Emma Hackett's Newsbook (Allan Ahlberg)

Last night my mum

Got really mad
And threw a jam tart
At my dad.
Dad lost his temper
Then with mother,
Threw one at her
And hit my brother.
My brother thought
It was my sister,
Threw two at her
But somehow missed her.
My sister,
She is only three,
Hurled four at him
And one at me!
I said I wouldn't
Stand for that,
Aimed one at her
And hit the cat.
The cat jumped up
Like he'd been shot,
And landed
In the baby's cot.
The baby -
Quietly sucking his thumb -
Then started howling
For my mum.
At which my mum
Got really mad,
And threw a Swiss roll

At my dad.

from Little House on the Prairie, chapter 2, Crossing the Creek (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

'This creek's pretty high,' Pa said.  'But I guess we can make it all right.  You can see this is a ford, by the old wheel ruts.  What do you say, Caroline?'

'Whatever you say, Charles,' Ma answered.

Pet and Patty lifted their wet noses.  They pricked their ears forward, looking at the creek; then they pricked them backward to hear what Pa would say.  They sighed and laid their soft noses together to whisper to each other.  A little way upstream, Jack was lapping the water with his red tongue.

'I'll tie down the wagon-cover,' Pa said.  He climbed down from the seat, unrolled the canvas sides and tied them firmly to the wagon-box.  Then he pulled the rope at the back, so that the canvas puckered together in the middle, leaving only a tiny round hole, too small to see through.

Mary huddled down on the bed.  She did not like fords; she was afraid of the rushing water.  But Laura was excited; she liked the splashing.  Pa climbed to the seat, saying, 'They may have to swim, out there in the middle.  But we'll make it all right, Caroline.'

Laura thought of Jack and said, 'I wish Jack could ride in the wagon, Pa.'

Pa did not answer.  He gathered the reins tightly in his hands.  Ma said, 'Jack can swim, Laura.  He will be all right.'

The wagon went forward softly in mud.  Water began to splash against the wheels.  The splashing grew louder.  The wagon shook as the noisy water struck at it.  Then all at once the wagon lifted and balanced and swayed.  It was a lovely feeling.

The noise stopped, and Ma said, sharply, 'Lie down, girls!'

Quick as a flash, Mary and Laura dropped flat on the bed.  When Ma spoke like that, they did as they were told.  Ma's arm pulled a smothering blanket over them, heads and all.

'Be still, just as you are.  Don't move!' she said.

Mary did not move; she was trembling and still.  But Laura could not help wriggling a little bit.  She did so want to see what was happening.  She could feel the wagon swaying and turning; the splashing was noisy again, and again it died away.  Then Pa's voice frightened Laura.  It said, 'Take them, Caroline!'

The wagon lurched; there was a sudden heavy splash beside it.  Laura sat straight up and clawed the blanket from her head.

Pa was gone.  Ma sat alone, holding tight to the reins with both hands.  Mary hid her face in the blanket again, but Laura rose up farther.  She couldn't see the creek bank.  She couldn't see anything in front of the wagon but water rushing at it.  And in the water, three heads; Pet's head and Patty's head and Pa's small, wet head.  Pa's fist in the water was holding tight to Pet's bridle.

Laura could faintly hear Pa's voice through the rushing of the water.  It sounded calm and cheerful, but she couldn't hear what he said.  He was talking to the horses.  Ma's face was white and scared.

'Lie down, Laura,' Ma said.

Laura lay down.  She felt cold and sick.  Her eyes were shut tight, but she could still see the terrible water and Pa's brown beard drowning in it.

For a long, long time the wagon swayed and swung, and Mary cried without making a sound, and Laura's stomach felt sicker and sicker.  Then the front wheels struck and grated, and Pa shouted.  The whole wagon jerked and jolted and tipped backward, but the wheels were turning on the ground.  Laura was up again, holding to the seat; she saw Pet's and Patty's scrambling wet backs climbing a steep bank, and Pa running beside them, shouting, 'Hi, Patty!  Hi, Pet!  Get up!  Get up!  Whoopsy-daisy!  Good girls!'

At the top of the bank they stood still, panting and dripping.  And the wagon stood still, safely out of that creek.

from Over to Candleford, chapter XXVIII, Growing Pains (Flora Thompson)

Her mother, with five children to keep and care for, was hard-pressed, especially as she still insisted upon living up to her old standard of what she called 'seemliness'.  Her idea of good housekeeping was that every corner of the house should be clean, clean sheets should be on the beds, clean clothes on every one of the seven bodies for which she was responsible, a good dinner on the table and a cake in the pantry for tea by noon every Sunday.  She would sit up sewing till midnight and rise before daybreak to wash clothes.  But she had her reward.

Introduction from Delia Smith's Christmas (Delia Smith)

If there's one person in the world who probably needs this book more than anyone else, it's me.  For years my own Christmas preparations have been, to say the least, fragmented and fraught: recipes here, notes there, and fading memories of what I might have done last year if only I could be sure!  What I needed, it seemed to me, was a sort of personal Christmas organiser, something I could reach for in October and keep by me as a guide all the way through to the point where the last of the Christmas leftovers have been dealt with.

Then I began to think: if that's what I need, how many other people might need the same?  It would be nice of course to be able to say at this point that the contents of this book can zip you through all that Christmas catering without a worry or a care.  Unfortunately that is not the case, because unless you are superhuman, believe me, there will still be some hectic days ahead of you.  But what I have set out to do here is to be a sort of friend in the background, providing practical information, offering new and different recipes (as well as the more traditional ones), and if not entirely removing the pressure of Christmas cooking then going some way to ensuring its success.

