I am back to work tomorrow, so here’s my What I did in the Holidays post.
We met up with my mum and dad at our favourite hotel in the Lake District. Sometimes my whole family land there: aunties, cousins, dogs, and grandparents, all piled on the comfy sofas. There are roaring open fires and lots of hotel room doors for the kids to play knock and run. Perfect!
This time, there were just five of us, and we spent most of our trip wandering between cafes, working out if it was too early to visit another cafe and thinking about what we would eat later.
Here’s a rundown of the holiday diet: Teacakes, cheese scones, Pastel de Nata, Thai food twice (long story), Pie had a chip craving, but the hotel only served chips to spa guests (I know! 😤), so she had to watch the spa guests, dressed in white towelling robes and slippers, happily tucking into their special spa chips. She was not happy.
We visited The Pencil Museum
I have wanted to visit this place for ages, and it did not disappoint. The tickets were pencils, and we were given a quiz on a clipboard with a pencil on a string. We won… wait for it, a pencil each! Then we visited the shop, and I bought some…pencils!
We visited the home of Beatrix Potter: Hill Top House
This was the highlight of the trip. What a place!
Peter Rabbit has become so ubiquitous that I have become tired if her drawings. I know, I know! That is sacrilegious. That’s just how I feel.
I loved Beatrix’s books when I was a child. I was brought up on Jemima Puddle-Duck and The Tale of Tom Kitten. They were dark and scary tales, and I couldn’t get enough of them. But since then, the image of Peter Rabbit is everywhere, EVERYWHERE, and he’s an annoying, diluted form of Peter. Like Frida Kahlo, he’s been watered down to a nice palatable ‘gallery shop’ version.
Then there was that Beatrix Potter film, starring Renée Zellweger, Miss Potter, which I found twee and annoying; remember the bit where Ewan McGregor bursts into song? Arg!
But visiting her house and seeing how she lived and worked rekindled my love for her. Her home is dark and richly eccentric: wallpaper on the wonky ceilings between the dark beams, flagstone floors, fancy furniture she brought from London mixed with some dark, heavy farmhouse furniture. There are china dishes perched on shelves and mantle pieces everywhere, an incredible dolls house and a four-poster bed with a traditional Cumbrian quilt that makes me want to make a quilt for our bed.
The nice man who showed us around told us that Beatrix used her book royalties to buy land, at one point owning 1% of the Lake District. After her death, she bequeathed fifteen farms and over 4,000 acres to the National Trust – a gift that protected and conserved the unique Lake District countryside.
She was known to drive a hard bargain, and was an expert at marketing her work. An artist-business-woman with a stubborn, eccentric streak. Excellent.
So yes, I am in love with Beatrix again. She was a force of nature!
We drove home yesterday, and I cleaned the fridge while Pie lay on the sofa looking at TikTok. She requested chips. I handed her a bowl of chopped-up orange, and she ate it without even knowing what she was doing. Ha! I am sneaky!
Love Helenx
P.S. I had a great chat with Ping He for her Botany Works Artist podcast; it’s out today.
Do you read French, Helen ? If so, you MUST read the novel Miss Charity by Marie-Aude Murail. It’s just the best evocation of Beatrix Potter, loosely inspired from her life, with all the strength, and fun all in the funniest drawn kid/teen novel ! ( May be Pie is learning French and you have an excuse to get it for her ? It’s even worth it for the drawings !).
And you know what ? As much as I loved seeing Potter’s house, I think the best picture of the lot is your Dad waving ! The sweetest ever !
Oooh lovely! We went to Malaga for our holibobs. We travelled on the train and on the bus and by shank’s pony around and about, ate too much and didn’t get enough sleep on account of the concrete slap that they said was a mattress… but we did enjoy some lovely Spanish sun! 💛