The way we were

In a TV schedule awash with things I don't want to watch, I have been heartened by BBC2's Victorian Farm.

In the second episode, the lady of the house boiled and peeled a whole cow's tongue. Being a fan of the sliced stuff you can buy from butchers and delis, I have sourced a full, skin-and-all one from the butcher and am going to have a bash.

The TV lady simply said she had boiled the tongue but didn't say how long for, so I set out on a mission to find some instructions. My mum has a shelf jam packed with cookery books and recipes, including a sheaf of handwritten ones that belonged to my great-great grandmother.

Eventually, I found what I was looking for in the most wonderful old brown-paged volume called Economy Success Cookery. Over the decades, the book has lost its front cover and starts immediately at the first recipe so there is no way of telling when it was published. Mum is unsure if it belonged to my grandmother or great-grandmother.

I discovered that an ox's tongue - as it is properly called - should be boiled for two and a half hours or 'up to four if it is tough'. The recipe was amidst instructions for boiling the heads of cows, pigs and sheep, cooking the brains of those unfortunate creatures and how to use them. It was enough to give the Food Standards Agency a fit.

There were also a vast array of ice creams made with custard bases, a recipe for melon jam and a sweet 'vinegar pudding'. I am tempted to try the tangerine marmalade but don't think I'll be bothering with the brawn.

At the back, the book contains hints and tips on starching, use of a meat safe, preserving uncooked eggs by smearing them with vaseline and waterproofing your boots with boiled mutton fat, a la Victorian Farm. There are also potions to get rid of wrinkles, freckles and housewives' reddened hands, plus a 'non-injurious' tooth-whitening solution. If I knew what borax was or where to get it, I might give some of them a go - in these credit crunched times, it's got to be cheaper than Boots!

Back in a bit ...

Bookworm

I am feeling rather excited. I am about to become reacquainted with someone for the first time in almost two decades. Her name is Prue Sarn and she appears in the pages of Mary Webb’s Precious Bane. I first read this novel when I was at university. I remember going to the bookshop with my friend; she bought Precious Bane and I bought EM Forster’s Maurice. Once we’d read our own books, we swapped. I hadn’t thought about Precious Bane for years until something put it into my mind last week. I looked on eBay; there it was and it arrived today. A small, navy blue hardback volume dating from 1927, three years after the novel was first published.

I adore books. I read in bed, I read in the bath, I read on journeys when I am not driving. I was banned from reading at the table when I was a child, so as soon as I left home, I started doing that too. I read all sorts – I have shelves full of racing thrillers and I have helped add to JK Rowling’s fortune, as well as reading ‘proper books’. My all time favourite is Brideshead Revisited. It always makes me laugh - and cry.

There will always be so many books and so little time, but I do enjoy re-reading certain volumes. A fleeting thought, the weather, the time of year – any of these can send me to the shelf looking for a particular book. I keep promising myself that I will read 1984 again soon. I read it in 1984 because I thought I ought to; I think I’ll get more out of it this time around.

My brother hates old books that have already been owned by someone. I think that’s part of the charm. My copy of Rebecca had a paper dust jacket (which I have managed to lose) that said ‘Price Held in Spite of War’. On the flyleaf, it says ‘Nora E Holdforth. October holiday 1940’. I hope she had a good holiday and I hope she enjoyed Rebecca as much as I did.

Anyway, I have to dash: I have a book to read.