like a party nibble and didn't feel like it had been particularly chosen well to accompany the drink. I was also a bit disappointed with the extremely haphazard way the drink was poured, as the woman standing next to me got twice as much as I or the other chap did (maybe the bartender fancied her).

Having joined the three of us in the middle of a conversation about beards, The Doctor had suggested that Billy was a "chin-stroking melancholic" and should have something to boost his blood. To that end, he was prescribed the "Sanguine" cocktail, a spiced mead, which was nice but sweet, and came accompanied by a teeny portion of fig covered in beetroot sauce.

Ironically, given the fact that Nikki is pregnant and can't drink alcohol, she was prescribed the tastiest cocktail. She told the doctor that she was far too knowledgable about the state of her yellow bile at the moment, so he prescribed a "Phlegmatic" cocktail, which fortunately wasn't made with phlegm, nor did it encourage it. In fact, it was a bloody marvellous combination; a cognac and apricot martini paired with porcini and truffle popcorn. The popcorn was extremely moreish (even though none of us are fans of porcini), and the flavours really complemented each other, with the buttery richness of the truffle lightly cutting the sweetness of the apricot. I was a bit jealous that she'd got a better prescription than me, but soon stopped complaining when she handed me most of the martini to finish after she'd taken one teensy sip (there are benefits of going to cocktail-themed night with a pregnant woman).

I was getting quite relaxed in the dim candlelight, chatting to people I could hardly see as the sound of waves came and went, but we had to move up to the next room, so up we went. Literally. First we piled into a teeny box of a lift, then using the lift as a time machine (which was certainly no TARDIS) we left the medieval spice boat and went up to the roof for a twenty-first century "deconstructed" champagne cocktail and a meaty Rocher, overlooking the London skyline. Although the views across London were great, and the herb-garden covering the bar was pretty, aromatic and practical, in hindsight I wish there'd been something a lot more futuristic at this point. But that's just wishful thinking, because at the time I was too busy admiring the view, discussing herbs with the charming French bartender and gasping in amazement at fizzy grapes to complain about anything.

Unfortunately, besides the fact that it looked exactly like a Ferrero Rocher, I don't remember much about how the Rocher D'or tasted. Obviously it tasted of meat, which was less of a shock than I expected, given how it looked, but I think the problem was that I was so bloody hungry I was actually too hungry to pay enough attention to the flavours. And there were only the teensiest blink-and-you'll-miss-'em singular specks of gold flake on each one, which barely justified their poncey name (not a problem, really, but everyone else's review seems to misleadingly imply that they were smothered in gold, which they weren't).

The cocktail, on the other hand, was a definite talking point. It was a classic champagne cocktail, but made with chardonnay instead of champagne, and with grapes as a garnish. Somehow, as the grapes soaked up the alcohol, the cocktail became paler and flatter, and the grapes got fizzy! Amazing. (Definitely one to try at home, although I suspect there's some secret trick they didn't share with us.)

The view was pretty good, too.

Then we all trooped downstairs again to find ourselves in yet another darkened room, this time with a vintage lampshade barely glowing and a vintage television flickering with vintage adverts. Ostensibly this was a celebration of the mass-production of the 1950s, and we were handed sheets of card and told to enjoy our TV dinners.

Our TV dinners were in fact scratch'n'sniff meals, although to be honest they smelled a bit disgusting. There was some debate between Billy and myself, as I was convinced that the roast chicken in fact smelled of coronation chicken (something that Cook Sister seems to agree on), and the peas smelled of mint toothpaste. Overall, it wasn't very appetising, and even now, days later, the artificial smell still lingers on the cards (which we took home as souvenirs), only now it smells even more disgusting! Fun idea, but not quite a success.

By this point we were wondering where our actual real dinner was and if we would ever get to eat it, but it was time to move onto the next room, down another set of stairs. There was nothing to eat or drink in the next room, the only thing to do was bounce. Or get bounced. Inside the room was a giant inflatable stomach that filled the four walls rather alarmingly, but a brief bounce around was quite good fun. (For anyone concerned about it, the pregnant woman sensibly eschewed this part.)

