Science | decorate a Christmas tree using maths

Is decorating a tree best done using science or plain good sense? Pick a method below and give it a go

Some people’s trees always just look stunning, don’t they? Don’t get us wrong, we’re big fans of a wonky tree ourselves, but we do sometimes wonder what their secret is. So we’ve done a bit of analysis to discover whether a Christmas tree is best decorated using hard science (or some tricky maths at least) or a good dollop of Simple Things style common sense.  Do give one a go and let us know how you got on.

Decorating a tree using mathematics

How much tinsel is too much? What quantity of baubles is enough? And is that angel too much? Take a deep breath. Maths students at Sheffield University Maths Society (SUMS - ho ho ho) have got all the answers. And they’ve shown their workings, too. 

Using 'treegonometry' they have calculated that a 152cm (5ft) Christmas tree would require 31 baubles, 776cm of tinsel and 478cm of lights with a 15cm star or angel on the top.

Length of tinsel = 13 x 𝛑/8 x (tree height in cm)

Number of baubles = √17/20 x (tree height in cm)

Height of star in cm =  Tree height in cm ÷ 10

If you’re no Pythagorus you can find a calculator here courtesy of Sheffield University to do the above sums for you. Just enter the height of your tree. 

Decorating a tree using common sense

Wondering whether a mono-colour tree would look stylish or ‘cold’? Or whether you need to put every last trinket on (even the ones the children made years ago and looked awful before they were stuck in the attic for a decade)? Fear not. We’ve got it all worked out, and not a sum in sight. 

Which baubles to put where? Easy. Breakables at the bottom so they have less far to fall, along with larger baubles. Work upwards in size order so you have the more delicate ones at the top and they won’t pull the more spindly branches down. For edibles such as chocolates, gingerbread biscuits and the like, take the height of your dog/child, triple it, and hang only above that height. 

How to design a colour scheme. Look at everything you have. Do you have basically one or two colours? If yes, decorate using only those. If no, mix it all up and go for a ‘lived in’ look.

In a knot with your lights? First make sure your tree is within reach of a plug socket. Pull the tree out to wrap the lights around it and push it back to the wall or corner afterwards to make putting the lights around it easier. Keep the lights rolled, unravelling only as you go. For a more professional look, start in the middle of the tree and take the lights out to the end of one branch and back to the middle, continue in the same way around the branches of the tree until you get high up enough that they can just be draped around. 

How to hide ‘homemade but horrible’ decorations. Put them round the back. Or if your tree is in a window, bury them in the bottom third round the side of the tree. 

Star or angel? Both, of course! It’s Christmas - you can’t have too many trinkets!

The very beautiful tree pictured above was decorated by Caroline Rowland, who has enough style running through her veins to be able to eschew both common sense and science. It’s just one of the trees we featured in our My Place feature starting on page 124.

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More Christmas decoration ideas…

More from our December issue…

Seven of our favourite card games

Join our card school and learn to play a few traditional games

When the evenings draw in and there’s a chill in the air, it’s the ideal time to dust off a pack of cards and cosy up for the evening. Whether you’re a green visors and whiskies card shark or more of a cup of tea and a quick hand of rummy before bed type, we hope you enjoy learning some of our favourite games.

Black Jack (Brit style)*

BASICS: 4-6 players; 52-card deck. Each player gets seven cards. Remaining cards are placed face down as stock with top card turned over as the starter. First player lays a card on the starter, which must match in either suit or rank, or draws a card from stock. The player continues laying cards in sequence until they can’t go or they lay an action card.

ACTION CARDS:
Two: next player picks up two cards, unless they can play a Two and make the next player pick up four.

Eight: next player misses turn.

Black Jack: next player picks up five cards. A second Black Jack makes the next player pick up ten. Red Jack cancels.

Queen: follow with a card of any suit.

King: reverses play order.

The first person to shed all their cards wins. However, when a player can win on their next go, they must call ‘last cards’ or have to draw a card.

*It’s different to the US gambling game ‘Blackjack’.

Eights

A game best played with two people, also known as Crazy Eights or Swedish Rummy

BASICS: 2–7 players; 52-card deck

Each player receives 5 cards (with two players, each receives 7 cards). Remaining cards are placed face down as the stock, with top card turned up as the starter. First player lays one card on the starter, which must match in either suit or rank. If unable to do this, the player must draw a card from the stock. When the stock is exhausted, a player unable to play must pass.

Eights are wild and can be played on any card, regardless of its suit or rank, with the player specifying its suit. Play ends when any player lays his last card. He scores the total of cards remaining in all other hands: Eights score

50, aces 1, face cards 10, the index value for all others. With two players, the first to reach 100 points wins.

Knockout whist

The classic family favourite. Sniggering at the word ‘trumps’ never gets old.

BASICS: 2–7 players; 52 card deck; Ace is high

Seven cards are dealt to each player. The next card is turned up and becomes the trump suit. The player to the left of the dealer places the first card. Each player must follow the suit led, if possible. If not, play any other card, including a trump card. The highest trump wins the trick or, if no trumps are played, the highest card of the suit led. The winner leads the next trick.

