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DJ: Frances Ambler
Competition | win a foodie hamper from Abel & Cole
A basketful of delicious treats, thoughtfully sourced, to cheer dark evenings
Abel & Cole have been delivering delicious organic food for 30 years now. With award-winning animal welfare credentials, top-rated treats, and plenty of plant-powered options, all the delicious goodies in Abel & Cole’s catalogue taste as good as the eco glow they’ll give you. From moreish pies, pastries and tarts to savoury charcuterie, interesting cheeses and wines and fizzes, you’ll find something to bring a little cheer to any winter evening.
Our favourite part? It’s all wrapped up in recyclable, reusable packaging and dropped to your door by their own cheery drivers. Each delivery is carefully planned to be as efficient and carbon-friendly as possible, always putting the planet first. All of which means you can feel completely happy with what you put on the table, whether you’re enjoying a cosy dinner in for two or are planning to be feeding a crowd.
WIN ONE OF THREE FOODIE HAMPERS
Abel & Cole have put together a foodie hamper to appeal to gourmands, worth £120 each, and we have three to give away. To be in with a chance of winning one just click the button below and answer the following question:
Q: For how long has Abel & Cole been delivering organic food?
Terms and conditions
Entrants must live within an Abel & Cole delivery area – please check your postcode at: abelandcole.co.uk/help/faq. Three prize winners will be picked at random from all valid entries and notified via their entry email address. The winner must claim the prize within three days of notification, after which time an alternative winner will be selected. For full terms and conditions, visit abelandcole.co.uk/terms-conditions. You’ll find Iceberg’s full terms and conditions on page 127 and online at icebergpress.co.uk/comprules Entry closes at 10pm on 27 December 2019.
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More festive food to get you in the mood…
More from our December issue…
Photography: Yeshen Venema
Make | homemade eco Christmas crackers
Create your own eco-friendly crackers with brown paper or recycled wrapping paper
If you liked the colourful Christmas Crackers make in our December issue, but would like something a little greener, or just a little more understated in design, you might like to make these eco-friendly versions.
You will need:
Cracker template (click to download and print out)
Brown paper
Cutting board
Craft knife
Toilet roll or cardboard tube
Cracker snaps
Double-sided tape
Ruler
String
How to make:
1. Cut out your template and draw around it on the card. Cut out the main cracker shape and then cut out all the triangles using your craft knife and ruler.
2. Place your toilet roll in the middle of the brown paper between the cut out diamonds. Take your cracker snap and put it through the cracker then place in the cracker any presents or jokes you wish to fill it with.
3. Place sticky tape along the bottom edge of the cracker, leaving a space where the triangles are, then roll and stick the cracker together. (If you don’t want to use tape you could little tabs in one side and slits in the other for them to go through to hold the paper together, although this won’t be as sturdy.)
4. Place your string underneath the triangles, pull tight and tie into a bow.
5. Cut off any of the cracker snap that may be showing, then personalise as you wish.
More from our December issue…
Vote | for your favourite Quality Street
Do you go straight for the Strawberry Delight or are you a die-hard Toffee Penny fan? Join our very scientific research project to help us pinpoint The Simple Things’ readers’ favourite?
In our December issue' Miscellany, we’ve taken an irreverent look at our favourite Quality Street chocolate. But these things require serious consideration, too. If you thought the biggest vote of December 2019 was the general election, think again.
There were strong feelings in the office, with the Coconut Eclair being perhaps the most divisive, so we’re putting the vote to you. Tell us which your favourite Quality Street is by clicking on your favourite below.
Competition | Win a baking hamper from Doves Farm
We have four Doves Farm Ancient Grain Baking Hampers to give away
The festive baking season is upon us and this month we’ve teamed up with Doves Farm, the organic flour experts, to give you the chance to win a spectacular hamper packed full of their award-winning organic ancient grain flours.
The prize
We have four hampers, each worth £50, ideal for the avid baker who would like to add delicious flavours to their bakes. Presented in a beautiful wicker hamper, the prize contains eight packs of Doves Farm organic ancient grain flours - Wholemeal Spelt Flour, White Spelt Flour, Wholemeal Rye Flour, White Rye Flour, KAMUT® Khorasan Flour, Einkorn Flour, Emmer Flour, Buckwheat Flour, Quick Yeast, a bread proving banneton and Doves Farm recipe booklet.
