Skye McAlpine on Hosting, Christmas & the Myth of Perfection at Home

0:00My favourite is to be with friends and I love a party and everything but after a while I do also need some quiet time. As I get older, I kind of realise that things like being happy, it doesn't just come. There are aspects of life that will prompt it or make it easier for you or trigger it for you. I've always had great Christmases when I was little. And I think consequently, I just love Christmas. And that's really important to me to kind of make it over the top and exciting and lots of things happening around it. People don't actually come to your home for the food. they come to be with you and I think they come for that feeling, that happy feeling of being in a welcoming, warm space and being taken care of.

0:48Hello and welcome to the Homing Podcast. Today's guest is the cookery writer Skye McAlpine. Skye kindly invited me into her beautiful home in London to record this episode. Despite it being September, she had a big Christmas tree up in her kitchen, which I must admit felt a bit eccentric at the time but it's because she's got a new book out called The Christmas Companion. Skye loves Christmas and that's because it's a time of connection. She likes nothing better than breaking bread with friends and family and her home is full of menus and mementos that remind her of important meals in her life.

1:26She tells me that she'd happily live full time in her kitchen in a sleeping bag on the floor. Speaking of sleep, she reveals herself to be a bit of an insomniac, and I get the impression there's a lot going on beyond the Instagram feed. Her father, Alistair, was a prominent politician and art collector. Their family home was bombed by the IRA, which prompted a move to Italy. As an adult, Guy still splits her time between Venice and London, but she says that she feels like an outsider in both places. She's had her fair share of adversity to deal with in recent years, including her father being involved in a media circus during the last days of his life and her daughter being seriously ill with cancer.

2:09But Sky reveals herself to be a genuinely positive and very warm-hearted person. And I must say, I really enjoy getting to know her better. I think there's a lot of wise words here and a really fascinating life story. Don't forget that if you're interested in having a look around Sky's house, there's a video tour available to subscribers which you'll find at patreon.com slash homing with matt right here's the podcast and i hope you enjoy it sky hi thanks so much for having us here so this is your life through the lens of home you were born in london i think but then you moved to venice quite early didn't you yes so i was born in london and then moved to venice when i was six years old okay so tell me about that I mean do you remember much from before age six or so I remember bits and I remember you know kind of when you look through old photo albums or photos whatever I think a lot of artificial memories or things that I remember because the story has been told but I do remember kind of life in London and I remember moving to Venice or I remember having a conversation with my mother where she said we were moving to Venice and I do remember this I remember asking her oh that's amazing so I won't have to go to school because in my mind Venice was somewhere where we went I guess on holiday and I didn't I somehow imagined slash hoped that there was no school in Venice and she's like no you'll go to school it's just it will be in Venice um so I remember that and what was that like then because you you landed in a different country I mean you had a bit obviously but did you speak Italian no I didn't speak any Italian and my My mother just sent me to the local Italian school, which was a convent right behind, if you know, Venice Santa Maria della Salute, which is that kind of incredible onion domed massive church.

3:58And right behind there, it's actually not a school anymore. I think it's just a convent. But at the time, it was an elementary convent school. So aged, I guess, six to 11. And I went there. And by the end of the academic year, I spoke Italian. I mean, children are amazing. They're just like sponges. they I think because you just learned English there's no difference really in a way for a child learning any language you just learn what's spoken around you and the nuns were so sweet and so patient with me um and I remember also one time um there was they kept on talking about gotcha and I wasn't sure what this word gotcha was and I clearly had absolutely no idea and madre adolfa who was this tiny tiny little nun um I mean minute about half as tall as as I am and you can see I'm not a very tall person and her grabbing me and nuns were very physical um compared to i think like how teachers are with children now in a nice way but kind of in quite a sort of abrupt way grabbing me sort of by the hand and lugging me through to through to the bathroom and running the water onto her finger because goccia means drop and putting and like pointing the kind because they didn't speak any english um pointing her sort of jabbing her finger at me with the drop on it and being like this this is a drop so I kind of remember I remember that.