Once all cards are played, players without any tricks are eliminated. The player with the most tricks picks trumps for the next hand; if two people have the same amount of tricks, cut cards to decide. The number of cards dealt decreases by one each hand, until only one player – the ultimate winner – remains.

Ninety-Nine

BASICS: 2 or more players; 52-card deck; you’ll need chips or counters.

Each player is given three counters and dealt three cards.

To play, place one card face up in the centre of the table, calling out the total value of the face-up pile before drawing the top card from the stock. Each card adds its face value in points. Jacks and Queens count as 10.

The following cards have additional effects:

3: skips next player

4: no value, reverses play

9: value of 99

10: adds or subtracts ten from the total

King: no value

Ace: value of one or 11.

If the player cannot place a card without taking the value of the pile over 99, the round ends and they lose one counter.

The winner is the last person left with counters.

Oh Hell!

A trick-taking game, beloved by Bill Clinton and Steven Spielberg, in which the object is to take exactly the number of tricks bid

BASICS: 3-7 players; 52 card deck; Ace is high

Each player is dealt a hand. There are many variations but typically, with

3–5 players, 10 cards each; 6 players, 8 cards each; 7 players, 7 cards each.

Each successive hand is played with one card fewer. After dealing, the next card is turned up and becomes the trump suit. Each player now bids for the number of tricks he thinks he can win. The player to the left of the dealer starts. Each player must follow the suit led, if possible. If not, play any other card, including trump. The highest card of the led suit wins the trick unless ruffed, when the highest trump wins. A player who wins the exact number of tricks bid scores 10 plus the number of tricks bid.

Klondike Solitaire

BASICS: 1–4 players; 52-card deck

One of the most popular versions of Solitaire, Klondike is typically a solo game, but it can be played as a group activity where everyone works together to solve the same shuffle. Players sort cards into foundation piles from Ace to King by suit, while organizing cards into descending order with alternating colors in the tableau.

Klondike is perfect for those looking to relax or sharpen their strategic thinking, either individually or as a team. You can try Klondike Solitaire here and even compete to see who can solve it fastest.

Red Dog

Beat the top card of the pack by having a higher ranking card of the same suit.

Basics: 2–10 players; 52-card deck; Ace is high; you’ll need chips or counters.

Five cards dealt to each player face down (four if more than eight play). Players put up one or any number of agreed chips to make the pool. First player can bet one chip or up to the number in the pool (‘betting the pot’). The dealer turns the top card of the pack. If the player can show a higher card in the same suit he wins back his bet and the pool. If he can’t he adds his chips to the pool, discards his hand and it’s the next player’s go. You can forfeit a hand by adding a chip to the pot and discarding your cards. When there are no chips in the pot, each player adds more and play continues.

More fun and games…

More ways to stay cosy at home…

Halloween | Simple spells

It’s Halloween. Why not try a little magic?*

• When you’re in the shower, visualise the water removing any anxieties and worries from the day before.

• If you’re feeling unwell, make a soup and while stirring it chant, “Cold, flu and ills be gone, healthy body from now on.”

• Make a love oil. Blend 5 drops each of rose and lavender oil and 120ml carrier oil. Shake the jar and focus on the intent of the oil (to bring love or friendship, say).

• Be a positive force. Help others, act with love, cut the gossip and try not to judge.

*Adapted from The Good Witch's Guide by Shawn Robbins and Charity Bedell (Sterling)

More Halloween activities…

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From our November issue…

Dogs | Pedigree Chums

A canine companion really does make any house a home.

Sometimes they also make any newspaper a shredded mess, any slipper a pile of rubber shavings and any lovingly prepared dinner for you a fast food takeaway for them. But we’ll not dwell on that. 

In our October issue we feature some fabulous photos of a few beautiful dogs in their beautiful homes, from the book Cool Dogs Cool Homes: Living in Style with Your Dog by Geraldine James (CICO Books). Photography by James Gardine. We’ve featured one of them here just to give you a sneak doggy preview.

All those stylish dogs in their stylish homes got us to wondering which types of stylish dogs are the most popular. So we looked it up. And here is the definitive answer.

In 2019, according to Kennel Club registrations, these were the most popular pedigree breeds:

1. Labrador Retreiver

2. French Bulldog

3. Cocker Spaniel

4. Bulldog

5. English Springer Spaniel

6. Golden Retriever

7. Dachsund

8. German Shepherd

9. Pug

10. Miniature Schnauser

Reader offer

Readers can buy a copy of Cool Dogs Cool Homes for the special price of £15 (RRP £19.99). To order go to rylandpeters.com and use code SIMPLEDOGS at checkout. Offer valid until October 31st 2020.

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More from our October issue…

More canine companions…

Are you a night owl or a lark?

