What to wear for a Burns Night

Photo of Robbie Burns in public domain from Wikipedia.

Problem
What do we wear for a Burns Supper or Scottish night?

Answers
Looking out your kilts and tartan clothes. If you don't have much, you might already have in your wardrobe:

Scottish Gentleman's Clothes
Cheapest is a tartan tie.

Scottish Lady's Clothes
Tartan dress or skirt.
If you are seated all evening, a skirt will not be noticed except when you arrive. Instead wear a black skirt, a white blouse and a tartan sash or tartan hairband and necklace.

DIY Tartan And Scottish Clothes
Your old tartan clothes are too small? Cut a piece of cloth and make a sash over a white blouse. Or a necktie. Or a bow tie. Or attach to a hair clip.
A stiff hairband - print a tartan and stick the paper over the hairband.
Make a tartan brooch.
Find a badge and stick tartan on it for an instant tartan badge.
Make tartan ear-rings.
A large birthday boy or birthday girl badge, the sort found attached to birthday cards, can be temporarily adapted by sticking on a tartan or a picture of Robbie Burns.

Tartans and Table Motifs
Do you need a pattern? Look online.
Alternatively, buy a packet of Scottish shortbread and cut out the design.
1 Stick it on something you are wearing.
2 Cut out the back of the packaging and stick that on something you are carrying, such as a bag.
3 Make a cover for a printed copy of Burns Poems.
4 Use the cut-out, or a photocopy of it, as the heading or edging of the menu.
5 You could even print a tartan or a map of Scotland as a frame for a tablemat or as the centrepiece for a table.
6 Print three A5 sheets of tartan as a repeating pattern for a table centrepiece or table runner.
7 Set up an ipad on the table with a tartan pattern displayed.
8 Have Burns poems ready on your phone, and Scottish music.

Useful websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_dress

Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Pancake Day (Feb 13 in 2018) Recipe for Success

Problem
What do I do for pancake day?

Make pancakes heart-shape because the day after pancake day it's Valentine's Day.

Iceland is offering free pancake ingredients with frying pans if you buy the deal whilst stocks last.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/food-and-drink/pancake-day-iceland-giving-away-free-pancake-ingredients-shrove-tuesday/

If you don't get these, here's a recipe for you:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Pancake

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How To Find Colourful Old English Villages With Odd Names Such as Sonning and March, or stay in a thatched cottage

Problem
Where can I find cute English villages?

Answer
They are all around. You just have to get off the motorway. For example:

On our way between Harrow and Cambridge, to reach the hotel The Old Bridge, at Huntingdon, we passed signs to a village called March. I had all sorts of punning thoughts.

'We are no longer marching like the Romans but driving through.'
'Shall we go to March in January, or go to March in February?'

We never got to March, so to speak. Just as well. No fun for photographers. It was raining.

The Romans marched this way. The small March museum is open a few hours in the middle of the day on Saturdays and Wednesdays. A church has a hammerbeam interior which you can see on Wikipedia.

The following day we drove from Harrow in NW London through Hungerford on our way to Little Bewyn to a Michelin starred restaurant, The Harrow (described in earlier posts).

Around England nowadays some of the older buildings have been painted bright colours. This one is blue. Unexpected. You could say it goes well with a blue sky on a summer's day. I like it.

I like the steeply gabled roofs and the inn signs. 

Here's a building with a steeply gabled roof, the triangular area  painted orange. I love it.

On the way out of Little Bedwyn, we passed a sign on a gatepost. It threated to charge you a large number of shillings if you left the gate open. Shillings. I remember shillings. Those were the days.

What does that sign say? Close the gate - or we'll fine you forty shillings! Photo by Angela Lansbury.

The M4 had two warnings signs about delays, so we diverted through old roads, which we call 'the scenic route' and discovered some more, equally delightful little villages.

I liked Sonning. But not much to do or see.

I started researching thatched cottages. I see one regularly driving through Kingsbury in NW London. But what can you visit?

If you want tea in a thatched cottage, there's one over the sea in Ireland.

In England the major tourist attraction with thatch is Anne Hathaway's Cottage in Stratford upon Avon.

Want to stay in a thatched cottage?
http://www.historic-uk.com/ThatchedCottagestoRent/

More ideas:
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g186338-i17-k6623220-Thatched_cottages-London_England.html

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Cobbs Farm Shop for Fresh Food, Different Drinks, Wine Cheese

What can you buy? Food, drink and lots of amusing items.

Problem
Where can I buy fresh farm food? Where can I see something different?

