The world's greatest festival
Forget Glastonbury! The World Marmalade Festival is nearly here. Plus a new podcast rec, and the *immensely* irritating way people have been urging the Princess of Wales to get well soon...
Discussion of Meghan’s marmalade ambitions last week reminded me that the world’s greatest festival is nearly upon us. Yes, yes, the line up for Glastonbury was announced a couple of weeks ago, and if you didn't manage to get tickets for it in the 14 seconds before it sold out, perhaps you’ve booked another festival. Latitude (the arty one) or Wilderness (the posh one), maybe, or Red Rooster (the soul one) or Secret Garden Party (the other posh one, which I went to once, woke up in the morning and found a human turd at the entrance of my tent. DON’T ask me how I knew it was human. You just do).
But can I tell you what’s better than all of these festivals, where you don’t have to wear denim cut-offs, and where there aren’t any tents but there is a plentiful supply of loo roll? The World Marmalade Festival in the Lake District.
I first went to this esteemed festival nine years ago. I can’t recall how I’d heard about it, but I pitched the idea of covering the two-day event at a Tatler features meeting and duly set off for the wilds of Cumbria. The house where the festival is set, Dalemain, is a large Georgian pile just outside Penrith, in an area which had been devastated by foot-and-mouth disease in 2001. Remember foot-and-mouth? It was the tragedy that struck the countryside and various farms back then, which meant six million animals had to be destroyed (including my family’s pet sheep). Cumbria was the worst affected area in Britain and so, Jane Hasell-McCosh, the matriarch of Dalemain, decided to do something cheering for the local area. ‘It felt like the forgotten county, so I wanted to do something to help,’ she told me.
As a big fan of marmalade who’d grown up watching her mother make the stuff, Jane decided to launch a marmalade festival/competition. And because she’s a determined sort who makes things happen, she persuaded Fortnum & Mason to come onboard as a sponsor and the local WI to judge. Around 60 jars were entered by enthusiastic locals in its first year.
Cut to a decade later, when I first went, and the competition had grown. Mushroomed. BOOMED. Over 2,000 jars were entered that year, from around the world, and there were now 14 categories, including Children’s Marmalade, Octogenarians and Upwards Marmalade, Merry Marmalade (ie marmalade with booze in it), and Campanologist’s Marmalade. Guess what what a campanologist is? Too slow, it’s a bell ringer. The festival even has a category for bell ringers’ marmalade. Isn’t that the most British thing you’ve ever heard?
I loved it. I chatted Eileen and Doreen, the two head WI judges, and met the daughter of Paddington author Michael Bond, Karen Jankel, who was there as an honoured guest. All the volunteers working at the festival were dressed in orange, and the house was decorated with orange streamers and balloons. I think the sheep in front of the house might have been dyed orange that year too, but let’s not bang on about that too much because people get upset about animals being dyed funny colours these days. Anyway, it was a riot.
Every single jar had been tasted and given a mark out of 20, and also a little card on which the judges had written their comments. Eileen and Doreen, together with a gaggle of helpers, tasted 130 jars a day in the lead-up to the festival using plastic teaspoons. ‘You don’t have try on a piece of toast or oat biscuit?’ I asked, whereupon Doreen looked at me as if I’d just suggested a dirty weekend in Brighton. No, she replied sharply, that would change the taste. ‘The biggest mistake people make,’ she added, ‘is not to cook the peel for long enough before they add the sugar.’ So there’s a little marmalade-making tip if you’re in the mood.
I walked around the ground floor rooms of the house, where all the entries were laid out on trestle tables, and read various comments on the little cards underneath. Quite scathing, some of them. ‘This is a jam!’ said some of the cards (marmalade has to have citrus fruit in it). Others were reprimanded for having let too many pips slide into their marmalade, or for using jars with ‘dirty lids’. Then, as now, the victor of the whole competition was given a contract with Fortnums, who make their marmalade and sell it on the shelves for a year.
I’ve been back a couple of times since, having encouraged my mother to enter the competition with her marmalade (you have to send your jars to Cumbria in advance, for Eileen and Doreen and their fellow WI judges to taste). In 2017, Mum was awarded two golds certificates for her marmalade which hang framed in her kitchen to this day. Again, we pottered around the rooms full of marmalade jars, tittering to ourselves at the comments on the little judging cards, and listened to a speech from the Japanese ambassador who had made it up north for the event (marmalade is big business in Japan). His Excellency Koji Tsuruoka said he was glad to see so many jars ‘made with love’.
