thedelahayegirls

Me Old China

E talks ceramics…

Is there a special word for the love of ceramics? If there isn’t, I think there should be. I take great pleasure in the beauty of everyday objects. I enjoy fine art too, but unless I win big on the National Lottery – which would be highly unlikely even if I did buy a ticket regularly – or I come into a sizeable inheritance – probably more unlikely than that Lottery win – I’m only going to be able to enjoy fine art in a gallery or museum. Everyday art, with its functional beauty, really appeals to me and I think that’s why I love ceramics.

In the interests of full disclosure, although I am a card-carrying member of the V&A, I am no expert on ceramics, nor am I anything as committed or organised as a collector. I don’t know my earthenware, from my stoneware or porcelain, and I suspect bone china is a category all of its own, and does it contain real bone? What I do know is that I enjoy looking at, handling and owning affordable and beautiful pieces of china and ceramics; crockery (“flatware”), a few vases, trinkets and jugs tend to catch my eye most often, jugs especially (as my Mum announced on Saturday, with an absolutely straight face: “our Em’s got a thing about jugs”).

I can date my interest in ceramics to 1986 and the half a dozen years that followed. For my 19^th birthday, a university friend bought me a tiny ceramic piggy-bank in a silk pouch made by a local ceramicist in Bath. I adored this little curiosity and, although the silk pouch is long gone, I still have the piggy.

As a gift to celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary, my maternal grandparents (the ones of Mr and Mrs fame) asked for a new dinner service. The design they chose – which was very en vogue in the late 1980s – was the Johnson Brothers Eternal Beau originally designed by Sarina Mascheroni, a pretty ribbon and bow motif on octagonal-shaped pieces. At the tender age of 20, I was quite taken with it and thought it very stylish. I don’t recall having thought about plates and cups and saucers before Eternal Beau. I wonder where my grandparents’ dinner service ended up? A couple of years later, moving into our first home as a young family, I was smitten with Portmeiron’s Botanic Garden range and enjoyed using it every day. I’ve held on to a few pieces: a side plate decorated with a lily and one decorated with Sweet Williams (of course); a formidably heavy bowl which I use as a mixing bowl and a vase (also decorated with lilies). My lovely Mum also gave me a large jug from her Botanic Garden collection last year which is in near-permanent use as a vase.

In the late 1980s, my paternal grandmother died and I was asked if there was anything of hers I’d like as a momento. I asked if I could have the pink ceramic coffee pot which had sat in a cabinet in the corridor of her flat. I must have walked passed this small cabinet displaying her bits of china dozens of times over the years and the pink coffee pot always caught my eye. I still adore it and today it sits on a table, at the head of my stairs, and I get to enjoy it every time I cross the landing. I researched it a few years ago and discovered that it is, in fact, a tea pot from the Arthur Wood Pottery in Stoke-on-Trent. To me it’ll always be the pink coffee pot.

My tastes have changed over the years and I much prefer unpatterned, or certainly minimally patterned, crockery these days. I’ve also come to learn that I don’t particularly desire matching crockery – I think there’s something wonderfully pleasing about mismatched plates and bowls. I also don’t hold with the notion of keeping things for “best”: I like to see, touch and use my best china and ceramics every day. I still enjoy buying pieces that appeal to me and current favourites include Van Verre cabbage bowls, Lene Bjerre pink crackle-glazed dishes, a cute Bombay Duck jug and a gorgeous pot handmade by Studio Arhoj which Lily bought as a gift for me when she visited Copenhagen last year (and which she massively covets and, I think, rather wishes she’d kept for herself).

So if you stumble across a word for a love of ceramics, do let me know. And if you find pretty pieces you fall in love with, share and tag us in. ~E.

My Secret Theatre

L spills the tea at work.

Those of you that know me and my Mum know that we love to write a list. We also love a glass of prosecco or three and chatting until the early hours, swapping stories and laughing until our cheeks ache. Put these components together and the result is E challenging me to write a list about theatre secrets. I’ve been an actress for the last eight years, working in film, television and on stage, and feeling incredibly lucky to do what I do, so I felt well placed to accept the challenge.

From the middle of this often misunderstood business of mine, here are some secrets about a life in the theatre…

Most actors/directors/stage managers are pretty superstitious. Maybe it’s the nature of what we do, using our overactive imaginations every day or the fact that we tend to work at night, or in the dark, but either way, most people who work in the theatrical industry support some form of superstition. Whether it’s a backstage ritual of passing the same actor each evening or getting your post show drink from the same bar each night, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t! I for one certainly never whistle in a theatre or speak the name of the “Scottish play”. I also get jittery if I don’t complete certain tasks by a set time, like getting my pin curls done before the warm up or finishing my dinner before certain members of the cast arrive at the theatre
We all get nervous. Every so often, I’ll get chatting to someone who’ll congratulate me on my career, claiming: “oh I’d be too scared to go on stage each night.” Here’s the thing, we are scared. Not all the time but certainly if I’m feeling under-prepared or I haven’t had a good warm up backstage I am riddled with nerves – there’s that superstitious side of me again! Auditions are a big part of your life as an actor and they are like attending a super intense job interview after downing a cold brew coffee on an empty stomach. A job interview you have to attend numerous times a week, for a position that will only last a few months until you have to start the process again. Oh, the glamourous life!
Getting to “stage kiss” a colleague is really not steamy in the slightest. Well, I suppose it could be if you’re both single and you fancy each other but nine times out of ten, this just isn’t the case. The art of choreographing a love scene is so technical, it stripes the smooch of any actual romance and after the thirteenth or fourteenth run through, the whole thing will feel as routine as a handshake. It is much the same on a film or television set except instead of sharing that intimate moment with an audience of 150, you get to share it with an entire crew instead. Mmm, sexy, right?

