Snapshot: Waiting for Father Christmas in Iran
This is a rather formal picture for a very happy occasion – this was the Christmas party at the Tehran Club, a club for British expats based in a grand old house set in large grounds in central Tehran. My mother Yolande (Lolo) and my grandmother Clara are in their fashionable best, in home-sewn outfits created by my grandmother, who was an amazing seamstress.
Calikmama (my pet name for my grandmother) is in her very on-trend Jackie Kennedy two-piece and, at 52, is only a year older than I am now. In the photo, I am aged around three. Until my fifth birthday, I was stuck like glue to my mother’s skirts, and would not go to anyone, not even long-suffering Calikmama, who subsequently became my greatest ally and best friend.
My dad, Roy Sowerby, who was into amateur theatricals, was always Father Christmas at these parties. His entrance was spectacular. Totally in character, his “ho ho hos” and handbell rang out while he rode a donkey through the gardens to the house, the children crowding around the big picture window, trembling with anticipation.
Until I left Iran with my family at the age of 16, I had led a sheltered life among the Armenian and expat British communities. Despite being the product of a mixed marriage, one of the very first of the Iranian/Armenian community between an aspiring middle-class, educated Armenian girl and a working-class, ex-pro English footballer, I felt well settled and loved by the family I had been born into and relatively unaffected by world politics.
The Armenians, a Christian community, were well respected by their Muslim hosts, having been part of the fabric of the country for more than 400 years. It was something of a shock, therefore, to discover that our world was not as stable as we thought, with the coming of the Ayatollah Khomeini and subsequent Islamic revolution.
After having lived in the vibrant capital city of Tehran for 16 years, I found myself fleeing the impending political tumult and going westward, to England and an estate in the northern suburbs of Leeds, eventually becoming a painter. Our family is now scattered across the globe and this experience of displacement had a profound effect on every aspect of my life and informed every mark and output during my professional career as an artist.
Karen Babayan
Playlist: Singing for the sun on our seaside holidays
Don’t Stay Away Too Long by Peters and Lee
“Jet plane flying high above me …
Don’t stay away too long …”
This song always takes me back to 1974 and our annual family summer holiday, much of which was spent on Putsborough beach in north Devon. We left our caravan at Little Roadway Farm campsite, high on the hill above Woolacombe Bay, and we went back every summer for the next six years, until 1980.
In those days, holidays meant the great British seaside, and it was always an ideal time to make new friends. My friends this time were the Georges from Reading. Trudy was the youngest, at six, and then came her two elder brothers, Glen and Bruce. Bruce was 10, the same age as me. Their family had a massive caravan compared with ours – theirs was a six-berth while ours was a four-berth. And they had an awning.
The Georges were great because they would fish from the edge of the cliffs at Putsborough right out to sea, while the rest of us pottered about in rock pools.
It has always been a joke in our family – and a truth – that everywhere my dad goes, so does the rain. And our holidays at Woolacombe were no exception. We would say that if we could see the island of Lundy, 12 miles off the Devon coast, then it was going to rain. And if we couldn’t see it, it was already raining. So the Peters and Lee hit of April 1974 (this was August) was quite apt when we had any sunshine, and we changed the words:
“Sunshine climbing high above me … Don’t stay away too long …”
Every time I hear it I sing those words inside my head, and I can see 10-year-old Bruce perched atop a rocky pinnacle, his brother and sister scrambling up the sides.
Diane Parkin
We love to eat: Great Aunt Kitty’s macaroons
Ingredients
125g ground almonds
200g icing sugar
3 medium-sized egg whites
2 tbsp caster sugar
Mix the ground almonds and icing sugar together. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites to stiff peak stage. Add the caster sugar and whisk until stiff and glossy. Fold in the almond and icing sugar mixture.
Cover an oven tray with baking parchment. Pipe the mixture in 5cm circles on to the parchment. Pop a whole blanched almond in the centre of each macaroon, then gently bang the tray on the work surface a couple of times to remove any air bubbles.
Leave for 30-45 minutes to allow the macaroons to form a skin. They are ready to cook when they are no longer sticky to the touch. Bake in an oven at 160C/gas mark 3 for 10-15 minutes. Remove from the oven, leave to rest for five minutes and then carefully peel off the baking parchment.
Great Aunt Kitty was a great cook. She lived in a converted flat in a grand Victorian house in Toxteth, Liverpool. When my grandparents visited her, they would often take me too. The highlight of our visit would be Kitty’s macaroons.
After the trip through the Mersey tunnel, I’d ring the bell at the impressive front door that bore Kitty Oliver’s name next to it and we would climb the ostentatious staircase that promised a grandeur that was never realised once we had ascended it.
Kitty’s flat was crammed full of stuff. It was little more than a bedsit, although it did have a separate bedroom. The kitchen was built in a cupboard and the bathroom was incredibly basic. What concerned me then, though, was the table in the huge bay window of the living room. For on this lay afternoon tea and the centrepiece – a plate of macaroons.
I would salivate at the thought of popping one of Kitty’s macaroons into my mouth. I was nine years old, a child of the 1960s, and nothing seemed as glamorous or unusual to me at that time as macaroons. They were feather-light, almond-flavoured, crunchy and chewy at the same time, melting slowly in your mouth and all cooked on edible rice paper.
I would tear tiny pieces of rice paper from their base and place them on my tongue, amazed that they would dissolve in such sweetness.
Nowadays, baking parchment has replaced the rice paper and the recent macaroon revival means that you can now colour them and sandwich them together in many ways, but Kitty’s original macaroons will always have a special place in my memory.
Pauline Davis
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