Little English baking*

*With apologies to the BBC

I've been having a bit of a baking craze recently.  It started with a bread and butter pudding -not quite sure why (possibly because we made them at school when I was about 12 and so I thought I could do this again) and followed by Victoria Sandwich Cake, fairy cakes (although I overcooked those) and this week Nigella's Butterscotch Layer Cake.  T helped me make the caramel as that was a first but, boy, is that delicious - we've kept some to have with ice-cream.  It's pretty yummy, if incredibly bad for you.  Anyway whilst a long way from a domestic goddess it has given T options for Christmas presents other than the usual books (not that I would be complaining this Christmas).

Can you believe it's Week Ten of this semester at King's.  Next week we break up for Christmas.  I can't believe how quickly the semester has gone & we will get our first essays back next week (which I'm not looking forward to).  Last week we read Untouchable an amazing story about an untouchable boy during the Empire.  I wasn't sure I would enjoy this book but I found it very affecting - his life was just so hard and unfair.  Anand, the author, wrote and published it in in London and for an anti-Imperialist book it has some interesting quirks - the British characters are generally sympathetic whilst the Indians are not.  I wonder if that is because the Indians are more realistic because Anand doesn't see the British as real but just ghosts (as Bhaka is to the higher castes)?  Anyway, a very good book, well worth the read.

This week we are off to the Museum of London and reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, another book I wouldn't have picked up of my own accord.  It's about the immigrant experience in the meat-packing districts of early twentieth-century Chicago.

I'll finish this here as this should have been posted several weeks ago.  I'll try and update more regularly again!

Thanks for reading