5:15What was school like for you then did you did you fit in okay or? I did fit it I mean everyone was really I must say everyone was really welcoming and really sweet and I did fit in and I made friends and those were my friends and stayed my friends and it very quickly came to feel like home but definitely I find for example when people say oh do you feel more English or do you feel more Italian I don't really feel either I guess fully it's that strange thing I think when you're from one place and you grow up in another what identity you kind of take on I know that when I'm in England I feel really un-English and I feel quite Italian and when I'm in Italy I feel probably not quite Italian I feel more English it's a sort of odd sense of never fully fitting in so I think when I was younger definitely when I was sort of a teenager when I was that bit older I felt quite self-conscious about and kind of and now I sort of embrace this quite a liberating thing because you have more homes and you're not you don't feel like everybody else so interesting way I've been writing about this because I've got a book coming out in the spring also called homing and one of the sections is about this idea of belonging yes oh my god fascinating it's my favorite topic of conversation fascinating personally so I'd love to probe this a bit more but there's this kind of theory I have in the book that we form attachments to our primary caregiver clearly there's an attachment theory John Bowlby's attachment theory but we also have something called place attachment where we attach to the physical surroundings that we're brought up in as well and of course that can be very secure but it can also be a bit dysfunctional depending on what our early years were like so something quite seismic like moving to another country at the age of six actually that's very formative yeah right because your sense of home has a big shift so interesting to me because I was chatting with a friend recently about a version of this and I was saying Venice to me feels like home and even though I was born in London and I've now lived here in the UK probably I mean I know we partly live half the year in London but we've had a home you know my husband and I boys are at school here we are here but home for me still feels like Venice.

7:22And I think I could live here for 40, 50 years, probably. And home still feels like Venice. And I don't know if that's to do with like my mum's still there. So maybe if, you know, one day when my mum's not there, if that will slowly start to shift. But that's definitely, you know, when you get off a plane or you walk into a place and you have that sort of feeling that it's very hard to put a finger on, but is that kind of like home? I definitely have that there it's not that I'm not very happy here in London and it doesn't have a lot of homey elements but that sort of like you say quite almost childish instinctive feeling is definitely there so interesting so am I right in saying you've spent a half your time in London half there that's what I aim to do some years it's I get to do a bit more in Venice and some years less maybe a little bit less so like last year I think wasn't in Venice nearly as much as we normally are because I was traveling a bit more and I had various work commitments here in London but I aimed to do half and half backwards and forwards so what was your childhood home in Venice like so it was a house um it's where my mum still lives um she's still there and it's in a part of town called Castello which um is that you might know is near where the Biennale events kind of all happen now but um and is a little bit more kind of trendy and has a sort of slightly arty feel to it but when I was growing up was deemed deeply on unshick part of town and it was very very residential so when my parents moved there they bought these actually free small houses kind of not a palazzo just sort of free not architecturally very interesting by Venice standards houses and they kind of knocked them together to make a sort of bigger bigger a house and that's where I that's where I grew up okay and if we were to picture you roaming around in that house at a young age what kind of character are you oh quite bookish right um so not so much roaming more sitting more sitting a lot of sitting yeah um probably sitting reading a book or playing with dolls or drawing or doing something quite sort of sedentary which is why now because I've got two boys and they're very physical I just my mind is blown I'm like I don't understand can you not just sit down.