In our September issue, we’ve explored the idea of night owls and larks. Do you sit up late, enjoying the peaace and the dark, getting all your best work done and having the most fun when everyone else has already retired? Or do you feel the glow of satisfaction of rising with the sun and getting stuff done while the rest of the house still snoozes?

Take part in our poll below on whether you’re a night owl or a lark. We’re hoping to find out whether more Simple Things readers are early risers or stay-up-laters. We’ll let you know the results!

More from our September issue…

More wellbeing for everyone…

Primer | colouring colours we loved

September is ‘new pencil cases’ time for us. Join us in a celebration of colouring crayons

There’s not much that cheers our hearts more than the idea of a bit of new stationery. Once you’ve sharpened your colouring pencils ready for the new term, buy a copy of our September issue, in which we have a Sketchbook Club feature with artist Jennie Maizels to help you learn to draw beautiful birds. We also were lucky enough to visit her colourful home, and you can see those pictures and read all about it from p94. We particularly coveted her bright studio with its pots upon pots of colouring pencils, paints and crayons, and it reminded us of a time when we knew the ‘names’ of all our crayons and always had a favourite - definitely a top ten at least. 

So here, in no particular order and judged completely on whim and without reason, are our favourite Crayola Crayon colours. Do share yours with us in the comments section below. 

1. Cerulean. Blue is repeatedly voted the nation’s favourite crayon colour. After all, it deserves some credit after all that stoic painting of skies and seas. Plus, we just loved the name. Why aren’t more children called Cerulean?

2. Inchworm. Named for the bright green caterpillar of the geometer moth (which disappointingly is itself a sludgy brown). It reminded us of the Hans Christian Andersen song, too. 

3. Macaroni and Cheese. A warm orange hue, named by a child as part of a competition Crayola ran in 1993 with Kraft Foods. 

4. Purple Mountains’ Majesty. This scores points for just being really fancy - and giving Farrow and Ball a run for its money. 

5. Corn silk. Back in the good old days, crayon colours were a bit educational, too. We mused for hours (while filling in suns and sandy beaches) over what corn silk might be. Turns out it’s the stringy bits on the top of a corn cob. Anyway, it’s a much better name than the brighter Unmellow Yellow… who wants their yellow UNmellow? 

The colourful array of colouring things in the picture by Carmel King above is from artist and founder of Sketchbook Club, Jennie Maizel’s home, which is featured in our September issue. You can find a tutorial on how to draw birds by Jennie on page 102. Jennie has run Sketchbook Club from her home and online for five years. For all the kit you need to get started, including paints, pencils and paper, visit: jenniemaizels.com and head to Jennie Maizels’ Sketchbook Club YouTube Channel for supporting ‘How to’ videos for these projects. You can also follow Jennie on Twitter and Instagram at @jenniemaizels.

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More from our September issue…

More Sketchbook Clubs…

Wish you were here

How a postcard spread a little sunshine eight decades late

We do love a postcard, and with so many holiday plans cancelled this year, we’re appreciating them even more. So we thought we’d bring some postal cheer with a story about a postcard that was also all the more enjoyable for being rather delayed. They do say the best things come to those who wait…

The postcard, featuring a black and white photo of a war memorial, was sent from Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex to a Mr and Mrs Richardson in East Dulwich, south London in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash and the same year John Logie Baird began his first experimental television transmissions from the BBC. It finally arrived at Lacon Road in 2008, the year of the bank bailout (for TV context the most-watched TV show that year was Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death).

The postcard reads simply:

Dear Auntie and Uncle,

Have arrived safely, got down about one o'clock, will write soon.

Love, May and Nel

But where did it get to in the intervening 79 years? Possibly it found its way accidentally into a nook or cranny somewhere at the Royal Mail and was rediscovered during renovations. The Royal Mail itself said at the time that it was more likely it had ‘re-entered the mail system’ all these years later so was perhaps misdelivered initially and then put in the post again. Mr and Mrs Richardson, whoever they might be, are presumably no longer with us but the current owner of the house held onto the postcard in case someone related to them ever wishes to claim it on their behalf. 

You can read more about the joy of postcards in our August issue, on sale now.

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More from our August issue…

More writing inspiration…

Eggs: scrambled, not stirred

Why scrambled eggs were nearly the undoing of James Bond but are still the best breakfast

It was Fay Weldon who originally advised us all to 'Go To Work on an Egg’ for the Egg Marketing Board in the 1950s. And it seems James Bond took her at her word.

If you expected Bond’s favourite dish to be something a little sexier, think again; Britain’s most famous spy liked nothing more than a plate of scrambled eggs and was regularly depicted getting stuck into a plate of them, with bacon, or kidneys… always with a fancy tipple. In fact, there are only three of the Ian Fleming books in which they don't appear (if you’re interested, they are From Russia With Love, The Man with the Golden Gun and You Only Live Twice). It must be pointed out that 007 does eat eggs in all those books, too, just not scrambled. 