How to enter
To be in with a chance of winning one of the hampers, simply click on the button below and answer the following question:
How many bags of flour are there in the prize?
A. 5.
B. 90.
C. 8.
Browse the full range, plus find hundreds of delicious recipe ideas at dovesfarm.co.uk.
Terms and conditions
Competition closes at 23.59 on 31 December 2019. Four winners will be selected at random from all correct entries received and notified soon after. The prize is as stated, can’t be transferred or swapped for cash. Find our full terms and conditions at icebergpress.co.uk/comprules.
How to do: zero waste shops
Ever fancied zero waste shopping but worried about how you’d get it all home? We asked an expert how to pack no-packaging grocery items. And we want to hear about your favourite zero waste stores, too…
Zero waste shops are suddenly everywhere, and we love using our local ones and having a poke round new ones we find on our travels. But for the newbie it can be a bit of a minefield, knowing what you should take and how you’re going to transport your goods home. Tote bags are all very well but you can’t fill them with milk now, can you? We talked to Tracey Harwood, owner of zero waste store Fetchem From The Cupboard, which has branches in Fetcham and Ashtead in Surrey, and asked her to share her best advice for shopping package free.
Tracey suggests you scope out your local zero waste store before you try and do a shop and see what products they stock, make a list of what you normally use and get containers ready to take with you. Here are her recommendations for transporting various products, from hand cream to quinoa...
Cheese
Beeswax wraps are a good investment but putting that into an airtight container too will improve longevity of the product.
Dried goods
Tupperware is best and most of us have some in our cupboards somewhere. Any storage containers you normally use for your rice and cereals can just be brought in and refilled. If you don’t have a label write down the date you filled the container. Most produce bought packaging free is fresher than plastic wrapped and therefore lasts longer but you need to use most dried goods within three months.
Oils and vinegars
Use an old bottle which used to contain oil or vinegar but it must be completely dry to avoid damaging the product. An old jam jar will do if not and is easy to fill.
Fresh fruit and veg
Loose produce can just be put straight into a reusable bag. If you want to invest in some lightweight produce bags to separate out your purchases, there are recycled plastic and cotton ones on the market which can be washed and reused. They’re good for things like Brussels sprouts and new potatoes, which can get lost in your basket or your trolley quite easily when loose.
Baked goods
Bring a tin or Tupperware again, most stores and even supermarkets will serve directly into your own containers now and they put their dispensed labels onto that instead.
Frozen things
Tupperware or produce bags are good here - or reuse the bags which you previously bought the products in and replace them as and when necessary. If you only buy small amounts the cotton bags are good enough for the freezer as you will use the product before it spoils.
Soap and cleaning products
Reuse the containers you have from your old products to fill up or invest in some prettier soap dispensers for ones that will be on display. Think about the fact you will need to refill them, so make sure the opening is not too small otherwise it may be tricky.
More things your zero-waste shopkeeper wants you to know
Tracey suggests you shop little and often if you can and take your time getting used to the self-fill containers. “See-through containers are ideal so you can track your progress when filling but they’re not essential. Ask a staff member of any shop which provides refills to help you until you have got the hang of refilling your containers - they’ll be only too pleased. Sadly, once a product has been decanted, a retailer is not allowed to put that product back, and if you leave it behind or worse, spill it, it has to be wasted, which obviously defeats the object.”
And working with the shop owners is key, she says. They want you to provide a good experience for you not just for the sake of their business but for the sake of the planet, so you’re all on the same side. “Give feedback when something doesn't meet your expectations but also give feedback when you are blown away by a product or service. Try to be patient and understanding - this is a learning curve for all of us and your zero waste shop owner is likely working very long hours, taking very little reward, yet turning up every day to make a difference - we all need your support to build sustainable businesses which can compete with the big boys. We need to work together on this.”