9:37But I was very bookish and I liked being around, I was an only child and I liked being around adults. I loved kind of, my parents would just sort of take me everywhere. So if they're going out for dinner, I would go to and I would sit there and listen. And then if I got tired, I'd just kind of go to sleep. And so I was always often with them and I didn't really like being with other, I mean, I did like other children. I had schools, I wasn't like a total Billy no mates but I really enjoyed the company of adults and I felt like I related to that much better because my heart slightly sank when my parents were like oh we've got some friends they're coming over with their children I was like oh yeah yeah I was going to ask you about that spending a lot of time with adults I mean obviously your own adult life is very much characterized by this theme of you know being a great sort of entertainer having people within your home environment creating memories in that way is that something that you remember a lot from growing up absolutely I mean both my parents loved hosting um and our home was always just an open house and always lots of people in there sometimes it might be friends or quite often because we were in Venice it would be friends of friends of friends of friends kind of thing who would you know would have got in touch because they were in town and um we'd have them over for lunch or for dinner or whatever so I kind of grew up with that and I guess I've just tried to replicate it in my own way in my own life because I have such positive associations with it so are you you in some way conjuring up that childhood then do you think aspects of it yeah uh not all of it um because obviously our lives the world now is a different world and we're in London a lot which is very different from kind of being in Venice.

11:26And I guess my own person and my husband is, you know, life is just moved on. But definitely aspects, the happier aspects of it, like Christmas, for example, always had great Christmases when I was little. And I think consequently, I just love Christmas. And that's a really big deal to me and really important to me to kind of make it over the top and exciting and lots of things happening around it. And I think I wouldn't do that if I, same for birthdays. I love birthdays, take birthdays really seriously. So my husband, for example, doesn't take birthdays very seriously. I mean, he knows to take mine seriously, but for his own birthday, he'd much rather kind of not really do anything, you know, maybe go for dinner or have lunch, all of the four of us together or whatever, but he doesn't want a big party.

12:11Whereas I love a big birthday party and I love lots of presents and I love the cards and I love the kind of like rigmarole around birthdays not just mine other people's too so you are you quite happy being the center of attention in that way I don't love being the center of attention but I love there being a lots of buzz around and I love being a part of that if that makes sense it does yeah it does so tell us about your father Alistair because um I mentioned this to you uh when we met previously but I used to edit his column in the world of interiors and it was illegible it was one of my favorite things because yeah it was called the diary of a collector and he used to fax it through on the old fax machine and it will be written in felt tip pen with not a single comma or full stock because he didn't really get punctuation he was dyslexic he was dyslexic and i remember he used to write he'd do everything longhand i suppose everyone kind of did longhand yeah those days but he had these massive yellow pads which probably the yellow wouldn't have come through no it didn't come through yellow on the fax but he would only write on these they were very thick paper and kind of the butter yellow of our of our kitchen and he would only write with a very specific kind of pen which were these black felt tip pens and then my mother one year because we're so into presence gave him um a very chic kind of pen holder so that the plasticky felt tip pen could be sort of look like I think it was silver or something pen and so he used that but then it was so heavy he gave himself tennis elbow oh really from writing with his chic pens he had to do with the chic pen holder oh wow so what are your memories of him growing up then many i mean he was kind of wild and wonderful and um he's a very interesting man i think he's not really like anyone else that i've ever well that i knew not like certainly not like anyone else that i knew growing up and not like anyone that i've met since he loved collecting um so um and he had a kind of very interesting attention span because he'd be completely obsessed with something and then um move on and kind of felt like he'd learned everything that he needed to learn about that thing whatever that thing was so the collecting was more about learning than about acquiring yeah i think so well he i mean he was one of the early collectors of Mark Rothko wasn't he?

14:38Yes he was but then he sold them all or gave them all away or something before Mark Rothko really became Mark Rothko unfortunately but he was he loved he loved art he loved he just loved beautiful things had a very aesthetic eye and it's quite funny because I remember growing up I never I wasn't allowed Barbies growing up because they were deemed my mother to kind of just thought they were boring and aesthetically displeasing and I kind of plastic toys etc are pretty limited and I remember thinking when I'm older and I have children I'm going to let them have all the plastic toys that they want and I mean I do actually because I'm outnumbered by my kids but they do have plastic toys but I my instinct 100 % is like no plastic toys you can only have pretty toys.