They made so many appearances in Live and Let Die that a proof reader pointed out to him that Bond’s scrambled egg habit was so impressive it may be his undoing; for any enemy on his tail would only have to nip into a restaurant and ask if an Englishman eating scrambled eggs had been in. He eventually edited a few instances of scrambled eggs out of the second draft, but Bond’s penchant for his favourite breakfast was, in general, unswerving.

In his short story 007 in New York, Fleming included a recipe for ‘Scrambled Eggs James Bond’, which you might like to try for brunch this weekend. It serves four.

Scrambled Eggs James Bond

12 fresh eggs
Salt and pepper
5-6 oz. of fresh butter

Break the eggs into a bowl. Beat thoroughly with a fork and season well. In a small copper (or heavy bottomed saucepan) melt 4oz of the butter. When melted, pour in the eggs and cook over a very low heat, whisking continuously with a small egg whisk.

While the eggs are slightly more moist than you would wish for eating, remove the pan from heat, add rest of butter and continue whisking for half a minute, adding the while finely chopped chives or fines herbes. Serve on hot buttered toast in individual copper dishes (for appearance only) with pink champagne (Taittinger) and low music.

It’s a certainly a classic recipe, but if you’re looking for something a little different, don’t miss our feature on second breakfasts on page 34 of our August issue. It includes a recipe for the Indian Scrambled Eggs with Naan (above), as well as homemade beans on toast, bay-roasted grapes and ricotta on toast and a delicious frittata, all taken from Home Bird: Simple Low-Waste Recipes for the Family and Friends by Megan Davies (Ryland Peters and Small) with photography by Clare Winfield.

Reader offer

Readers can buy a copy of Home Bird for the special price of £12 To order go to rylandpeters.com and use code HOMEBIRD12 at checkout. Offer valid until August 31 2020.

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More from our August issue…

Eggstra inspiration for you…

Puffins and puffineers

Illustration: Zuza Misko

We have always thought there’s nuffin like a puffin and, like Kelly Keegan, who wrote our Magical Creatures feature about puffins in our July issue, we attribute much of our love for these birds to their association with Puffin Books, which were such a big part of so many of our childhoods. If you were a big fan, you might even have been a member of The Puffin Club, aka a Puffineer.

The club was founded in 1967 by Kaye Webb, then editor of Puffin Books and in its first year more than 16,000 children joined. At its peak it had some 200,000 members. The enamel puffin badge was a big draw, if we remember correctly, but we stayed for the excitement of receiving a copy of the Puffin Post through the letterbox regularly and being invited to VIP Puffin parties, colourful, grand affairs attended by some of the day’s most famous children’s authors and illustrators. Whether you were a proud Puffineer or not, here are a few facts you might like to know about the Puffin Club…

1. There was a secret Puffin Club greeting for members: “Sniffup”, and a response: “Spotera”. (Try reading them backwards).

2. Each month, Puffin would hide 50 coded messages in new books all over the country but only members had the code to decipher them.

3. The Puffin Club’s ‘computer’ was called TOMCAT (Totally Obedient Machine Cannot Actually Think) though all the admin was done with good old-fashioned paper and pencil in reality. 

4. The last Puffin Post was printed in 1989 but there was a brief revival in 2009 when The Book People took it over. Puffineers will tell you it wasn’t a patch on the original, however. 

5. As well as a love of reading, Puffineers joined in with acts of charity, including raising £3,000 to buy a stretch of Yorkshire coastline as a puffin sanctuary in 1972.

6. Puffin Post always featured a joke. The first one being: “Do you get fur from a skunk? Yes, as fur away as possible.”

7. Virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin was the second president of the Puffin Club.

8. Founder members received the gold Puffin badge, but if you weren’t an early adopter (or weren’t born) you would be awarded the black Puffin badge for four continuous years of membership.

9. To encourage younger members, the Junior Puffin Club was founded with its own mascot, a baby puffin called Smudge, and its own magazine, The Egg.

10. Puffin Post included regular writing competitions, but in typical seventies educational style, if entries were not considered to be good enough, the Editor would let members know and there would be no winners announced. Harsh, but we like to think that’s what gave us early Puffin Club members the backbone we still enjoy today!

You can read more about puffins (of the feathery variety) on page 15 of our July issue.

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More from our July issue…

More children’s books nostalgia…

How to | Hula Hoop

Because it’s a skill everyone should be able to surprise their friends with

Our July cover photo had us all wanting to invest in a hula hoop and rotate our hips like hula-pros. So we thought we’d put together a short guide on how to get started with hula hooping.

1. Invest in the correct-sized hula hoop - you need one that comes up to your belly button when it is standing on the floor in front of you.

2. Once you have your hula hoop, hold it in front of you and step inside the hoop with your feet towards the back. Bring the hoop to your waist level with two hands and stand your feet shoulder width apart. 

3. Keep your body long and give the hoop a big flat spin and then start to push forwards and backwards. If you’re right-handed spin it anticlockwise. If you’re left-handed spin it clockwise. Keep your knees, chest and hips still and just move the belly and back if you can. 

