It’s now been over a month since I last posted, which is really not usual Basil Expo behaviour.  I am now in the midst of my master’s course.  I’m enjoying it enormously, but the blog has run aground on the amount of work I have to belt through for that, as well as the time I’m spending trying to get to know the city and my fellow students.  However, I have also felt some uncertainty with the blog for a while past: its remit has always, purposely, been vaguely defined so that I could steer it in whatever direction I wanted to take it, but for a while recently I have found that that vagueness has its downsides.

I hope to return, but it’s likely to be many weeks before I have leisure to do so.

The event was held in the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, an appropriately hipster-friendly setting (sadly for me!) and a very good venue for just this sort of large event — light, bright and roomy.  Certainly when we were there, in the middle of Sunday afternoon, the attendance looked extremely healthy, but it never got overpoweringly busy for a leisurely browse (unlike other American craft fair behemoths making moves on the British capital).  I did think more thought could have been put into the balance of stallholders; there was a tonne of cutesy, whimsical jewellery but comparatively little in the way of wall art, particularly graphic wall art (which is what I’d gone hoping to find), and practically no clothing or larger accessories (what my friend had been hoping to see).  However, this is a small criticism, and probably proof of the fact that such fairs are now becoming so thick on the ground, and so well attended, that attendees can start getting more demanding in what is expected of them.  Here are a few photos of stalls that caught my eye, but it is, comparatively, a drop in the ocean.

Zosienka & Rosie – illustrators whose work includes stationery and textiles

Karin Akesson – another illustrator with prints and textiles, the emphasis on the prints

Robin & Mould – cute and colourful textiles

Being Natalie – paintings of many kinds

The very busy Make Lounge crafting station

Well done, Renegade!  Come back soon!

One of my last acts before leaving the old country was to make good use of the lovely kitchen in my family home with a few baking sessions.  This was, as it turns out, an excellent idea — my student kitchen will not be home to a great deal of baking, I wager.  I tried out the recipe for muffins in The Cornucopia Cookbook, which is a single ur-recipe with a lot of potential variations.  We had frozen raspberries and almonds on hand that day, so that was the variation I made.  Be warned, though: the recipe makes enormo-muffins (BB’s-style muffins, for Dublin readers) and could easily be made with a third less of the called-for mixture if you don’t like your cakes seeping all over the tray.  But the enormo-muffins are good too!

The amazing grounds of Blenheim Palace, Capability Brown’s masterpiece.

They weren’t hurt by the glorious sun in which I saw them, of course.

* Title courtesy of the Divine Comedy’s “Assume the Perpendicular”

Britain has been undergoing the mother of all Indian summers the past week or so.

Visiting Blenheim Palace was not a bad way to make the most of it.

More tomorrow …

To begin with, my college (a view from the gardens of the back of the front quad).

These 10 photos of taped-up New York restaurant windows — and the hilarious commentary — made me laugh immensely.  And made me wish I could visit New York very much.

This study gives me some confidence that my degree (English) is worth something, dammit.

But in reality what I’ve mostly been reading in the past few weeks are course-related: at the moment, I’m moving between The Mill on the Floss and The Woodlanders, both of which have been very enjoyable.  Recently I’ve also read Wordsworth’s The Prelude (not worth your time), Byron’s Don Juan (very slightly more worth your time than The Prelude) and re-read Forster’s Howards End, which I’d forgotten was so great.

I used this recipe for the cake which, I must say, I wasn’t greatly impressed with — I baked it in two sandwich tins though, rather than the recipe’s stipulation of one slab which is then cut into three — this may explain why I found it so dry (though only I seemed to think this: I’m not sure whether I just got a duff slice or everyone else was being polite).  The icing, however (equal parts butter and chocolate [which was itself two parts milk choc to one part dark] melted and then cooled enough to make it malleable), was a winner.

One little girl, just three years old, when it was unveiled, turned to her mother and remarked that she had seen a cake just like it in Aldi.  Don’t look behind the curtain, child!