Jane Brocket's Blog

I'm blogging here these days. Still quilting and baking and reading and making, but often putting the photos on Instagram, and writing about different subjects on the blog.

My FREE Guide to Shoreditch is available on my yarnstorm press blog - and now here. The Preston guide and the Chichester guides are also FREE to download. 

This is the background:

I may have been making trips up and down the country on a Grand Provincial Tour for the last couple of years, but I haven't tired of London. How could I possibly tire of a place I fell in love with before I even saw it, and which has enthralled me ever since my first, never-to-be-forgotten visit when I was 13. I've worked in London, and have lived close to London since my twenties (even when we loved abroad for six years, I got the plane/train back for cultural and shopping weekends whenever possible). I'm in and out of London all the time for work, books, art, architecture, film, food, friends and Tom, Alice and Phoebe. Over the years, I've explored many parts of the city, and some I've come to know and love well.

Shoreditch is one such part, and because I was going there so often, I started making lists of the things I wanted to see, places I wanted to drink coffee, eat freshly baked buns, buy good fruit and veg, find flowers, meet friends, go for a swim. The lists grew and grew, and eventually became a fully-fledged, 116-page guide to this marvellously energetic, diverse, fluid and exciting part of London. It's now the first title in my Capital Tour series. 

As with the other Brocket in your Pocket Guides, I'm up against problems with selling it. New EU VAT regulations make selling it as a pdf impossible, publishers very much like the guides but feel they are 'too niche' (or even 'not international enough'. Er, no), and printing and distributing the guides myself would be costly and ultimately unprofitable. So I've decided to give the first three titles, Chichester, Preston and now Shoreditch away for free. You can download the pdf, print it off, and put it in your pocket, so you still get a Brocket in your Pocket.

However, I am loath to put three carefully researched and photographed, beautifully designed guides out into the world for nothing, and I'd much rather someone, somewhere benefitted from them. So in return for taking the guides which would cost up to £8 each if printed, and if you feel inclined, I would be incredibly grateful for a donation to the Trussell Trust which runs foodbanks all over the UK. Think of it as a tin of beans or a box of tea bags or a packet of biscuits. I've already raised over £400 and the Trussell Trust is delighted (as am I), and it's good to know the guides are helping a great cause.

Do get to Shoreditch before it changes. Success breeds success, and developers have realised that Shoreditch has great potential. I've seen 'artists' impressions' of the enormous glass towers they are planning and, if they happen, the unique character of Shoreditch will be lost. For now, though, it's one of the most interesting parts of London and just brilliant for Sundays, baking, buildings, galleries, street art, and lots and lots of coffee. 

Download SHOREDITCH Jan 15

Trussell Trust donation page 

There are flowers, books and lots more at my new blogging place.

I've moved and there is more to read here. Leave your mop and your marigolds, and click and come over. 

[Stained glass window, 1925, by Arnold Wathen Robinson in the Berkeley Chapel in Bristol Cathedral]

Although Phoebe is now at university, she hasn't hung up her apron. Far from it: she moved into her self-catering hall of residence with bowls and spatulas and scales and icing sugar and flour and all the butter we had in the fridge, and has been baking away (photos on Instagram) and filling her kitchen with cake and biscuits. She also found time to photograph her bakeface which has won her a Kenwood Mixer -  a pretty wonderful prize for making gooey brownies and gurning, two of her greatest talents.

[I'm writing here now, but update the photo here now and then.]

I'm writing here these days. New season, new blog, new fruit and veg and nuts in the shops.

A new photo for this page because I think we need to ring the changes every so often. There are more pictures of dusk here. They are the result of having done a photography course last week and wanting to try some new things, including a weak attempt at light painting. My excuse is that I was on my own and the room was dark and I couldn't make out where the camera was. It could be a flower, but in truth it's just a squiggle.

I have moved. I am now here at Yarnstorm Press.

[same eyes, new views ]

Well, my new place is almost done and dusted, but I have decided that even though it's not quite finished, I'm ready to welcome visitors. There may not be 'swinging, dancing, and singing' (to quote The Drifters) just yet, but I feel at home there already.

After writing the note to myself, the realisation dawned that the problem wasn't so much with blogging as with the blog itself. I'd boxed myself in and, while my life had moved on, I was finding it difficult to move on blog-wise. So I'll be getting out a new blogging hat and wearing it to write posts that complement what I'm doing with the Yarnstorm Press, and the Grand Provincial Tour in particular . It won't be the same, but there will still be colour, pictures, and an undimmed enthusiasm for the pleasures of everyday life.

Don't bother to RSVP to this invitation. Just turn up.

[Theme tune for this post: Come on Over to My Place by the Drifters (1965)]

[Greengrocer, Rye Lane, Peckham]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your wonderful comments. I am incredibly touched and buoyed up by them. 

This is a line to say that I shall be moving to a fresh, new place quite soon. It's set up and ready to go, but I just need to prepare the welcome. It's under the banner of yarnstorm press and will be a blog/website where I shall write about many of the things I love but with a slightly shifted focus. You'll see what I mean. Plus, there will be lots of colour and photos (I have so many to use, it's ridiculous) and new yarnstorm press books and pdfs/downloads to buy.  

I'll put a link here soon, and look forward to seeing you there.