Then we followed a trail of mushrooms down a corridor, past a couple of rooms with hand-written "no entry" signs pasted up on the doors. One door was open, and the room was filled with junk and equipment. It was a peek behind the scenes, but it slightly spoiled the magic, as did the signs written in biro. The mushrooms reminded me a bit of mushroom tunnels, and looked almost as though Fairyland had gone through some kind of urban development.

At the end of the corridor, and down some stairs filled with flickering images projected onto the walls, we finally came to the dining room for our main course, which was good as by this time Nikki and I were ravenous (although we nearly wandered into the bar by mistake, as it was the first door we saw when we got to the bottom of the stairs). In the dining room we were greeted by a female maitre d' in a pretty dress. Unfortunately, given that this was the room for the grand Victorian banquet, although it was a pretty dress, it wasn't a very Victorian one (more like a noughties version of a sixties version of the twenties). I'd been feeling a bit sad that the staff hadn't been in period costume where possible because I think it would have enhanced the historical aspects of the theme and helped us immerse ourselves in each period to better effect. Probably nobody else noticed or cared, but this was one of those moments where my disappointment was reinforced.

Because the dining room was full, we had to wait a few moments before they could seat us for our own moment of recreating the famous new year banquet inside a Crystal Palace Iguanadon in 1853.

Waiting meant that we actually got to have our dinner seated inside the replica of the Iguanadon at Crystal Palace, rather than at one of the many tables at the edges of the room. Admittedly, in reality it was slightly awkward as I was over-conscious of not wishing to disturb the two women already seated at the other end, and the decor of the table cloth and place setting made me think of some stuffy municipal dinner, rather than anything as fantastical as eating dinner inside a dinosaur. Again, that was probably just me — and might have had something to do with the fact that I only had the back wall to look at, rather than out over the small balcony into the main room, like the other two.

Unfortunately by this time I was so hungry that once again I didn't really pay enough attention to what we were eating, a confit of duck with puy lentils with a black champagne sauce, although — tasty as it was (which was very) — I can't say I really tasted much champagne in it, nor could I work out how they'd made it black. To be honest, the room was so dimly-lit there wasn't much way of telling what colour anything was anyway. The duck was nicely cooked, falling-off-the-bone tender, and the puy lentils were perfect. Sadly, the bread rolls they provided were a disappointment; the fact that our waiter arrived carrying a huge tray piled high with them only reinforced my mental notion that they'd been bought in bulk from a supermarket, which undermined the feeling of "decadence" that the chefs claimed to be aiming for in this room (at least, according to the programme).

The cocktail at this juncture was a bit disappointing too; a summer punch made with cognac, green tea, apple juice and elderflower. Much like my first cocktail, it seemed to have far more ice than necessary (if you must insist on ice, then one or two cubes is much better than five or six, especially in short glasses), and its light fruitiness didn't complement the meal as well as a glass of wine or something with more body would have done (I also would have liked the option of a glass of water at this point, and I'm sure Nikki would have as well!). However, it was quite refreshing as a digestif at the end of the course, and would probably work very well on a hot summer's day eating cucumber sandwiches and strawberries-and-cream. Of course, it wasn't really a digestif because it wasn't really the end of the meal, and there was one more course to go: the Renaissance Dessert.

I was quite surprised on entering the dessert room to discover that there was first an anteroom showcasing the gingerbread Gherkin from the Parliamentary Waffle House (which I sadly didn't get to visit, because I always passed when I had a full stomach). As impressive as it sounds on paper, it was — again — too dark in the room to really see it properly, and it was hardly the reason we were here. In fact, other than as an excuse to show off what they can do, I have no idea why it was even there: it's not like any of us got to taste it, and it wasn't even appropriate to the Renaissance Period anyway.

Although, to be honest, the rest of the dessert room wasn't really very Renaissance, either, as it was being soundtracked by cheesy 1980s pop music and it was full of pink frilly curtains that wouldn't have looked out of place on an 1980s soap opera. (I wanted to compare it to Barbara Cartland's boudoir, but another blogger already beat me to it, so I won't, in case I'm accused of copycatting. You get the idea, though.) Behind all the pink frippery was a giant cake turntable, with dishes laid out on it for us to take (here's a 5 second video).