4. Move your waist in a circular motion, moving your belly froward as it crosses your front and pushing backwards as it crosses your back. You need to move the part of your body you want the hoop to sit on and keep the other areas still as much as you can.

5. Put one foot in front of the other if it feels easier. If you feel the hoop starting to drop, go faster, or turn your body in the same direction as the hoop is moving while pushing faster. 

6. Once you’ve got the momentum and you can do a few hoops, you can start being fancy. Try taking a step forward and back or moving across the room. Try these tricks for beginners if you like.

More skills to learn…

More from our July issue…

Four fictional bookshops

Join us as we browse the shelves of our favourite fictional bookshops

Is there a better place to spend a quiet afternoon than browsing in a really lovely bookshop? One with an expansive fiction section but also some surprises: maybe a really good maps or travel corner or a shelf of cookery books that you can lose an hour in. Browsing in bookshops has been one of the things we have missed most during lockdown, so we’re pleased to see them beginning to open up.

This week is Independent Bookshops week and there are many ways to support your local emporium of words, from buying books from them online or over the phone to purchasing book tokens to be spent there in the future when browsing will hopefully be back to normal. In the meantime, we’ve been reminiscing about our favourite bookshops from books, TV and films. Here are a few we remember fondly…

Marks & Co

Located at the eponymous 84, Charing Cross Road, Marks & Co is a bit of an interloper in this list, as it wasn’t fictional at all. But it’s surely one of the most famous bookshops from a book ever to exist so we had to include it here. For those who haven’t yet read it (and it is a case of yet - you really must read it) the book is a collection of letters between the author, Helene Hanff, and the staff of Marks & Co, primarily Frank Doel. New Yorker Hanff wrote to the bookshop having heard they were specialists in out of print books, to ask for a number of titles she couldn’t get in the US. From there began a correspondence that spanned two decades. Sadly, by the time Helene made it to England the shop had just closed its doors for the final time, but the shop lives on in her book which was eventually published in 1971 and later became a film (starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft) and a screenplay. 

Black Books

This warm early noughties sit com, created by Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan, followed the lives of irascible bookshop owner Bernard Black, his assistant Manny and friend and neighbour Fran. The real star of the show, however, was the London bookshop itself. Infested with vermin and other creatures unknown, filthy to the extent of being unlivable, and languishing in a permanent fug of Bernard’s cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes, for some reason we all wanted to own Black Books, too. We’re still not sure why, but there it is. 

The Travel Book Co

William Thacker’s (Hugh Grant’s) bookshop in the film Notting Hill was a charming emporium with the sort of romantic atmosphere that only comes with being in a beautiful building surrounded by enchanting tales from across the globe. So it’s no wonder American superstar Ann falls for the slightly bumbling English eccentric Will. We’d probably all be endlessly attractive if we all owned such as bookshop. The real-life location (142 Portobello Road) has actually never been a bookstore, but The Travel Book Co was based on the real-life Travel Bookshop nearby at 13 Blenheim Crescent. 

Flourish and Blotts

No bookshop makes us want to go straight back to school more than Flourish & Blotts of Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter stories: ‘The shelves were packed to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather, books the size of postage stamps covered in silk, books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all…’ The owners are regularly confounded by titles such as The Invisible Book of Invisibility, which appears never to have turned up, and The Monster Book of Monsters, copies of which attack the manager and tear each other to pieces. Just magic. 

More bookshops to make you joyful…

June | a final thought

We’ve reached the end of our June issue this week. We' hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed making it.

Here’s the image from our back cover: in many ways a poignant one this month. With all the bad and frightening things there are in the world, a reminder to take action while remaining calm and staying angry (in a useful and positive way) is pretty timely. We were remided that it’s ‘doing’ that changes things, even when our actions may be quiet and small.

Our July issue is out soon. We can’t wait to share it with you.

More from our June issue…

More wisdom from our back cover…

Moments | reading in railway carriages

There’s something special about reading in a railway carriage. Perhaps it’s the rhythm of the ‘faster than fairies, faster than witches’ carriages rattling along as you read, or maybe it’s the way the countryside unrolls like a plot as you go. We have a particular penchant for reading a railway-based book on a train journey. So we’ve matched a few books with a few train journeys to inspire you. Think of it like a cheese and wine pairing, but with choo-choos and words. 

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone

Read it:  on any train from platform nine or ten at King’s Cross, London.

Bring with you: Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.

If you can’t locate Platform nine-and-three-quarters simply enjoy chugging out of this magnificent station, pretending you’re on your way to Hogwarts for the first time. 

Murder on the Orient Express

Read it: on the Istanbul to Paris line via Belgrade.

Bring with you: a pipe and a handkerchief embroidered with the letter H.

Get your little grey cells to work as you relive the great age of steam through Agatha Christie’s 1934 crime novel.

The Railway Children

Read it: On the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway at Oakworth Railway Station.

Bring with you: Apple Pie (for breakfast). How perfectly ripping.

Feel your heart swell with a love of steam as you read the immortal opening line: ‘They were not Railway Children to begin with.’