15:25Sounds familiar. I've now turned into my parents but your dad was a political figure as well wasn't he because he was treasurer of the conservative party for I think 10 years or something like that and he was a close friend of well both my parents were close friends of Margaret Thatcher's and did I read that you played hide and seek with Margaret Thatcher you did she was always really sweet to me but so this is one of those ones that I don't remember but I've been told but I took her to play hide and seek and then suddenly no one knew where she was and that was that caused because she was hiding poor thing um but caused an element of of drama so i'm surprised it wasn't a big hairdo sticking out from behind the curtain obviously hid very well yes exactly so i mean your dad would i imagine would have been pretty busy so was he you know i know you're an only child but did did you did he have a lot of time for that side of family life you know being a father being present no not in a traditional sense of the word I think it was about me fitting in with him as a child or us fitting in around him to some degree rather than him enjoying or making time for kind of traditional um father child kind of um behaviors if that makes sense it does yeah um do you regret that no i don't regret it because everyone gives what they have to give and what i learned from him all his wild and wonderful things have been kind of amazing and in their own way and my mother is the you know world's best mother and always been incredibly kind of loving so i've never felt like not loved and she you know gave up working roundabout when we moved to Venice or working full-time roundabout when we moved to Venice and was very present parent and I think now that I'm older and I'm a parent myself I really see how much she kind of put to one side to prioritize that so I think my father gave me what he had to give and I'm very grateful for it if that makes sense Yeah, it does.

17:37Yeah. But being an only child, I always think this, that you're a triangle, right? You're a three. Yeah. So there's always an odd one out in a way, isn't there? I mean, I've noted in some relationships that sometimes the daughter or the son is slightly in the way of that relationship. Other times the offspring becomes very attached to one or the other of the parents because they couple up with them in a funny sense. that's so interesting I feel like I never felt in the way I mostly just sort of tagged along but I quite enjoyed tagging along yeah um so I think maybe personality wise it just kind of worked quite well like I like being part of the dinner you know the big dinner or the big dinner party whatever and then sitting quietly and just listening to everyone else talk that suited me quite well um so I think I was lucky in that way yeah I think maybe if my personality had been kind kind of more that I wanted to sort of be more part of the conversation, then maybe that would have been more challenging.

18:41I don't know. Yeah. So you also had a family home in Hampshire, didn't you? At West Green. Yes. When I was very little. So when I was, or kind of before, my parents had it before I was born and then when I was born until we moved to Italy. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us about that because that was bombed, wasn't it, by the IRA? It was just before we moved to Venice. But it was a beautiful National Trust house. I've been there because you can visit. You can go. Absolutely. It's open to the public. Yeah. And an amazing garden. Amazing garden. I mean, I haven't been back since, you know, I was five or six.

19:20But it's a beautiful house and the garden's really beautiful as well. So it was kind of a different chapter in my life. So beyond your memory a little bit, but I mean. A little bit. I mean, I think I remember we did Christmas there on quite a big scale. My parents would always have a big Christmas Eve party and Father Christmas would always come. But he'd sort of stand in the distance so that he, well, he was, of course, the real Father Christmas. But, you know, he didn't like to sort of show too much of himself, less one question his credentials. um and I remember that and I remember my mother cooking lots in that kitchen it had kind of like a proper country house kitchen and I think because it's so close to London Hampshire my parents would always have massive Sunday lunches um and people would just come down for lunch and kind of so I have the memories of kind of lovely big long lunches as well but that's pretty hardcore isn't it like your your your home being blown up in that way or at least part of it I mean did that is there a question around safety within the home connected to that did you feel unsafe in some way so in retrospect I mean I didn't feel and I kind of didn't feel too unsafe I think for my mother in retrospect now that I'm kind of a grown-up and have my own children I appreciate how challenging it must have been for her.

20:45I mean, now I also recognize how resilient children are because I remember, I think I did find it upsetting to some degree. And I probably was a slightly more nervous child than I might have been if that hadn't happened. And it kind of, I think, impacted, you know, we prompted our move to Venice to some degree. Definitely meant that I think we felt kind kind of safer maybe in Venice. And we had things that for years when we'd travel, we'd always fly under a different name and sort of odd bits and bobs like that. But I think my mother really was very keen that I not be stressed by it. You insulated from it a bit.

