I’ve read Mariana (the Persephone edition), which I enjoyed, so when a friend lent me this I was keen to try it.

Here’s the blurb …

 What does a young, well-off English woman do with herself when she’s thrown out of acting school and is tired of being a debutante? Well, if you’re Monica Dickens, you become a cook. She makes the plunge to a life “below the stairs,” confident in her abilities to be a cook because she once took a course in French cuisine. She quickly learns the difference between school learning and real life. Scalded milk, dropped roasts, and fallen souffles plague her in her domestic career, but she perseveres. What makes this book so delightful is the sense of humor and drama Monica Dickens brings to her work. From dressing up for job interviews in a “supporting-a-widowed-mum look” to eavesdropping on dinner guests, she tackles her work with an enthusiasm for discovery. To her descriptions of battles with crazy scullery maids, abusive employers, and unwieldy custards, she brings a humorous and pointed commentary about the delicate and ongoing war between the wealthy and their servants. Written in 1939, this true-life experience reveals a writer who wasted no opportunity to explore daily lives and dramas. Her keen eye for detail, youthful resilience, and sense of the absurd make One Pair of Hands a deliciously inside look at the households of the British upper-class.

There are some fabulous laugh out loud moments in this memoir. It is worth reading just for the social history and when she tries to act the part at the interview (it always involves a sensible and frumpy hat).

It is written in a really chatty style – you can imagine sitting down with Ms Dickens over tea and being regaled with these stories. The work was hard and long – she arrived early to prepare breakfast and needed to stay to tidy up after dinner parties (which she cooked and served). This was all in a time before dish washers!

It’s definitely worth reading this memoir – it’s light, entertaining and a quick read. And now I know what a Cook General is meant to do.

Here’s the blurb …

Jean Baggott is ‘the girl on the wall’ – a 1948 photograph taken of her when she was eleven – whose life was never going to be remarkable and the pinnacle of whose achievements would come from being a wife and a mother. Almost 60 years later, with her children gone, dealing with the loss of the love of her life, Jean began the education denied to her as a girl. Inspired by ceilings of Lincolnshire’s Burghley House and by the History degree she had begun, Jean began to stitch a tapestry which looked back at her life and the changing world around her. It took sixteen months to complete. The tapestry consists of over 70 intersecting circles, each telling some aspect of her life. Some represent extraordinary events such as the moon landings or world historical news stories like the Cuban Missile Crisis; some circles comment on famous people and places she remembers, others about the music she loves – Pink Floyd – and the games she played as a child, and growing up during the second world war with her brothers. Each chapter of “The Girl on the Wall” features a circle from the tapestry and Jean’s accompanying narrative, exploring the circle and the memories it evokes. It reveals an ordinary life in extraordinary detail. The result is a truly unique, touching portrait of a seemingly average British woman’s life. To stand back and look at the tapestry is to be struck by the richness of one human journey – from 1940 to the present day. The girl on the wall would be proud. The book includes a full-colour pull-out of Jean’s tapestry inside the back cover.

This is an amazing memoir if only for the sheer ordinariness of Jean’s life. I really enjoyed reading about her childhood during the war, the rationing (and the fact that it continued for a long time after the war), the terrible winter, that you were expected to be a wife and mother by 21. It is the every day details that make this a great memoir – bits of every day life that historians would consider irrelevant.

I did find the book somewhat repeatitious, but I think this was because each chapter was designed to stand alone (and be about a circle) and some things were told twice.

I’m amazed that the entire tapestry was finished in 16  months! One circle would probably take me that long – what an amazing achievement and what a great legacy to leave for her grand children.