This dessert was one of the highlights of the evening: an iris jelly with candied orange, ambergris posset and one perfect raspberry. The jelly had the colour and shape of a really good creme caramel, so the light, slightly citrussy flavour came as a (pleasant) surprise. The texture of the jelly was wonderful, too, firm but yielding, and it was complemented very well by the sweet dollop of creamy sauce on the plate.

The sauce provided one of the funnier moments of the evening, as there were people already tucking into their dish when the food guide started telling us what had gone into it. "Does anyone know what ambergris is?" she asked, to a responding chorus of "yeahs" from our corner (hey, we're nerds, we admit it). The look of slight shock and horror on some peoples' faces when she explained it was regurgitated by whales was mildly amusing, because I bet those same people eat honey without ever wondering or worrying where it comes from, even though it's regurgitated by bees. Billy muttered something about how expensive ambergris is, which prompted me to ask whether it had been gathered ethically. The guide was quick to reassure me that no whales had been killed in the collection of the ambergris, but I was no closer to finding out how it was (or is) sourced (but that's what Wikipedia is for). However, it was one of the only moments of the evening where people were confronted with the idea of where their food had come from, and I liked that it got them thinking and talking. I wish there'd been a few more moments like that, really, especially from an event marketed as The Complete History of Food.

Amongst the pretty pastel-coloured frou-frou frills and sugared ornaments, there was a funny little technical gizmo which provided much amusement. This was basically a table fitted with a heart monitor. You could stick your finger in the hole and make the table vibrate, and of course there was a plate of jelly on top of the table to wobble with as much thrust as you could muster. Sadly, because I have short, stumpy fingers, I couldn't even reach the sensor properly, so I couldn't manage much in the way of thrust, but Billy did better — here's a video.

And after that, dinner was sadly at an end, so we popped into the bar to prolong it a while longer. Unfortunately, after ending on such a fun note, the bar was something of a disappointment, especially for Nikki. There was only a choice of two cocktails: a pre-mixed Parisian Rendezvous punch, or a rather boozy cognac Sidecar. It's a real shame that the Parisian Rendezvous had been pre-mixed, because without the alcohol it would have made a very refreshing drink, and even though the evening was sponsored by an alcohol company, I think it's poor service not to provide an alcohol-free option, especially as they had the drinkaware website brashly emblazoned on our lanyards.

And this brings me back to my main problem with the night: it was misnamed. As a History of Food it wasn't really a great success, no History of Food would forget to mention potatoes, or honey, or fish (although there were eels in the water, there were none in the food, and the ambergris doesn't count because whales are mammals), or rice, or bananas, or cheese (I've just realised there was no cheese! How can you have a food event without cheese?) Instead, what they gave us was a very entertaining cocktail party with some food attached. Often, it felt a bit like the spectacle was the most important part of the night — especially the scratch'n'sniff dinner, or the inflatable stomach — and that was fine, but it meant that we sacrificed sating our appetite at the expense of sating our other senses, which is not really what we were there for. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound like I didn't have a great time, because I really did enjoy myself. It's more that the down notes of the evening dragged the high parts down as well, so that the overall good feeling at the end of the dinner was somewhat spoiled by the rather lacklustre experience in the bar afterwards (and to add insult to injury, we had to pay extra for that bit, which none of the reviews mention).

I'm still glad I went, and I did enjoy myself a great deal. After all, it's not every day you can drink cocktails in the bowels of a wooden ship in a flooded cellar, or nibble gold leaf and fizzy grapes in a herb-covered roof garden, or experience a scratch'n'sniff TV dinner, or jump around inside an inflatable stomach, or walk along a corridor that's been colonised by mushrooms, or dine on duck inside a dinosaur, or eat whale vomit and iris jelly, or wobble a plate by the power of your pulse alone. And I'm very grateful I got to do all of those things, because they all add up to a wonderfully eccentric evening of fun times with two of my best friends. And frankly, experiences like that are worth a little disappointment in less important areas.

Other reviews (and much better pictures) from:
Eat Like A Girl | Gourmet Chick | Fernandez & Leluu | Londonist | Cook Sister | the Telegraph | Domestic Sluttery { Crafts' Council | London Eater | The English Can Eat | Caroline's Miscellany