21:28And insulated me from it very successfully. Well, that's amazing, isn't it? And I can see that Venice would be the place to do that because it feels like that anyway. It does. It's a really... It feels insulated. It feels, it's literally physically insulated. And it's its own time capsule. It's in many ways. And particularly then, this is 30 plus years ago, 35 years ago or something. And Venice then was kind of even more of a sort of bubble than it is now. um so I think that that was pretty magical to be able to kind of get away from all of that and kind of move there and so how old were you when your parents separated I was 16 what was that like not super fun but then probably anyone whose parents separated would say the same um it wasn't super fun but it was what it was yeah do you look back on that with regret and also does it impact the way that your relationship is with your husband because I always think that like we only have one blueprint to work to don't we I think it does I think it may help me I mean I first met my husband we met in freshers week at university and very quickly I think you know I kind of knew he was the one um how did you know I just knew and I know people say that and it's really annoying and you're kind of like no but you've got to have more I just it was I think it's a bit like that home feeling it felt weirdly like being home even though we'd kind of only met maybe a week or two before um but his parents his parents are separated also um and I don't know if That's, and I think we both kind of love our, you know, grateful for our set up.

23:28I mean, everyone, no one who gets married, gets married planning on separating. So I don't know, but I think we just had an, like, we just found home in each other very quickly. That's a really nice way to put it. Yeah. This is quite a probing question, but do you feel at home within yourself? Yes, I do. I think I do feel, I feel very at home in myself. Like I do enjoy my own, I love being, I mean, my favorite is to be with friends. and I love a party and everything. But weirdly, I've never done one of those personality tests, you know, where you can see what kind of... But I sort of think if I did, I'd come up as an introvert because I'm naturally quite shy and I do love being around people.

24:07But I'm such an only child that after a while, I do also need, I kind of need a bit of a nap or some quiet time. I struggle to be around people all the time. I really enjoy my time to myself as well. Um, so I am happy. I think I, you know, I do enjoy my own company. I am happy in myself. I think that's something I need to work on. Like we all need to work on. As I get older, I kind of realize that things like being happy, it doesn't just come. There are aspects of life that will prompt it or make it easier for you or trigger it for you. But we do, we all have to work at, you know, when something wonderful falls into your lap, you also have to have the ability to kind of recognize that it's a wonderful thing.

24:49and then the ability to kind of, you know, accept that you're lucky that this wonderful thing has happened and that's okay. You know, like, I think being happy is being lucky and having the circumstances to be happy, but it's also putting a conscious effort into being happy as well, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think one of the things I've taken away from meeting you again today is that you're very good at gratitude, I think. I mean, just going around and, you know, you've collected mementos of occasions that you've really enjoyed and that clearly meant a lot to you. Actually, that act is about gratitude.

25:27And that's really important. I think I'm really bad at that, you see. I'm very bad at marking something and saying that went well or I enjoyed that. And that's kind of what you're saying because that goes into this feeling of happiness, doesn't it? For me, it definitely does. I mean, what I'm working on is when things go well in terms of work goals or personal achievements, I don't know if we all do this, but I definitely do have a real tendency to kind of move the goalposts. So, you know, I remember when I started out writing my blog years ago, all I wanted to do was publish a cookbook. I mean, that for me was the absolute dream come true.

26:09And if I could just do that, I would kind of die contented and happy. Now I'm on book four, which is incredible. And I'm so grateful. But it's very easy to get caught up in kind of, oh, well, maybe the book is perceived as a commercial success or not a commercial success, or maybe it's well received. Maybe no one reads it. All these things. And it's not that they don't matter. Of course they do. But taking that time to recognize that that thing that you once wanted has happened and you have managed to achieve it and letting yourself enjoy that moment before you move on to worrying about the next thing or the next challenge or upping the stakes a bit.