Tell us about your favourite zero waste stores
We loved poking our noses into Fetchem From The Cupboard but now it’s over to you. Do you also have an amazing zero-waste store near you? Somewhere that’s going above and beyond, offers products you don’t see elsewhere, has a brilliant cafe or simply staff that are making a real difference and make it a pleasure to shop there?
We’re hoping to put together a booklet of the best zero-waste stores around the UK, as voted for by readers of The Simple Things. Leave your votes in our comments section, or on Facebook or Instagram.
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More from our November issue…
More ways to be green…
Workshop | make your own Christmas hamper
By Rebecca Frank
As thoughts inevitably turn to Christmas, why not swap the shops for the kitchen and have a go at making your own festive foodie gifts. Rebecca Frank visited River Cottage to do just that
While Christmas shopping tends to make you tired and stressed, spending a day in the kitchen creating brightly coloured bottles and boxes bursting with delicious festive flavours whilst ticking names off your present list has the exact opposite effect. This I discovered on a cold and wet November day when I joined the Christmas Hampers workshop at the River Cottage in Devon. While the rain came down outside my fellow cooks and I boiled beetroot, apple and tomatoes with wintry spices to create a bottle of deep red St Nicholas Ketchup and combined Bramley apples and lemons with eggs and cloves to make two jars of Hugh’s delicious winter lemon curd. A chocolate salami followed, which course leader Lucy Brazier described as the ideal no-cook recipe for when you’re ‘sick of pudding and sick of cooking’. Packed with nuts and sour cherries and a couple of teaspoons of alcohol (we used locally made cider brandy) all of our sausage shaped creations looked different but equally impressive.
As we all know, cooking can build up quite an appetite but there’s no fear of going hungry here with regular breaks for tea and homemade spelt digestives and a hearty lunch served in the farmhouse in front of the log fire. While feasting enthusiastically on winter salads and tender meats we shared stories of our Christmases and cooking successes and disasters. It was soon back to the kitchen as we had a long list of goodies to get through including piccalilli, roasted nuts and seeds with Twelfth Night seasoning, quince vinegar and a batch of those yummy spelt digestives. Lucy made it all feel very achievable for a bunch of amateur cooks with her lively demonstrations and useful tips and hints. While we cooked at our individual stations, she wandered around answering questions and rescuing the odd mishap with a smile.
At the end of the day we were given wooden boxes and Christmassy accessories with which to decorate our hampers while Lucy poured us all a glass of quince, bay and ginger ratafia and laid out a fabulous cheese board for us to feast on as we worked. I came away with heaps more confidence and ideas for making edible gifts but also general cooking tips I will definitely be putting to use in the kitchen over Christmas. I wasn’t surprised to find most people on the course had been on a River Cottage workshop before as I definitely hope to return soon. If you can’t make it down this year, perhaps you could slip a cooking course onto your Christmas wish-list..?
The next Christmas Hamper course is on 21 November and costs £195 for the day including lunch (9.30-5pm). Visit rivercottage.net to find out more.
Recipe by Le Creuset, photography by Dirk Pieters
Recipe: Fish pie
Surely the most comforting of comfort foods, great for a crowd and just as good eaten alone on the sofa
In our November issue, Olivia Potts, author of A Half Baked Idea (Fig Tree), talked about how cooking a fish pie helped her grieve for her mother and we all agreed that there’s something very gentle and soothing about both putting together and eating this dish. Baking a fish pie needn’t involve using every pan in your house. In this simple recipe, which first appeared in our November 2015 issue, the veg are included in the pie so you don’t even need a side dish. Spoon it out into a bowl to eat curled up with a blanket or perhaps bring it out for a bonfire night supper with friends.
Fish Pie
You will need
200g boneless white fish fillets
200g skinless salmon fillet (pin-boned)
450ml full-fat milk
750g potatoes, peeled and halved
1 tbsp olive oil
4 baby leeks, finely sliced
3 shallots, diced
2 fennel bulbs, finely sliced
100g butter
2 tbsp plain flour
150g frozen peas
3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
juice of 1 lemon
salt and freshly ground black pepper
How to make
1 Preheat oven to 180C/Fan 160C/350F.
2 Place the fish in a baking dish, season and pour over 400ml of the milk. Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes until the fish flakes slightly when pressed with a fork.
