Scorchio!

It was sunny and warm by 8.30 this morning and on the last day of the holiday, Samson put in an appearance for a tummy rub.

It was a shame to make a new friend just as we were leaving the cottage and there followed a brief argument as to whether to spend a beautiful day in one of Britain's most beautiful places, or whether we should drive immediately back to Newcastle in case someone broke into the car in Coniston village, that infamous den of thieves, and stole the Andrex and shampoo we were taking home. Luckily sense and my threat to sulk ALL DAY prevailed and we did a five mile walk to 'popular local beauty spot' Tarn Hows, the prettiest walk we've done all week. 

As well as some stunning scenery, we saw a brown striped sheep, a teeny tiny frog (I went all city, "ew it's on my iPhone case"), a tempting prospect at Tom Gill waterfall and, blessed relief on a hot sunny day, an ice cream van. 

I don't often go for strawberry ice cream, but as this was made with real fruit, I threw caution to the wind. There's just no stopping me sometimes. I might not be the only one of my schoolfriends for whom strawberry ice cream has the bitter tang of regret after Chloe, an excellent cook, once made us some fantastic strawberry ice cream at her house, then instead of giving us a second portion, made us go for a walk by the river. Twenty years on, this is still hotly lamented whenever we get together. 

For lunch I had another cream tea ("hey, I'm still on holiday") and another ice cream (in your face, Chloe). This time it was Lakeland's Thunder and Lightning, vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and little melty bits of cinder toffee. 

And that was that. All my attempts at prolonging the fun on the way home - can we stop at Grasmere for gingerbread? can we stop at Castlerigg to look at some stones? - were overridden and my mumbled protest 'Han would let me' held no sway. 

Still, I love coming home. Round about Carlisle I start singing Paul Simon's Mother and Child Reunion as I anticipate seeing these furry little faces again. They might even have brought me a tasty treat...

High time for high tea

Today we went for a walk at Ulverston, a place name I have been singing all week to Glen Campbell's "Galveston". I have been hankering after a high tea and investigated options at tip top hotels ranging in price from £35 to £49. I was aware, however, that Fitz's lack of appreciation would not justify the price, as he has a woeful understanding of cake. It would be like someone giving me a rare and expensive champagne to taste, me saying "yeah, that's quite nice", and that someone wanting to punch me in the face.

Sue, our lovely neighbour at Coat Yeat Cottages who has taught us this week about all sorts from adders, swallows and natterjack toads to the best place to spot glow-worms, had recommended Gillam's in Ulverston, a vegetarian tearoom. For £6.95, they serve a lovely cream tea of cucumber sandwiches, homemade scone with jam and cream, a slice of carrot cake and a slice of coffee cake. We sat in Gillam's pretty garden, which boasts a view of a warm kitty and a white bell-tower that rings every quarter hour.

I quickly calculated that by choosing Gillam's for my cream tea, I had saved upwards of £28 in a week when I had spent nothing at all on what Fitz calls "shit you don't need", straining like a  dog on a leash at shop windows full of pale blue teapots and  cat ornaments. But I play by Han's holiday rule of spending at least £20 on crap and that putative twenty pound note was burning a hole in my pocket. Luckily, the tearoom also sold ladytreats and I went into speed shopping mode (I shop so quickly that even my dad, who loathes shopping, said I was a pleasure to accompany on a weekly supermarket trip. Something to do with never checking best before dates). As well as liquorice wheels, Kendal mint cake and fudge to thank my parents for feeding my cats, I got this jug decorated with apples

and a bar of violet infused milk chocolate, which is delicious.

I felt we'd earned our high tea as we'd done a five mile walk along Ulverston's canal which once upon a time brought in goods from exotic places and is now a reed-lined waterway that passes, er, a GlaxoSmithKline chemical factory. So picturesque. It's got a swan and everything.

I have to admit that we started the walk with a visit to the best chip shop in Ulverston for a cone. Fitz was so hungry that he raced through his and, as I was halfway through mine, started asking "do you want the rest of yours?" I did, but I got the hint. Greater love hath no woman than to part with her chips. Especially if she's a Geordie.

Cake over Coniston

It's still warm and sunny in the Lakes so I have felt compelled to do some country walks and spent £2.25 on "Five Easy Walks Around Coniston". My rules on country walking are simple:

1) Invite a man along so he can carry the rucksack (Fitz spotted this ruse immediately)

2) Always kiss at a kissing gate. If you don't know the other person very well, a formal handshake is acceptable

3) There MUST be a tea room during or at the end of the walk. Or both.

Yesterday's five mile walk on the western shores of Lake Coniston ended happily enough with a maple and walnut Lakeland ice cream, a lovely ice cream only available in the North West. Every time my dad visits Morecambe, he buys me a two litre tub and drives home as directly as possible. 