Strangers on a Train

Read it: On a train from New York to Texas

Bring with you: a good alibi.

Eye up your fellow passengers and mull over which might be best at committing the perfect murder while you settle into Patricia Highsmith’s fabulous 1950 thriller.

The Girl on the Train

Read it: on a commuter train from Buckinghamshire to Euston. 

Bring with you: gin in a tin for the journey home.

Nose in a few kitchens and back gardens as you pass through suburbia and enjoy making up backgrounds for the lives of the people whose houses you pass. There’s nothing like a train for people-watching. 

The picture above by Andreas Von Einsiedel is from our Home Tour feature in our June issue - a house built around a railway carriage! If you like the idea of escaping to a railway carriage for a weekend, you might like to know you can stay in the house itself, The Bolthole, in Pagham, West Sussex.

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More from our June issue…

More journeys to savour…

History | Vintage Vulgarities

In 1785, Captain Francis Grose compiled A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – an impressive compilation of the choice vocabulary he heard in the less genteel areas of London. It’s still in print (a pocket version was published by Chronicle Books earlier this year) and is testament to the values of its time – and the evolving wonders of the English language. A few choice definitions follow:

A BLOWSE or BLOWSABELLA: A woman whose hair is dishevelled, and hanging around her face; a slattern

BUMFIDDLE: The backside, the breech.

CATCH FART: A footboy: so called from such servants commonly following close behind their master or mistress.

CRINKUM CRANKUM: A woman’s commodity

FLASH LINGO: The canting or slang language

GOTCH-GUTTED: Pot-bellied: a gotch in Norfolk signifying a pitcher, or a large round jug.

JOHNNY BUM: A he or jack ass; so called by a lady that affected to be extremely polite and modest, who would not say jack because it was vulgar, nor ass because it was indecent.

JUST-ASS: A punning appellation for a justice.

NOB: The head

TALLYWAGS or TARRYWAGS: A man’s testicles.

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If a bit of a swear-up makes you feel better occasionally you are not alone and you might like to read our feature Strong Words on p44 of our June issue by Frances Ambler. It features lots of examples of the ways in which swearing can be good for you, including a look at the work of Whitstable’s Profanity Emrboidery Group (pictured above) - @pegwhistable

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More from our June issue…

More fun with words…

Final thought | May

Am I overthinking this?

Our May issue is almost at an end now. We’ve loved this very special issue, which was put together slightly on the hoof, from our homes and gardens and using old ideas, and new, and a lot of imagination. It was certainly unlike any issue we’ve made before and is one we’ll all remember. We hope you enjoyed it, too.

Here’s something from our May issue to make you smile, reprinted from Am I Overthinking This? by Michelle Rial (Chronicle Books).

The May Inspire issue is still in the shops for a few more days but you can continue to order it from our online store, of course, if you missed it.

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More from our May issue…

A few more of our final thoughts…

Learn | to play a little sunshine on the ukulele

Gain a new skill and spread a little sunshine along the way

We hope you liked our ‘sunshine’ chalkboard*, that we featured in our May issue. We’ve been humming ‘You Are My Sunshine’ all month.

If, like us, you’ve been trying your hand at a new skill or using lockdown as time to improve on a skill you already have, you might have dusted off an old instrument or two. We know lots of people have dug out their ukuleles or bought one online recently. They’re a really easy instrument to learn. If you fancy having a go, we’ve started you off here with the chords for You Are My Sunshine. It’s the song most uke players start off with because it only uses three really simple chords.

Here are the chords you need to know to play You Are My Sunshine. (The left hand side is the top of the fret board, so with C you would place your ring finger on the bottom string on the third fret).

You Are My Sunshine (Jimmie Davis, Charles Mitchell, 1939)

You Are My [C] Sunshine
My only sunshine.
You make me [F] happy
When skies are [C] grey.
You'll never know, [F] dear,
How much I [C] love you.
Please don't take my [G7] sunshine a-[C] -way

The other night, dear,
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I [F] held you in my [C] arms.
When I a-[F]-woke, dear,
I was mis-[C]-taken
And I hung my [G7] head and [C] cried.

You Are My [C] Sunshine
My only sunshine.
You make me [F] happy
When skies are [C] grey.
You'll never know, [F] dear,
How much I [C] love you.
Please don't take my [G7] sunshine a-[C] -way
Please don't take my [G7] sunshine a-[C] -way

*You can buy a selection of our chalkboard pictures as postcards from our online store.

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Three more new things to learn about…

Make | a candle from crayons

Because you can never have too much emergency lighting or fun with crayons

Perhaps there’s been a power cut and your home has been plunged into darkness? Or maybe you just want a project that puts to use of all those broken Crayolas lying around (that’s enough to make any healthy and safety inspector grind their teeth to dust). Here’s the hack for you.

Pick up three of those surplus colouring devices, all roughly equal in size, and remove their labels (soaking them in cold water makes this easier).