3 Remove the fish, reserving the milk. When cool enough to handle, flake the fish into bite- sized pieces and set aside.
4 Place the potatoes in a pot, cover with salted cold water, bring to the boil and simmer until soft. 5 Heat the olive oil in a shallow casserole over a low to medium heat on the hob and sautée the leeks, shallots and fennel until soft. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
6 Melt 50g of the butter in the casserole, stir in the flour and cook over a low heat for 2-3 mins. Slowly add the reserved milk and continue to cook until thickened, stirring continuously.
7 Add the flaked fish, sautéed leeks, shallots and fennel, peas, 1 tbsp of the parsley and the lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.
8 Drain the potatoes and mash with the remaining 50ml milk, 50g butter and rest of the chopped parsley until smooth. Season to taste.
9 Spoon the mash on top of the fish mixture and smooth with a spatula. Trace a pattern into the mash with a fork.
10 Place the casserole into the oven and bake for 20–25 mins or until golden.
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More comfort food recipes…
From our November issue…
Photography: Cathy Pyle
Autumn tipple | pomegranate and rosemary gin fizz
For a bonfire night gathering or just a dinner with a spooky or autumnal feel, this cocktail is a winner
Ingredients
1 bottle of gin
1 bottle of elderflower tonic water
1 litre fresh pomegranate juice
1 lemon, cut into wedges
6 sprigs of rosemary
1 fresh pomegranate
How to make
1 Mix together 1/3 gin to 1/3 tonic and 1/3 pomegranate juice.
2 Add a twist of lemon and stir with the rosemary sprig (then add the lemon wedge and rosemary to the glass for garnish).
3 Cut the fresh pomegranate in half and scoop out the seeds. Add 1 tsp of seeds to each cocktail.
This cocktail recipe by Kay Prestney is in our November issue, as part of our menu for a murder mystery party, which also includes brie and cranberry bites, apple and celeriac soup, chicken, chorizo and pepper bake and poached pears in red wine. A menu to die for. Find it on p32.
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More from our November issue…
More tipples to tickle your fancy…
Soul cakes recipe by Lia Leendertz
Photography by Kirstie Young
Recipe: Soul cakes
Soul cakes are an old English traditional cake, sometimes known simply as ‘souls’. The tradition of giving out soul cakes on All Hallows’ Eve dates back to the Middle Ages, when children went door-to-door saying prayers for the dead On All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, children went ‘souling’, asking for soul cakes from house to house: quite possibly a precursor to trick or treating. This recipe is adapted from one on lavenderandlovage.com.
Soul cakes
Makes 12–15 cakes
175g butter
175g caster sugar
3 egg yolks
450g plain flour
2 teaspoons mixed spice
100g currants
a little milk to mix
1 Pre-heat the oven to 190C/Fan 170/375F. Cream the butter with the sugar until it’s light and fluffy and then beat in the egg yolks one at a time.
2 In a separate bowl, sieve the flour and the spices together and add to the wet mixture along with the currants (reserving a small handful to decorate the tops later).
3 Mix with a wooden spoon and then add some milk to pull everything together into a dough.
4 Roll out to a thickness of around 1cm and cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter. Use a straight-sided knife to make a slight cross indent in the top of each cake and then push in raisins along it.
5 Place on a piece of baking parchment on a baking tray and bake for 10 to 15 mins on the fire or in the oven until golden. Allow to cool before eating.
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More All Hallows Even celebrations…
From our November issue…
Illustration: Stuart Cox
A tale of two woodpeckers
A short biography of two very different birds. Because why not?
Here at The Simple Things, we love a woodpecker, so much so we dedicated one of our Magical Creatures pages to it back in February. You can buy that issue here.
And when we saw this wonderful illustration of one in this month’s ‘Cosy’ issue, it got us wondering why you don’t encounter many Woodpeckers in books or on the silver screen. They are sadly under-represented, we feel. To go some way towards righting that wrong, we’re celebrating two famous, but very different woodpeckers.