Today's walk was a whopping seven miles on the eastern shores of the Lake, so a proper tea room was in order. We stopped at Brantwood for tea and cake; I had coffee cake and Fitz, who only two days ago was pooh-poohing cake yet is now in love with chocolate tiffin, had chocolate tiffin.

Brantwood was the home of John Ruskin and is now a museum, but Fitz refused to look around on the grounds that it would be boring. So all I know about John Ruskin is what I learned this week from Caitlin Moran's chapter on tidying the lady garden in her book "How to be a Woman", which I am thoroughly enjoying: "In the 21st century, modern boys watching hardcore pornography are now as panicked by pubic hair as Victorian art critic John Ruskin apparently was, in 1848, when he was so alarmed at the sight of his new wife's pubic hair that he refused to ever consummate the marriage". I bet they don't mention that in his Lakeside museum.

The Lakes are always beautiful but the sunshine has made them even more so. It's also allowed me to rock the sundress & walking boots look, which all the cool kids will soon be copying. 

There were a couple of mysteries on the walk, like this sleeping cat ornament in the middle of a wood. I think it was a Roman-style tombstone for a pet who'd gone to the big catbasket in the sky, but it had been too painful to inscribe hic situs est Mr Fluffy.

And why had someone neatly carved this message onto an abandoned piece of wood?

More pressingly, work where? And what kind of cake is it? I will never know.

In the evening we had another treat available only in the North West - a trip to Booth's supermarket. I love nebbing around supermarkets, especially abroad, to look at all the lovely food. I came back to Tethera cottage with a box of violet creams for the old lady hiding inside me, and a bar of Galaxy Bubbles, which is like Aero but much nicer.

My Aunt Kate (Kate being one of the few permitted names in our family) emailed me today to ask if I knew what Tethera meant. I didn't, even though the other two cottages here are called Yan and Tyan which together with a rudimentary knowledge of philology, should have given me a clue. Yan, tyan and tethera are of course 'one, two and three' in the dialect used by shepherds across the UK for counting. I looked this up on Wikipedia and was DELIGHTED to find the word for 15 in this Brythonic Celtic language is bumfit. Bumfit. I am going to use it more often in conversation.

Banana loaf

After the excitement of a family wedding, we have come to Coal Yeat Cottages near Coniston in the Lake District, set in 25 acres of stunning scenery (it's on the far left of this photo).

It can be hit and miss booking a self catering cottage online - you might end up next to a busy road that has been carefully omitted from a photo, or have to endure the kind of decor that even your granny would disdain. Tethera cottage is definitely a hit - it's beautifully decorated and so tranquil that all I can hear is nesting swallows, clucking chickens and Fitz blethering on. The cottage is also well equipped (dishwasher, dvd, Sky TV and even digital radio so I can listen to my beloved 6music) though amazingly the weather has been so warm and sunny that there is little call for indoor entertainment. Pop go my plans for another trip to the Lakeland Pencil Museum.

There was a warm welcome at Tethera cottage - not only were we provided with basics like tea, coffee, milk, bread and butter, there was the unexpected gift of homemade banana loaf. I was thrilled.

So far we have made friends with Pumpkin, the neighbour's dog, who is extremely good at chasing sticks and was not caught out for a second by Fitz's trick throws.

Yesterday we sunbathed on the shore of Lake Coniston across from the island that inspired Swallows and Amazons. Sadly I forgot to take my camera, so there is no photo of the clear  waters or of Fitz's bright blue swimming shorts. Having worked up an appetite by lying about, we went into Coniston for a sausage sandwich in a cafe. It was there that I had this conversation with Fitz:

- "Did you see at the counter what kind of cakes there are?" (I was pretty sure I'd spied some chocolate tiffin).

- "No".

- "For you, Fitz, cake is just something that other people eat, isn't it?"

- "Yes. They just sit there taking up space".

Heartbreaking. Still, it leaves more homemade banana loaf for me.

Wedding cake

My family has been in a state of high excitement as we've celebrated the first family wedding in ten years. My sister Lucy became Mrs Mark Wright at the weekend and we are all delighted.

I set about making the cake several weeks ago, baking a 12 inch fruit cake that would have time to mature. I forgot to make a wish when I mixed it, unless you count "I hope I get a slice". I was more careful with the next two tiers - chocolate orange, then lemon - and took requests. Lucy suggested a win on the lottery, my mum hoped for a baby girl, and I plumped for health, happiness, holidays and a kitten.

Lucy had asked for a plain white iced cake with pink ribbon and wedding toppers of her, Mark and baby Alex. This sounds simple but plain is hard to do - there are no flowers or decoration to patch up uneven covering. 