Lily as Lucille Frank and Ross Barnes as Leo Frank in Parade. Photography by Cameron Slater.

We can see you! Yep, I myself have settled into my plush seat as an audience member and relaxed into that state of anonymity that a dark auditorium can bring, but I promise you, if you can see us, chances are that we on-stage folk can see you too, especially if you are seated in the front few rows. I’ve seen some bizarre behaviour in the audience over the years, my favourites being: drunk people who attempt to interact with the on-stage performers mid-scene; people falling asleep (although even I have done this on one occasion); and one memorable moment when a patron decided to order and then eat an entire pizza mid-show. Seriously, at least offer me a slice if I’m working so hard for you
So many of the magical transformations you see on stage are done the old fashioned way. Quick changes in and out of costume are exactly that, a quick change. There is one change I had to make in Act One of the Phantom of the Opera for which I had 55 seconds. Six members of our hair and wardrobe department would silently gather in the wings, just off-stage, and use their many, super-talented hands to strip me of one set of costumes and wig and fasten me into another, while I tried to take quick sips of water before I was back onstage. All of this in near silence, in the darkness and with military precision. Everyone had an objective and would focus solely on completeing it. When I was appearing in the musical Cats, I was fortunate to play the role of Grizabella a number of times. Poor Griz had to effect a wig, costume and make up change all within the first thirty minutes of the show. This involved me slinking off stage (well, Grizabella is the glamour cat), then, once out of sight of the audience, running from the wings to my dressing room, taking parts of my costume off as I went. Once my wig was off, in a flurry of baby wipes, I had to clean my face and then reapply the character’s iconic bedraggled look. So long as I remained a cool cat, I always managed it.

God, I miss my job. Due to the pandemic it’s unlikely that my industry will be able to return to anything approaching normality before the New Year and even then, forgive the pun, I wonder about state of play. So many freelancers have been out of work for almost six months; our landscape has completely transformed. What I do know is that once we return, those first few weeks of performances are going to be a once in a lifetime experience. Keep your ghost lights burning and I
promise I will see you back in a theatre just as soon as we are permitted. ~L

Nuttily Good

Yummy vegan creamy pasta sauce

We are both avid and ardent collectors of cookery books. I think this is because we are both avid and ardent lovers of food. It’s not just the recipes these books contain that inspire us but the food styling and photography they showcase. Our favourites also incorporate a few lines per recipe sharing the author’s history with the recipe, or its provenance, or some brief reminisce of where it was first served and eaten. What we’re trying to say is that we both enjoy cookery books as much for reading as for cooking!

Disclaimer: we do also both enjoy embellishing a recipe; you’ll find no slavish devotion to the ingredients and quantities here except, of course, when we’re baking. We’re both confident (or foolhardy) enough cooks to switch out ingredients to whatever we have in the fridge or pantry, or for whatever takes our fancy.

I did a stocktake, dust and re-arrange of my cookery books at the beginning of July (look, cut me some slack, I worked as a library assistant for six months in my youth and some things never leave you). My 83 vegan cookery books are those I spend most time with these days, though I still dip into the other recipe books I own; I do love the challenge of “veganising” recipes and no, they aren’t always successful. And yes, of course all my cookery books are listed, in order of publication date, thank you for asking.

The Plantpower Way by Julie Piatt and Rich Roll is a gorgeous book of vegan recipes inspired by the Italian countryside. The book also contains a range of recipes for plant-based cheeses like one for roasted almond and sun-dried tomato cheese and another for creamy garlic Gorgonzola made with cashew nuts. These are both on my “to do” list.

I made the book’s walnut porcini cream sauce for dinner the other evening, serving it over wholemeal fusilli with steamed broccoli. Brazil and macadamia nuts were switched out for some of the walnuts and all nuts were soaked for an hour in hot water first to soften them. My staple of a couple of tablespoons of nutritional yeast (“Nooch” in Lily’s vocab) were also added. Like so many recipes utilising nuts to create the smoothest creamy consistency, a high-speed blender is required, but this sauce wouldn’t be unpleasant if it retained a bit of nutty graininess. And hold back a mugful of the pasta cooking liquid to loosen the sauce – it ends up a pretty thick consistency and the mug of hot, starchy water ensured each corkscrew of pasta was well coated. A delicious sauce and definitely one that’s going to be added to our regular repertoire. ~E.