Picus, Greek myth
Picus (Latin for woodpecker) was a man originally known as Stercutus and was the first king of Latium. He earned his nickname for the fact that he was enormously talented in augury and used woodpeckers for his divination (best not ask how). He was a handsome chap and women, nymphs and a myriad of assorted other females couldn’t help but throw themselves at him. What’s a King of Latium to do? But he came a cropper when the witch, Circe, tried to seduce him and he turned her down with little care for her feelings. Well. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and the witch turned him into a woodpecker as punishment. And for good measure, she turned his friends into a variety of other creatures and his wife into a nymph. The wife went mad and wandered the forest for six days before laying down on the banks of the river and dying. And all because a simple ‘I’d love to but I’m washing my hair’ would not suffice. Lesson learned, chaps.
Woody Woodpecker, Universal Pictures
The inspiration for Woody arrived on cartoonist Walter Lantz’s honeymoon when an acorn woodpecker disturbed Walt and his wife’s peace repeatedly by boring holes in the roof. Walt was going to shoot the bird but his wife suggested he instead make a cartoon of him, and a star was born.
No one is quite sure what type of woodpecker Woody is, but his laugh has made many assume he is a pileated woodpecker. So now you know.
Woody, voiced by Mel Blanc (who also voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and more) first appeared in the cartoon short Knock Knock on November 25 1940, in which he tormented two unassuming pandas.
Woody made the move to television in 1957 with The Woody Woodpecker Show, which was revived in the early 70s. And in 1999 he saw another renaissance when The New Woody Woodpecker Show ran for a few years on Fox Kids. A new series is available on YouTube now, where Woody continues to sweep back his quiff, bore holes in things he shouldn’t, irritate all creatures great and small and laugh his infamous laugh. And how is that laugh, written, we’d like to know? According to the lyrics to the Woody Woodpecker Song, it is notated, thus:
Ho-ho-ho ho ho! Ho-ho-ho ho ho!
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The beautiful illustration above is from I Like Birds: A Guide to Britain’s Avian Wildlife by Stuart Cox (Quadrille)
More miscellaneous fun…
More from our November issue…
Astounding facts | knitting
Tales of woolly wonder that will provide you with a good yarn
We’ve been celebrating all things wool-related in our ‘Cosy’ November issue. It’s got blankets for snuggling (including some with dogs on), a short story about knitting and a retrospective on how wool has shaped British history, from Viking socks to knitted bikinis. And we thought we’d share with you some of the wonderful woolly facts we discovered along the way.
The record for the longest knitted scarf stands at 4,565.46 metres. That’s nearly three miles. It was knitted by Helge Johansen of Oslo, Norway, and took him 30 years. We’re concerned about how he kept warm for those three decades before the scarf was finished.
The largest number of people to be knitting together in one room is 3,083 and the record was achieved by the Women’s Institute (naturally) in The Royal Albert Hall in 2012.
The fastest hand-knitted ‘sheep-to-jumper’ item was made in 4 hours 45 minutes and 53 seconds by a team in Swalmen, Netherlands in 2017. We don’t know how this was done and we don’t wish to, as we can’t bear to spoil the mental image of someone clicking their needles, taking wool directly off an ever-decreasing sheep.
The world’s largest knitting needles were made by an art student in Wiltshire. They measured 4.42m long and had a diameter of 9.01cm. To claim the world record, the needles had to be capable of knitting ten stitches and ten rows of yarn.
Slow TV in Norway once broadcast a knitting marathon lasting 13 hours, which was watched by 1.3 million viewers.
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More knitting inspiration…
More from our November issue…
Photography: Kirstie Young
Make your own | rosehip tea
Fancy a cuppa? We’ll just pop to the end of the garden and brew up
In our November issue, Lia Leendertz showed us how to forage rose hips and threw in a few delicious recipes, too. If you had a glut though, you might like to dry some to keep for rosehip tea, a delicately flavoured beverage that will warm you through the colder months.
Here’s how to make rosehip tea, from hedgerow to armchair.
Pick your rosehips. After the first frost is best but if they get too frozen they’ll be no good. Lia recommends you pick them whenever you spot them, frost or no, and pop them in the freezer for a few hours to create a fake first frost. You can cut them off with scissors or a knife or just pick them off. Gloves are a good idea.