26:43It doesn't come naturally to me, but I think it's a helpful tool in terms of getting through life. Yeah, definitely. I really admire that. You touched on it there, but you studied classics at Oxford, right? Yeah. How did you end up getting into food then? What's that? Such a random story. So I studied classics at Oxford, which in itself was slightly random because neither of my parents went to university or had much interest in kind of, or stood much store by university kind of education. It was never sort of, but I was quite bookish, like I said, and always did quite well at school, mostly because I'm a terrible goody two-shoes.

27:22So if the teacher said to like kind of read pages, you know, 10 to 75, I would read pages 10 to 75 and I'd do it well. So I did quite well at school. and I decided as my great act of rebellion that I was in fact going to go to university and then I watched I mean this is the madness of it I watched that incredible ITV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited and thought that just seemed fabulous and so then decided that I should go to Oxford and because I wasn't at school in England and I just sort of didn't realize it was actually quite hard to get into Oxford or whatever so I thought I'm going to go to Oxford and if I don't go to Oxford.

28:00If that really doesn't work out, I'll just go to university in Venice or Padova or somewhere local. So I just applied to Oxford and then by some sort of bizarre miracle, I kind of got in. And then I arrived and I was massively underqualified to kind of cope. I'd never written an essay in English before. Well, I hadn't done A-levels. Instead, I'd done the maturita, which is sort of 13 subjects. So my levels of Latin and Greek were very poor by comparison to my really impressive peers. So I kind of muddled my way through that, not excelling, but surviving. And I loved it. I mean, it was a huge challenge.

28:41I love my time there. I met my husband. It was magic. It wasn't, you know, I didn't carry a teddy bear around and I didn't actually have a very Brideshead revisited experience, but I made wonderful friends and I loved, I think it was a nice transition for me from Venice because it's such a beautiful town and it feels quite like Venice in a way and I am sensitive to my surroundings I do enjoy being in a or everyone enjoys being in a beautiful place but I know that about myself so I did kind of I was very grateful for that and I loved that but I was sort of really just surviving and then in my last year and I thought I was going to be a lawyer which was my second act of rebellion against my parents um who kind of thought this sounds like a terrible idea.

29:24I mean, they were, for me, it actually probably was right. It would have been a terrible idea for me with my personality, but like loathe confrontations, it would have been a terrible lawyer. But I'd convinced myself that's what I was going to do. And then in my last year at university, I did a paper. One of the final exam modules was that I chose, was this paper that was looking at sort of representations of classical themes in English literature. And I just, that just blew it. It made the whole of my degree kind of suddenly make sense, this sort of connecting the ancient world with the world that we live in now in a more direct way.

30:01And I absolutely loved it and became obsessed. And so then I was still going to be a lawyer and I signed up to do an MA at UCL part-time in the evenings, continuing. It was an MA in what they call reception theory, which is much as it says, it's looking at the, basically the influence of the aspects of the classical world on the Western, on Western civilization. And then, so that was all great. And then just after finals, my husband was like, you don't want to be a lawyer. Like, don't do that. Just do the MA, enjoy doing the MA and don't, you know, don't, don't be a lawyer just to spite your poor parents.

30:35So I was like, okay, great. So I did my MA and then the MA took me to my PhD and I loved it. But all the while I was cooking and hosting and loving that. And if I'd known what the graduate path, this sounds so silly, what the graduate path to being a cookery writer was, and if I'd believed that I could be on it when I was 21 or 22, I 100 % would have just done that. But I somehow got caught up in this thing when you leave university that you think you can only really do, and maybe this was much more of a thing back in the days before the internet and social media and everything, but where you can only really do what the sort of careers department tell you are the options.

31:17And so I kind of, I wouldn't say I wasted time because actually I loved that time and it was so, I wouldn't trade it, but it took me longer to find my path. But anyway, whilst I was then doing my PhD, I started writing a blog about food. I did this food writing course at Proleafs. And that was really fun because they had different speakers come, you know, like a food stylist and a restaurant critic and a recipe writer and recipe developer and talk about their life experiences and how they got to do what they were doing, etc. And what I took away from that, was a big lesson for me, was that they hadn't all kind of gone to culinary school or had restaurants or being chefs and therefore were deeply qualified to write cookbooks.