Christmas has its critics and, if we were honest, I'm sure each one of us has, at some time, wished we could quietly quit the planet and come back when it was over.  On the other hand, at what other time of the year can we turn our minds to the sheer joy of feasting?  The sharing of fine food and wines with family and friends is a deeply ingrained human (as well as religious) activity, without which our lives would surely be diminished.

As a veteran of many a Christmas campaign, my final message to you is not to worry.  You will be pressured, you will get grumpy, but it will all be worth it.  Just set your mind on that glorious moment on Christmas Day when the last of the washing-up has been done.  By then you will probably have enough food in the house to last for several days, so fill your glass, put your feet up and forget all about it for another year!

from a letter to Cassandra Austen, 8-9 September 1816 (Jane Austen)

How good Mrs West could have written such books and collected so many hard works, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment!  Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.

from The Long Winter, chapter 30, It Can't Beat Us

Winter had lasted so long that it seemed it would never end. It seemed that they would never really wake up.

In the morning Laura got out of bed into the cold. She dressed downstairs by the fire that Pa had kindled before he went to the stable. They ate their coarse brown bread. Then all day long she and Ma and Mary ground wheat and twisted hay as fast as they could. The fire must not go out; it was very cold. They ate some coarse brown bread. Then Laura crawled into the cold bed and shivered until she grew warm enough to sleep.

Next morning she got out of bed into the cold. She dressed in the chilly kitchen by the fire. She ate her coarse brown bread. She took her turns at grinding wheat and twisting hay. But she did not ever feel awake. She felt beaten by the cold and the storms.

She knew she was dull and stupid but she could not wake up.

There were no more lessons. There was nothing in the world but cold and dark and work and coarse brown bread and winds blowing. The storm was always there, outside the walls, waiting sometimes, then pouncing, shaking the house, roaring, snarling, and screaming in rage.

Out of bed in the morning to hurry down and dress by the fire. Then work all day to crawl into a cold bed at night and fall asleep as soon as she grew warm. The winter had lasted so long. It would never end.

from Peter Duck, chapter XVI, The Madeiras at Dusk (Arthur Ransome)

There was always something to see. And, besides, there was always something to do. Susan and Peggy were busy from morning to night with their cooking and housekeeping. 'Shipkeeping, it ought to be called,' as Roger pointed out one day when Susan said she was too busy housekeeping to knit a stocking cap for Gibber. Gibber, by the way, got his stocking cap all right, but it was knitted by Peter Duck when he had finished darning his socks. He knitted it from blue wool, on the pattern of his own, and Susan, when she saw it, let shipkeeping go hang while she made a red woollen tassel to go on the top of it.

Every day the main water tank had to be filled up from the small screw-top tanks that were stored under the flooring down below. In this way Susan was able to keep count of exactly how much water they were using. She never had been very good at sums, and neither had Peggy, but long before the end of that voyage nobody could have found fault with their additions and subtractions and divisions. They were calculating all the time, and often Susan would wake up in the early morning thinking that one of the sums had gone wrong, and then she would sit up in her bunk and work it out again, and tell Titty about it, and Titty, in the bunk below, would also have a go with pencil and paper, trying to help. Inside the deckhouse door there was a card, and every time one of those tins from down below was emptied into the main tank, Susan used to tick it off on this card, so that Captain Flint, too, was able to keep an eye on the way the water was going. They were very careful about the water, doing most of their washing in salt water, using special salt-water soap. It did not make much of a lather, and it left them feeling rather sticky, but anything was better than running short of drinking water. And in the end, Captain Flint said that it was all due to Susan that things went off so well. If she had not been so careful with the water they could never have done what they did.

from Little House in the Big Woods, chapter 13, The Deer in the Wood (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?” 

“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.” 

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting. 

She thought to herself, “This is now.” 

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

from The Pursuit of Love (Nancy Mitford)

But Christian's politics did not bore her. As they walked back from his father's house
that evening he had taken her for a tour of the world. He showed her Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, civil war in Spain, inadequate Socialism in France, tyranny in Africa, starvation in Asia,  reaction in America and Right-wing blight in England. Only the U.S.S.R., Norway and Mexico came in for a modicum of praise.

-

Feeling provincial, up in London for the day and determined to see a little life, I made Davey give me luncheon at the Ritz. This had a still further depressing effect on my spirits. My clothes, so nice and suitable for the George, so much admired by the other dons' wives ('My dear, where did you get that lovely tweed?') , were, I now realized, almost bizarre in their dowdiness; it was the floating panels of taffeta all over again. I thought of those dear little black children, three of them now, in their nursery at home, and of dear Alfred in his study, but just for the moment this thought was no consolation. I passionately longed to have a tiny fur hat, or a tiny ostrich hat, like the two ladies at the next table. I longed for a neat black dress, diamond clips and a dark mink coat, shoes like surgical boots, long crinkly black suède gloves, and smooth polished hair. When I tried to explain all this to Davey, he remarked absentmindedly: 

'Oh, but it doesn’t matter a bit for you, Fanny, and, after all, how can you have time for les petits soins de la personne with so many other, more important things to think of.'

I suppose he thought this would cheer me up.

from Confusion (Elizabeth Jane Howard)

She had thought that a weight would be lifted once she had got into the train with the visit behind her, but the pall of boredom and irritation was quenched now only by guilt, as she thought of all the ways in which she might have given her mother more pleasure, been kinder, nicer, more patient.  Why was it that, in spite of all these years during which she felt that she had grown from being a spoiled and selfish girl into a thoroughly grown-up wife and mother and reponsible member of a large family, she had only to be with her mother for a few minutes to revert to her earlier, disagreeable self?  It was her behaviour, after all, that made her mother so timid and conciliatory, made her, in fact, everything that she, Zoë, found most exasperating.