Rose hips can be used whole, or you can trim either end if you prefer. You can also cut them in half and scoop out the seeds if you like. Again, not a must but the seeds are covered in tiny hairs which might spoil your tea. It depends how ‘rough’ you like your hip tea really. Give them a good wash and dry them on newspaper in the sun if you can, or just leave them to dry off indoors.
To fully dry them, either put them in a food dehydrator (not many people have one but they are rather fun for all sorts of projects like this) or simply put them in the oven on its lowest heat for about three and a half hours.
Once the hips are dried, pop them into a food processor and give them a quick whizz. You want the pieces to be fairly chunky still.
Put the blitzed hips into a sieve and shake through any tiny bits. If you didn’t remove the hairs earlier this should get rid of them.
Ta da! You have rosehip tea! Just put your tea into an airtight jar.
To serve, put one teaspoon of the tea in a loose-leaf infuser (we like the one Teapigs sells), put it in a mug and pour boiling water on top. Allow to steep for five minutes before removing. Enjoy with a blanket and half an hour to yourself with the November ‘Cosy’ issue of The Simple Things, which is in shops now.
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More teas to make and sip…
More from our November issue…
Am I Overthinking This? by Michelle Rial (Chronicle Books)
October | a final thought
A cartoon from our back cover to cheer your day
We’re seeing off our October issue today. All the pumpkins, spooky stories, toffee apples and tea have made us feel properly autumnal. We hope you’ve enjoyed it, too. Our November ‘Cosy’ issue will be snuggling up on supermarket shelves this week so do pop out and buy a copy.
Meanwhile, please enjoy this cartoon from our October back cover.
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More from our October issue…
More amusement from our back cover…
Photography: Alamy
Build your own spooky story
Frighten friends and freak out family with your own spooky story
If you love a scary tale, especially at this time of year, why not try penning your own? How hard can it be, after all*? To show you just how easy it is, we asked author and creative writing tutor Susan Elliot Wright to help us put together this Spooky Story Kit. Simply choose one beginning, one ending and five scary elements from below, string them together with a few verbs and conjunctions and Bob’s your Uncle (and The Bride of Frankenstein’s your Aunt). Go!
Beginnings (choose one)
She had thought the house was empty as she pushed open the creaking door…
Four hundred years after her death, Esmerelda sat up in her coffin…
A mile or two into the forest road, Roger Peebles’ car choked to a halt. He had run out of petrol…
Endings (choose one)
And that would be the last the town saw of those vampires, for now at least.
He put the knife back where he had found it. No one would ever know he had been there at all.
But the rats continued to run.
Scary Elements to add to your story’s sandwich filling
An electric light that doesn’t work. Characters may pull on it frantically and pointlessly.
A crow. Particularly one with beady eyes or a malformed foot or two.
A rocking chair that rocks of its own accord. Just a little bit too quickly and silently to have been set off by a human.
A clown. Not a funny one though. A malign-looking, silent one, preferably seen from a distance.
Long corridors (they really should be <very> long, and also shadowy to allow plenty of opportunity for evil to skulk in their corners).
The distant sound of a weeping woman that can’t be located. The listener should ideally dash from room to room, with the noise of weeping becoming louder and quieter again at random.
A face at the window of a house. The protagonist should not be able to locate the room the face appeared in once inside the property.
Some things that ‘go’ when no one has set them off: a television, a gramophone, a slightly manic-looking wind-up toy monkey bashing cymbals together.
Something seen from the corner of one’s eye, only fleetingly. It should move swiftly and be gone when the protagonist whirls round (one never simply turns in spooky stories).
A deserted institution. An asylum is ideal but hospitals, churches and prisons are all good. Any building that would once have been bustling and may hide dark secrets.
Any child’s toy in the wrong context. A rag doll that appears in someone’s home and has never been seen before. A doll’s house in an abandoned home. Any mechanical toy that moves of its own accord.
*It’s quite a bit harder than we have made this sound, actually.