32:00They kind of lived their lives and found their way meandering to doing what they loved. And so that sort of slightly inspired me to try and to be a little bit brave about it and to put myself out there. So then I started writing a blog and then eventually I got that commissioned into being my first book, which was roundabout when I finished my PhD. And so I was quite lucky that by the time I completed my PhD, I kind of had something tangible to hook onto that felt like it could maybe qualify as a job. And so I moved into food basically. So taking up the theme of food now then your home your current home and moving on to this place where we are recording this now I mean your kitchen is absolutely the heart of your your working life isn't it?

32:46Yeah it's the heart of everything. It's like your identity. It's basically I mean I could have a little kind of sleeping bag in there and then just section off that bit of the house and basically be fine. Tell me about that I mean why is that space so central to your everything? I think because I feel happiest there, probably. That's where I feel most kind of comfortable. Like we've said, like having people over, having people around, that makes me very happy. That feeling of bringing a little bit of joy or warmth into other people, people that I care about's lives, feels like a great privilege and gives you a bit of a high.

33:27So I enjoy that. And then maybe because of that, maybe because of the ghosts of that, it's also where if I'm me and my laptop writing with my cup of tea, that's where I'll gravitate to. It's kind of where the boys will do their homework. You know, it's where they build their Lego, which drives me mad because I'm like, Lego, upstairs, it's plastic. But I try and rein that back in because, you know, plastic toys and everything, important part of growing up. and so it's you know when my husband will cook supper or if we're just having supper just us or barbecue or whatever on the patio which sort of attached attached to the kitchen it's just it's where I feel kind of happiest and then somehow over time I think because what I do doesn't I guess have a kind of graduate career path is a bit amorphous it's sort of grown from there I think it's all grown from my kitchen even if it hasn't grown from this physical kitchen because we only moved in here about six years ago and I've been writing about food now for I guess close to 10 years um but this the platonic ideal of the kitchen as it were that is what kind of in a way downstairs is a reflection of is where it all where it all comes from if that kind of makes sense Yeah, yeah, yeah.

34:46It's obviously about connection, isn't it? I love connection. But I love also when I say I love parties, I love an excuse to dress up. I love a party, but I don't really love cocktail parties, for example, unless it's like my own cocktail party. And that's just I've curated them. They're all my favorite people and I get to see everyone together. I don't love going into a big room full of people. But I do love going to, you know, a friend's house for a kitchen supper and sitting around the table with six people who I may or may not know, but like a people that they think I'm going to have a you know, we're all going to connect and sitting down and having a proper conversation.

35:17But I love chatting. I mean, this is the dream. This is like such a treat. It's a rolling podcast. Yeah, exactly. You know, I love chatting about things and discussing them. You know, my favourite was my poor husband, Matt, but I love like going for a walk, whether it's around the park or in Venice, like a long walk, and then just like chatting about stuff. It's really fun. And then chatting over food, people I feel like have better conversations often over food as you're settled. If you're enjoying this conversation with Skye, you might be interested to watch our video tour of her house. She talks me through her personal collections of objects, including gifts from her family.