The whole event is made with love, really, and put together with such care and effort. There are panels talks from marmalade experts and cookery demonstrations, and all the funds raised go to local hospices. I don’t know why a TV channel hasn’t got involved before - it would make a terrifically Richard Curtis-esque documentary. And it’s taking place in just over three weeks, April 20, if you fancy it (partly because National Marmalade Week is from 13-20 April, don’t you know). Lots of nice B&Bs in Penrith. Way nicer than a tent. Especially a tent with a you-know-what curled at its entrance. None of that at the World Marmalade Festival, thank you very much. HERE’s a link to its website.
Pic of the week (sort of)
You know when you’ve had a couple of drinks, and you take a photo you believe is arty and beautiful and seems to somehow say something important about the meaning of life? Last week, I went to a pub beside the river in London on a sunny evening. It was perhaps the first evening this year where it felt like we could sit outside, and people were drinking post-work pints and turning their faces to the sky like sunflowers. There was a jubilatory sense that maybe, just maybe, we were emerging from the bleakness of winter. I ordered a cider to kill time before Paul arrived, and read my Kindle for a while, before I decided the light was so pretty, and the scene so lovely, that it deserved a shot. So I took the above to capture the moment (I even, pathetically, arranged my Kindle and glass like that to try and…show something???) and, well, it’s exactly the kind of photo you take when you’re almost a pint of cider down on an empty stomach, isn’t it? It was a lovely moment though. Lighter evenings! And lighter still on the way because this post is really an excuse to cheer that THE CLOCKS GO FORWARD THIS SUNDAY. I know, I know, we lose an hour’s sleep but what does a trifling thing like sleep matter when we get longer evenings in return? ‘I’ve never met anyone as obsessed as you with the clocks going forward,’ said Paul, last week, when I reminded him for the 93rd time that it was about to happen. But my family are peculiarly affected by the light. One cousin used to send his mother, my great aunt, a bunch of flowers every year on December 21st, the winter solstice, to remind her that brighter days were now approaching. Isn’t that lovely? And they are approaching. They’re very nearly here, in fact.
Recommendation of the week
New podcast, A Muslim and A Jew Go There. David Baddiel’s had a pop at me for being posh on Twitter X before (zzzzzzz!) so I was a tiny bit reluctant to listen to his new project, which is a weekly discussion between him and Sayeeda Warsi, which they’ve launched recently for obvious reasons. But I put it on in the car the other night and found myself totally absorbed by their calm discussion of topics, which range from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, to whether the BBC coverage of it is biased, George Galloway, and Bradley Cooper’s nose in Maestro. Their chat about the speech that Jonathan Glazer gave when he accepted the Best International Film Oscar for The Zone Of Interest, which led on to a debate about the portrayal of Jews and Muslims in film, was particularly illuminating, I thought. Here you go, HERE’s a link to that one. Give it a whirl. Immensely refreshing to listen to people talk about this subject (or any subject, these days, qf) without descending into shouting. Also, if you listen to it, you can be one of those pretentious people who says to others ‘Haven’t you listened to the new podcast, A Muslim and A Jew Go There? Oh you must! It’s brilliant, actually, mmmm, really informative.’
Nonsense of the week
Urgh. The award this week to anyone who’s posted a picture of *themselves* with the Princess of Wales on social media following the news that she’s undergoing cancer treatment. Christ, I find this annoying. And weird. And incredibly narcissistic. Various celebrities I follow on Instagram did it - posting a picture of themselves with Kate - along with a message of support. I’m not criticising the support. It’s lovely and thoughtful and kind to send one’s best wishes at such a moment. Entirely understandable. But why shoehorn yourself into it? It’s such a self-absorbed thing to do - ‘Oh I do hope the poor princess gets well soon, but look at me with her! I’ve met her, you know!’ Much though I worship at the altar of Richard E Grant, he did it over the weekend. As did Dame Joan Collins. As did the designer of the dress that Kate wore when she announced her engagement all those years ago. The same happened when the news broke that the king had cancer a few weeks ago. Various people I follow seemed to think that was also an appropriate moment to scrabble through their photo folder and find a picture of themselves with him to post online. Why? If you want to lend support, why not just stick up a picture of the person in question saying ‘get well soon’ and stop trying to inject yourself into the situation. It’s not about you, right now, Dame Joan!
Similar happens on social media whenever a celebrity dies – especially in fashion circles. A famous designer, let’s say Karl Lagerfeld, sadly dies, and people immediately rush to upload a picture of themselves with him. It’s grim and vain to try and make such a moment about you in any way. Get a grip, everyone.
Craving marmalade now….
A World Marmalade Festival is where I belong…