Susan Elliot Wright loves a spooky story. Her latest novel, The Flight of Cornelia Blackwood (Simon and Schuster) features some rather spooky crows, of which she is a big fan. For more of her writing tips and advice on getting published visit susanelliotwright.co.uk. For some more spooky inspiration, have a read of our feature Dare To Be Scared for ideas on paranormal outings you can do in a day (p80).
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If you enjoy a good mystery, don’t miss our November issue, in which we will be announcing the winner of our competition to write the ending for a murder mystery penned by Sophie Hannah. We'll be publishing Sophie’s own ending to the story (and the rest of it too, so you can enjoy it all in one go) here on the blog later in the month.
More from our October issue…
More spooky things for an autumn evening…
Image: Shutterstock
Playlist | Cosy
Goes down well with a mug of something hot.
Listen at thesimplethings.com/blog/cosyplaylist
More Simple Things playlists…
More from our November issue…
Images: Shutterstock
Murder mystery story | The ending
Here it is… the original ending to our murder mystery short story competition…
Back in August we printed (most of) a murder mystery story by crime writer Sophie Hannah and set readers the challenge of finishing it. You can read the winning entry (as well as the beginning of Sophie’s story) in our November issue. But here you can enjoy Sophie’s original, intended, ending. Did you guess who the murderer was?…
If you missed the original story, we’ll be printing it here in full later in the month, or buy the November issue, on sale now.
‘Tell me.’ I crouched down beside her.
She stared at the square of words. ‘Edward was right. It is a palindrome, if you lay the five words end to end — ROTASOPERATENETAREPOSATOR. Lily misunderstood. He wasn’t claiming that each word was a palindrome. What a clever magic square! And to be able to make the Paternoster cross, too! It’s really rather marvellous that they found it among the ruins of Pompei.’
‘What does this have to do with Stanley’s death?’
‘All this time, I’ve wondered, Philip: what terrible things might Julia and Lily have said that day that prompted you to threaten them? Odd, isn’t it, for us both to forget? And why would my sisters savage me? I had promised to share everything equally. Lily didn’t even want Father’s money. Why should she accuse you of having gone mad unless…unless you’d reacted to something that never happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ There was a limit to how much Alice could know. She was surely unaware (or she’d have mentioned it) that Stanley had consulted me about making a new will, to make things equal between his daughters. Julia, damn her, had persuaded him that was fairer. And then, if Alice had married me as I’d hoped she would, we’d have been unnecessarily poorer. Unless something were to happen to Stanley before the new will could be made…
‘You reacted with anger to nothing,’ said Alice. ‘I didn’t forget the dreadful things Lily and Julia said; neither did you. They said nothing offensive. You needed that conversation to end: the discussion about palindromes and words that were other words reversed. You were afraid I’d tumble to the truth: that you murdered Father. That, while dying, he managed to turn over that cup of tea — and in doing so, name his murderer. The word cup, upside down, gives us the letters p, u, c. Philip Unwin-Carruthers. As you say, Father wasn’t one for setting puzzles. Your words contained an assumption: that Father turned the cup upside down, not his murderer. How could you have known that unless you were there? Unless you killed him?’
What a fool I’d been, so secure and smug in the assumption that she’d never work it out.
Well, there was only one thing for it — though Alice hadn’t yet got that far in her deductions. She soon would. What choice did I have? I was hardly about to let her leave my room and go straight to the police.
It was a terrible pity. I sincerely loved her. We could have been so happy together.
THE END
More bookish things to enjoy…
More from our November issue…
Photography: Joseph Ford
Camouflage | a short primer
Now you see me… now you don’t
We tend to think of camouflage as matching one’s background. And indeed, this can be used to good effect, as seen in the picture above from Invisible Jumpers by Joseph Ford and Nina , published by Hoxton Mini Press (you can see more of these fabulous photographs in our October issue).
But in the animal kingdom, it’s all a little more subtle and complex than this (and less knitted) and the theories of how camo works have been discussed by everyone from artists to zoologists for decades. Here are a few of the nifty tricks nature uses to make itself invisible.