35:56And we have a laugh about the time she rustled up a Gwyneth Paltrow turmeric drink and it exploded all over her kitchen. Head to patreon.com slash homing with Matt to take a look. So is there a particular occasion you've had here that sticks out in your memory as being particularly successful or memorable and why is that? It's like choosing a favourite child. I mean, I've had a lot of birthdays here. I have a kind of format for my birthday, which is like clear all the furniture out of the kitchen, do one long table and get as many friends around as I can. We do actually, but I really love doing, that's become a sort of tradition for our youngest son's birthday is in June um and um so we always do a sort of he usually now has a birthday party which is with his school friends which will be like at a play center or kind of laser tag or something that he really wants and then we do afternoon tea here for his godparents and his grandparents will come and then friends with children the same age and they're all friends come and I do it's like a proper old-fashioned deeply unfashionable tea party and do the table and we always have fun and we go all out with the theme and he loves choosing the theme and I do a mad cake and that's always because it's summer and it's a beautiful day and it's lots of people and it's across the generations that always feels like a very special moment in the year and I'm sort of dreading him I think he's going to be 18 and I'm still going to be forcing him to have the tea party of course and then and then what what would be an example of one that wasn't so successful i mean that's a bit hard to answer but why why would it why would it not work if not necessarily for you but for anyone i think if you get stressed about it it's less fun yeah uh you're a little bit of stress if you're organizing a big thing and you've got a lot on it's probably kind of normal what i find is if i sometimes i'm rushing around that half hour before everyone arrives kind of madly thinking like to try to tidy and yeah um and finish off cooking and trying to sort things out and think, God, why am I doing this?

37:59And then from the moment people arrive, you're like, oh, this is why it's so fun. It was worth it. I think basically hosting is all about your attitude to it. And it's just about remembering that it's fun. And I think it's a bit like being happy to some degree. It's a mindset. And of course, there are things that can go horribly wrong. I didn't know if your friends had said they were coming and then they just didn't come. That would be a bit sad. That would be sad. I don't know. But I think a lot of the things that people normally think of as qualifying as a failure is totally mis - You know, like burning the pudding or burning the roast or whatever.

38:35There's nothing that there's not, you know, just ordering pizza or make a salad or do a quick pasta or just make a joke. Like I think it's a big misconception. This is deeply ironic coming from someone who writes cookbooks. But people don't actually come to your home for the food or really actually for the drink. they come to be with you and I think they come for that feeling that happy feeling of of being in a welcoming warm space and being taken care of um for a little bit so I think it's about remembering not to stress too much about fussing it's a bit like you know when parents being really annoying and they're fussing over you and of course it comes from a place place of love I noticed it with my own boys I think it's an expression of love to kind of fuss and put the jacket on and all this kind of stuff but for them it's just a little bit annoying I think it's the same with guests like if you're you invite people over because you want them to you want in some way to express a little bit of warmth and love to them and make them feel taken care of but then when they get here you're kind of stressing them out by being stressed that this isn't ready or that's not you know like it's not perfect it's not a very nice experience for them really all they just want to come is come and it's about feeling really more than things or anything that you you can do so how how do you implement that then in terms of making sure that you're present with your guests rather than buzzing around them?

39:49So the kitchen that's also a dining room really helps with that. And then I basically, I mean, friends who come for supper or Sunday lunch here regularly will know that, ironically for someone who loves food and is the world's greediest person and writes cookbooks, I'm not actually particularly imaginative with my menus. Like I probably have a rotor of favourites that I make time and time again. And that's in large part because they're recipes that I know well, I'm confident with, I can do in my sleep. But also they're things that you just pop in the, you know, but don't, you pop in the oven and you can forget about.

40:19I think, especially in my second book, which is A Table for Friends, what I was really trying to do with that, that I think is quite helpful and I implement, is just outlining the techniques or the tricks kind of for building a menu that is super user-friendly and will allow you to be pretty hands-off and enjoy your time with your friends and i think that's kind of key and really helps i also think just shedding the guilt um so if you don't feel like cooking and you do live in london or whatever just order deliveroo and just put it on nice plates like don't but don't feel guilty about it i'm actually kind of fabulous to have chinese or whatever like um you don't don't don't whatever you what is it julia child who said never apologize and i think that is true and we all have a tendency to apologize but we we shouldn't just just let it let it be put it out there for for what it is so another one of your books is called a table full of love is that right yes so do you see that as an act of love of sorts yes so that was my last books my third book the last one um before my next book comes out and that was that i came up with the idea for i guess during covid or just after covid um and it for me in a way it's almost like a little bit of a manifesto because i was really thinking about why do we do this?