I made the wedding toppers referring to the notes I'd made at Cakes4Fun when Pen taught us modelling, chuckling at the instruction "make groom's trousers HIGH for support. Think Simon Cowell". I attached Alex to Mark's lap by sliding a piece of spaghetti into his stomach, completing hiding the waistcoat I'd carefully embossed and shimmered. The naked lump behind him is the bride's torso waiting for its dress. When I attached the toppers to the cake on the wedding day and turned the bride upside down to apply glue, she had a shamefully bare flesh-coloured bottom. I felt that I should have made some bridal pantaloons.

While I'm on the subject of flesh: when I was seven, I had a set of crayons with names like 'poppy red' and 'ocean blue'. Even in the late 70s, it was becoming unfashionable to describe the beige-y pink as 'flesh' and it was renamed 'salmon pink' as the crayon world woke up to the fact that beige-y pink is not the flesh tone for everyone. Yet in the 21st century world of modelling paste, I'm surprised to find this colour is still referred to as 'flesh'. Perhaps because it's the base for other skin tones too, or perhaps they're just a big bunch of racialists.

I carefully copied the belt design on Lucy's wedding dress, then cursed myself as I covered most of it up with the bouquet. The last thing to add was the hair, for which I used a craft gun and a slimy mix of brown sugar paste and Trex. It goes into the gun in a slippery brown sausage that looks disgusting. Having carefully modelled tiny little ears on the bride, I cursed myself again that I was about to cover them completely with hair, and toyed with the idea of leaving a bit of ear poking out between the locks of hair, an effect known in my family as 'monkey ear' and utterly reviled. I have done many horrible things to my sister over the years, from trying to convince her that she was growing a moustache when she was 12 (she wasn't) to telling her and her friends during school lunch break that the kitchen freezer had broken and they were giving away all the ice creams (they weren't). However, giving her monkey ear on her wedding cake would have been a step too far. The ears were covered up.

I stacked the cake on the wedding day at Bramall Hall, a beautiful Tudor building set in its own park, and the cake sat on a Jacobean dresser carved with wooden foxes.

The ceremony was beautiful, though the bride and groom were each flanked by a man with a noose around his neck. 

If there was a hidden warning, Mark chose to ignore it and happily signed the register, watched over by a small toy owl nestling on a light fitting.

The official photographer Sam Ryley made sure that the photographs were fun to do and very kindly took this photo of me, the cake, and Lucy reflected in the mirror. I like it and so must our mother, who described it as "a good photo of a scrawny lady. No offence intended". I hope she enjoys the official wedding portraits just as much.

We had a lovely wedding breakfast; the speeches were funny, the cake was cut and the first dance was danced. It was a very happy occasion. I got my wish for a slice of fruit cake twice over and I hope that Lucy and Mark get all their wedding wishes too - health, happiness, perhaps someone I can buy cute little dresses for, and a kitten. Possibly twice over.

Prom cake pops

When I was a student, I often wondered why people resented us. Twenty years on, battling my way through Jesmond Tesco with its 7 foot tall blond men and its perfectly coiffed girls in their pyjamas, I realise why - we're jealous. They look like they're having so much fun - parties, cool clothes, good music, festivals, and massive student debts. 


It's the same with sixth formers - they all look like they've stepped off a catwalk and ooze with confidence.  I wondered if we were the same 20 years ago and that I'd simply forgotten how we were, so I checked some old photos. My memory was not wrong - we were minging. Badly dressed, hairy, boyfriendless. Our idea of a good time was getting out the fondue sets our parents had been given as wedding gifts and stored in the loft. We'd make a cheese fondue and a chocolate fondue and eat until we were nearly sick. Oh yeah, I can add "chubby" to the list of our attributes.


This is David Mitchell's description of teenage life in the 1980s: "In my day, teenagers were expected to stay in, grimly getting on with their homework, shuddering at the prospect of human contact and meekly looking forward to the next series of Blackadder. That's what it was like for everyone, right?" It is shockingly accurate.


Certainly in the 1980s we didn't have the US-style prom parties that are popular today. I've been asked this week to make cake pops for a pre-prom party in the shape of little pink dresses and tuxedos.

My 18 year old self would have been flabbergasted - a dance! With BOYS! And little cakes on sticks! I might even have turned off my Blackadder video for a minute and put on some make up.

Yellow Rose

This was the first sugar rose I ever made. I dusted it yellow because it was yellow roses that Wayne used to give me. He grew them in his garden and they had a fantastic scent that could fill a whole room.


It was a yellow rose that he gave me when I went to Ireland last June and I sent him photos of me and 'Rose' in Dublin and Kilkenny. It was yellow roses that I sent to his funeral a month later. He died at midnight a year ago today.


Wayne was kind, clever, handsome, charming and generous. Every day I thank him for what he taught me and what he gave me over the last five years, which has helped me reach the happy place I am in now. I just wish he could have been happy too. 


Night night, sweetheart x