Countershading
Since the Cretaceous period, many animals have been darker on the top of their body and lighter on the underside (think about a shark with its dark back and white belly - it works just as well for predators as prey). When light falls from above on a 3D object of one shade the underside appears darker than the top because of the way shadows fall, giving the object a solid appearance. Countershading works against that, using shading to counterbalance light’s effects to make the object seem to disappear.
Mimetic resemblance
This is the sort of camo we often think of first - those mad stick insects that look like leaves, moths that have wings that look just like bark. Devious little so-and-sos.
Counter illumination
This is a bit subtler but seen from below, most marine animals are able to be seen because they have a dark silhouette against the water. Some, like the firefly squid, produce light from bioluminscent photophores on their undersides, which counteracts the effect of their dark silhouette making them harder to see.
Disruptive colouration
In layman’s terms, this is ‘splotchiness’, like on a leopard or a flatfish. The splotches make it harder to see the contours of the animal’s body.
Contour obliteration
Also known as ‘boundary disruption’. This makes the edges of an animal’s shape looks a bit roughed up so it’s harder to discern its body as a whole from its background.
Concealment of the eye
By far our favourite camo trick. The eye can be a bit of a target for predators, as it stands out, so concealing it can be the difference between being a survivor and being dinner. Some animals have a dark band or stripe across the eye (like a raccoon) to hide the dark pupil, others have dark patches around the eye (pandas). While others still go for total misdirection, like some fish which have a fake ‘eye’ near the end of their tail and their real eyes are tiny and easily missed. Sneaky!
You can find more pictures of the fabulous knitted camo from Invisible jumpers in our October ‘Create’ issue. Get hold of your copy of this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe
More from our October issue…
More of nature’s wonders…
Help choose our new manifesto
We’re making two lovely posters. Vote below to let us know which one you like best…
We made some The Simple Things manifestos to put on your wall some time ago. They went like hot cakes and readers have been asking about them ever since…
So, by popular demand, they are back! We designed two colour ways but we have to choose just one to print, so we thought we’d leave it up to you.
Click below to vote for your favourite and as soon as we have a winner we’ll rush it to the printer’s.
Illustration: Zuza Misko
Mythology | How the spider got eight legs
A little legend about one of our favourite creepy crawlies
There’s no doubt there’s something a bit special about spiders. In our October issue (in shops now), we are celebrating our eight-legged friends on our Magical Creatures page. But why did Mother Nature decide they needed quite so many legs? We suspect there’s a very scientific evolutionary answer, but we quite like this one...
The Greek myth of Arachne has several versions but Ovid told a slightly terrifying story about how the spider got eight legs.
Arachne was a mortal woman, the daughter of a shepherd, and a top-notch weaver, but more than a little boastful regarding her skill. Foolishly, she began to boast that her weaving was better than that of the Goddess Athena, who overheard (as Gods are wont to) and popped to earth, disguised as an old lady to urge her to retract her claims in hopes the Gods would forgive her.
Bumptious Arachne refused to say that her weaving was inferior to that of Athena’s and went one step further, in fact, saying that if Athena thought her weaving was so spectacular she should come to earth herself and join her in a weaving competition. Athena cast aside her old lady costume and they both began to weave.
Athena’s weaving depicted contests between mortals and the Gods in which mortals were harshly punished for daring to set themselves against the Gods (an unsubtle hint of what was to come, but one Arachne chose to ignore). Arachne, meanwhile, ill-advisedly wove a picture showing the ways in which the Gods had abused mortals over the years. More inadvisedly still, her weaving turned out to be far superior than Athena’s.
Furious at both Arachne’s cheek and her talent, Athena struck her about the head three times and tore her work to pieces. Shamed and fearful, Arachne hanged herself.
Athena, who shows a frightening lack of moral compassion here, we must say, even for a Goddess, told her: "Live on then, and yet hang, condemned one, but, lest you are careless in future, this same condition is declared, in punishment, against your descendants, to the last generation!" She sprinkled her with some of Hecate’s poisonous herbs, at which point Arachne’s hair fell out, her nose fell off and her head and body shrank. Her talented weaver’s fingers stuck to her sides and became legs, which would spin thread from her belly for ever.
The moral of the story? Keep your light under a bushel… unless you’re a Goddess with a bit of an anger problem.
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