Now bunch them together, with a string of natural fibre (think a length of wool, or a strand from an old-fashioned mop) running up through the centre as your wick.

Bind the lot with a couple of straightened out paperclips and secure its base carefully. Make sure you keep a close eye on it, but your makeshift candle should burn for about an hour.

OK, you won’t be giving Diptyque any sleepless nights, but you’ve certainly acquired some valuable survivalist skills.

This was just one of the miscellaneous makes from our bumper Miscellany pages in our May issue, where you can also learn skills including getting rid of slugs, telling apart all the different pasta shapes in the shops, recalling Romeo and Juliet accurately, and listing the component parts of a flower, among other things. There’s also a wordsearch, a spot the difference and a game of Eye Spy to keep you busy.

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More from our May issue…

More fun from our Miscellany pages…

Nostalgia | Weird but wonderful childhood hobbies

Were you the proud owner of a rubber collection or a keen creator of garden homes for clay dragons? You’ve found your people. Read on…

We’re celebrating the art of being bored in our May issue, something we’ve all got a little more time to dedicate to at the moment. And we’ve been remembering the ways we used to spend long days with not much to do when we were children, when hobbies mainly took place in our bedrooms and craft equipment might extend only to a tin of paints, some polymer clay and a scrapbook, but were no less absorbing for it. If anything we were more obsessed then than we have been since. 

We asked The Simple Things staff what their favourite strange hobbies were as children and have made a list of the most popular here, along with ideas for how you could ‘grown-up-ify’ them to enjoy them again. (Though don’t let us stop you if you still want to build a matchbox house for a woodlouse. Life’s rich tapestry and all that…)

Building tiny things

Wasn’t Fimo and the like an absolute dream for creative types? Several of us spent most of our formative years making entire tiny villages and peoples from polymer clay, painstakingly cutting out tiny eyes, ears, dresses and dragons. One TST staff member (who should remain nameless to save her blushes) then photographed them and stuck all the photographs into notebooks, cataloguing each character and their backstory in tiny, tedious detail. Oh the excitement of being able to create your very own world exactly as wanted it (skill permitting) and then the delicious anticipation of it coming out of the oven, stuck fast to an old baking tray and hotter than the sun for the next 20 minutes, meaning you could only stand and stare on tenterhooks until it was cool enough to handle.

If you’re a pre-Fimo child perhaps you did the same with plasticine, salt dough or something else sticky that dried to a fine, unremovable patina on your sweaty hands, and adhered itself with vigour to your bedroom carpet (sorry, Mum). 

Grown-up tiny building: If you still harbour a love of building tiny things deep down, try making walnut shell dioramas. Delightfully bonkers and madly charming. Look them up on Pinterest or Etsy for ideas. 

Spotting and jotting

Were you a keen train spotter? Or, possibly even a car number plate spotter? It’s ok. You’re among friends. A frighteningly large number of us remember standing at the living room window making notes of car number plates as they passed and keeping log books of them. Riveting. But there’s a certain delight in looking out for things to ‘spot’ and keeping records of when and where they were recorded. It’s kept Eye Spy books in business for years, after all! What satisfaction there once was in seeing an engine never before glimpsed in our part of the country, or passing a rare Edward VIII post box. 

Grown-up spotting and jotting: One word: birds. Shake off your ideas of twitchers being, erm, men of a certain age. Birdwatching is the ultimate cool hobby for those who love spotting things and keeping notes about it. Try How to be a Bad Birdwatcher (Short Books) by Simon Barnes to get you started.

Studying the Argos catalogue to degree level

They didn’t call it the Book of Dreams for nothing. We all remember endless afternoons spent poring over the Argos catalogue, first choosing something from each page we would buy if it was a ‘buy something from each page or face certain death’ situation (obviously). Then we made fantasy wedding lists. Eternal Bow crockery featured quite heavily. Then, when the new catalogue arrived, the best part of all… being allowed to cut up the old Argos catalogue and create room sets for our dream homes, with polished teak dining tables stuck down next to chintzy curtains and garish lampshades. Bliss. 

Grown-up catalogue crafting: If you still love a bit of interior design dreaming, get on Pinterest and start creating moodboards for all your rooms. It’ll give you a good starting place next time you have a home decorating project on your hands and is still a surprisingly relaxing way to spend an afternoon with a cup of tea. And best of all, money is no object when you’re window shopping. 

Rose petal perfume

Be honest, did anyone NOT at some point strip their parents’ rose bushes of petals, collect them all in a bucket, fill it with water and stir it daily in certainty it would eventually smell like Chanel No 5? And, then, in spite of the disappointment of having created nothing but a bucket of filthy, stagnant water, did any of us NOT do it all again the following week, certain that if we could just tweak the recipe correctly we’d get there? We thought not. It was good fun though wasn’t it?

Grown-up rose petal perfume: Make real beauty products and experiment with essential oils at home. We have a few ideas in our May issue in our feature, Natural Selection. We recommend the skin-boosting body butter in particular. 