Answers
Cobbs Farm shop has a huge variety of interesting things to see and buy. Park outside and look at the plants and pot on the way in. Fresh vegetables are in racks.

Here's an idea - oatcakes for a Scottish Supper.

Orange marmalade cake - I took a photo to remind me to put it on my wishlist for my next visit. My other wishlist item is Raspberry Bakewell.

Another reminder - stop for tea and cake.

Cheeses
Inside are breads and cheeses. We were offered teeny tastes of cheese. 

We looked at the colourful eye-catching cheese. Solid orange colour. In London supermarkets I like to buy cheese with cranberries, enticing to look at, soft and flavourful. (I also bought some in Singapore from a supermarket in HillV2.) At Cobbs Farm shop we tried the cheese with orange. Little visible orange bits in it. Strong orange flavour like marmalade.

Cakes looked lovely. I had my eye on the almond cake. About six pounds something.  We settled for frozen croissants which you cook yourself, at 40p each.

A cafe. Toilets.

Meat.

Some of the prices are high. You need to shop around. They have a discount card which gives you 10% off.

Next door is a fishmongers.

Cobbs Farm Shop
Bath Road, Hungerford
RG17 OSP
Tel: 01488 686770.

Their website gives details of a playbarn where you can hold children's parties. I also liked the page of recipes including easy strawberry ice cream.

Where is it on the way to and from?
We were going to and from The Harrow at Little Bedwyn restaurant. Cobbs is on the road past The Bear at Hungerford pub and hotel, on the old road to the West country. It's off the M4.

We drove from Harrow in NW London. Because we diverted to avoid two delays on the M4 the journey was 2 hours each way.

I praticularly liked the Red Wine Farmer cheese, as a novelty. Dee-lish!

Useful website
http://cobbsfarmshop.co.uk

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Must Visit The Michelin Starred Harrow at Little Bedwyn Restaurant

Savoury dish at the Harrow at Little Bedwyn restaurant. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Problem
Who can afford to eat at the top Michelin starred restaurants? Not as many people as would like to visit them.

Answer
Get on the mailing list and wait for a special offer.

Everything about this place is wonderful. The collection of carafes from Reidel Glass, which are for sale, look stunning. You can buy a carafe or glass. Maybe for a birthday or wedding anniversary.

We had a six-course meal with four matching wines for £60.

We began with olives. The starter was a tasty mulligatawny soup, mustard yellow. Cod was enhanced by January greens and truffle. The lamb was wonderful.

Surprise 'egg'. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Then came the surprise. Egg with soldiers. Looks like a boiled egg, served in an egg cup.  White meringue on top, hiding orange mango.

Rhubarb dessert. Photos by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Finally rhubarb. A delight for the eye. The one which looks like a sandwich contains teeny pieces of ginger.

Definitely a place for a celebration.

The Harrow at little Bedwyn
Marlborough
Wiltshire
SN8 3JP
Tel: +44 (0) 1672 870 871
Email: office@theharrowatlittlebedwyn.com
Useful Websites
http://www.theharrowatlittlebedwyn.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my next post on nearby Cobbs Farm shop.

Burns Night With Pipers In Harrow And Readings From Animation Using Burns Skull Cast

Problem
When and where to celebrate Burns night?

Photo in the public domain. From Wikipedia. 

Answer
Anywhere, any time. Last night, Jan 25th, 2018, I saw two pipers wearing kilts playing outside the pub on Harrow on the Hill.

If you haven't been invited to a Burns Night, you can organize your own. Maybe this coming weekend. I went to a Burns Night last weekend. I am on a waiting list for another this weekend.

Did you see the animation made from a cast of Burns' skull? I thought it looked odd, with cheeks so red. Then I saw the portrait of Burns.

I remembered passing a pub with a Scottish name, Wee Bairn, meaning small child.

Useful website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-42792795 (3D animation of Burns reading a poem.)
https://untappd.com/b/raindogs-brewing-company-wee-bairn-bitter/145738

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How to fix lack of indents and extra spaces on your blog post

Problems With Blog Layouts
1 All my blog posts are in American letter format, aligned to the left with no indents.

2 When I copy from other places such as Google translate I get huge spaces after the word or words I copied. I remove the spaces but as soon as I type on afterwards the space re-insert itself.

Answers
1 I found that when I copied into my blog from something I created in pages (because I had been off the internet with no access to my blog) the indents in the offline post were copied.

So one solution would be to write your entire blog post elsewhere and copy it in. The original formatting and spacing is retained.

2 That explains the cause and solution to my other problem. Without needing to check HTML.

Author
Angela Lansbury