Building your own zoo

Before we begin, we’d like to apologise to all the woodlice that went home from school in our pockets to the Woodlouse Zoo and ants that probably didn’t enjoy Ant Castle as much as we had hoped, and every poor beetle that spent 20 terrified minutes in our matchboxes. At least our pets had some peace while we were hunting ladybirds. We know now that it wasn’t right, but it’s hard to absorb that message when you’re a three-foot naturalist. Insects are fascinating as well as being an essential part of our environment. Perhaps you need to be nearer the ground to appreciate them fully, and forget about them as you grow and they become further away, but we spent many a happy hour creating habitats for unwilling wildlife and studying tiny thoraxes, little legs and amazing antennae. 

Grown-up entomology: If you still have a yearning to build a B&B for bugs, you’re in luck. There are endless habitats on the market for everything from ladybirds to butterflies, and you can always build your own, too, with a few bricks, palettes, sticks and stones and the odd bit of cardboard and cotton wool to create cosy holes for insects looking for somewhere to lay their heads. And you’ll be doing the earth a favour at the same time.

Read our feature The Lost Art of Boredom on p90 of the May issue.

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More from our May issue…

More things that make us feel nostalgic…

Friday Sketchbook Club | Spring Banner

Welcome to Friday Art Club! We’ve teamed up with illustrator Jennie Maizels to bring you a sketchbook project to do every Friday for the next few weeks. We hope you enjoy them.

Jennie started Sketchbook Club because she believes that ANYONE can draw. So whether drawing is a long-lost love of yours or you haven’t picked up a colouring pencil since school, do have a go. Jennie’s principle is that if we treat Art like any other creative pastime and follow simple instructions, just like a recipe, we would all be drawing as much as we are baking, sewing and knitting.

Each module comes with instructions, a ‘How to’ video, reference material and often, templates which you can ‘transfer’. They have been carefully designed to suit all ages and abilities. Young children, grandparents and whole families or groups of friends are all drawing and painting together as a result of Sketchbook Club.
 
A note on materials: Originally designed to introduce a plethora of different paints, collage and methods. All modules can be altered to use what you have available - Just substitute as you like / need.

Let’s get started! You can watch the Spring Banner video tutorial and use Jennie’s references to copy or trace. There are flowers and wreaths references, rabbits and birds references and references to trace and copy for the lettering all here. Just click to download and print.
 

You will need (if you have them):

HB pencil
Rubber
Size 1 and size 6 paintbrushes
Watercolour paints
Coloured pencils
White gouache paint (optional)

How to create your Spring Banner picture

1. Start by transferring your chosen lettering to your Sketchbook by drawing over the whole of the reversed text image with a firm HB pencil.Turn the paper over and position the text on your page and scribble over the back with a lead pencil firmly, making sure it doesn’t move around too much.

2. Now, using watercolours, start to add colour. You can always add shading, shadows or decorations with coloured pencils later.

3. Once your lettering is complete you can start to draw in your decorative surround. Firstly, transfer any rabbits and birds using the method above, then if you are nervous going straight to paint, lightly draw in all your squirls and stem positions. To make it symmetrical, transfer a rabbit or a bird on one side then repeat on the other. Do this with the flowers and leaves too.

4. Once you are happy with the decorative surround and the birds and rabbits, start to add some lovely colour. If you are brave enough, leaves do look better if painted straight on with watercolours. You may also want to add another layer of watercolours for the flowers so they cover the leaves and maybe some further details on the leaves and birds too?

5. You might also like to add a few white highlights using gouache paint. Do this using little swipes of your size-one brush on the lettering, petals and leaves.

6. Finally, if you would like, add some coloured pencil details. Jennie added all the shading, ears and whiskers etc. on the rabbits and feather details on the birds and some darker sections of leaves and flowers, too. Jennie also added shadows to the lettering and the tiny words as well.

There are many more modules available on Jennie’s website, Sketchbook Club (only £4 each.), where you can also buy art kits and supplies. For more inspiration, you can follow Jennie on Instagram @jenniemaizels or visit the website jenniemaizels.com. Look out for another Friday Sketchbook Club project with Jennie here next week.

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From our April issue…

More art for art’s sake…

Recipe | Pink lemonade

Zingy pink lemonade to brighten every spring lunch, with just three ingredients

A jug of this refreshing pink lemonade will cheer any outdoor spring lunch table. It’s part of our outdoor menu in our April issue, which includes a Picnic Pie, homemade scotch eggs and peanut salad jars, and is so simple to make.

Makes 1 litre

Juice of 6 pink lemons (about 100ml). Buy British if in season, otherwise Italian pink lemons are available most of the year

60g caster sugar

800ml hot water

1 Juice your pink lemons. Retain the skins to zest later - they look really pretty topping cupcakes or other desserts. Put the pink lemon juice in a large lipped bowl.

2 Add the sugar, pour on the hot water and stir until sugar has dissolved.

3 Let cool completely then pour into re-sealable bottles and store in the fridge until you’re ready to serve.

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More from our April issue…

More drinks to make…