But it’s not my birthday, Archdeacon

When I was 15 and bored in a GCSE Russian lesson, I started chatting to a friend of a friend about what was pretty much my only topic of conversation: how much I loved Rowan Atkinson. “Yes”, said Han, “I love him too”. There was an almost audible click in the air and we have been best of friends ever since.  When two like-minded people meet, they can be capable of great or terrible things. Or they can just while away their study periods drinking hot chocolate and arguing about who should get to marry Rowan first.

To be fair to Han, she had seen him first and had been far more diligent in her information gathering. She had a horde of untold treasures that she generously shared with me – the first series of Blackadder on video (VIDEO in the early 80s!), a programme from his one man show in London (she’d actually been to see him in LONDON!) and an autograph from Rowan in reply to a very funny letter she’d sent him (a piece of paper he’d TOUCHED!)  It seems odd now looking back to an age before the internet when you couldn’t just Google for images or news or reviews, or go on You Tube for an entire video back catalogue or go tappity tap tap “oh so that’s where he lives” tappity tap tap Google street view “that bush could do with a trim”.

When we were in our teens, pictures were hard won by going through stacks of magazines in a dentist’s waiting room, video clips were snatched by hovering over the record button at all times (advert breaks were particularly fraught), backdated reviews had to be ordered at the public library on microfiche, and if you wanted to have a sneaky peek at someone’s house armed only with a photograph and some vague geographical information, good luck to you. We laugh today about where we’d be if we’d had the internet back then. Prison, probably.

By the time we were 17, we’d met Rowan three times (always charming), got his autograph and travelled to London to see an episode of Blackadder Goes Forth recorded at the BBC. We knew Blackadder and Not the Nine O Clock news off by heart and often went into a semi-private language that was intensely irritating to everyone around us.

Then in 1990 we were dealt a double blow: firstly, instead of marrying a pair of schoolgirls  Rowan married a woman he’d actually met. Secondly, he made Mr Bean. We left school, went to university, got jobs, got older, got cats, but still watch our Blackadder dvds together.

Today is Han’s birthday and there was only one way to decorate the cake. On the top I’ve painted the Blackadder snake and dagger motif that I used to carve into school desks with a compass (sorry). It’s copied from a gift tag Han made me years ago on Rowan Day, celebrated each year on Twelfth Night with the exchange of gifts and cards, the eating of certain foods designated as Rowany (potatoes, cheese, Mars Bars) and the watching of videos.

There aren’t many Blackadder birthday quotes but luckily “But it’s not my birthday, Archdeacon” is a particular favourite. There are several Blackadder fonts available and I used the Blackadder II font as the quote is from this series (episode 5, “Beer”).

Lastly, I added the figurines sitting in order: The Blackadder, the series viewed as inferior but which does have some very good episodes and was filmed in part in Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, making it extra special. Then Blackadder II, my favourite series, in which the world realised what was patently obvious even to a 13 year old: Rowan is very handsome, even if the man himself has said the beard makes him look a bit like Peter Sutcliffe. The figurine looked a bit more camp than I was hoping, and I could say the same for Blackadder the Third, Han’s favourite series. I was pleased with the uniform on the Blackadder Goes Forth figure.

Sometimes it feels like a long time ago that we sat goggled eyed in the front row at BBC Television Centre; sometimes it feels like yesterday.  Han is one of the cleverest people I’ve ever met, combining a fierce intellect with a sense of humour so dry it could sandpaper walls. A true polymath, she’s at home in literature, medicine, music or sport and can name the X Factor contestants/Lear’s daughters/the Scooby Doo team with equal ease. If Rowan ever tires of Mrs A, I can heartily recommend Han as a replacement. Happy birthday, you fine saucy young trollop!

Sugar Flowers

This week I did the five day PME course in Sugar Flowers at Cakes4Fun, which is a mere 150 metres from this house

If you’re in your 30s and as a child watched BBC while eating your tea, you will probably recognise the bowler-hatted man coming out of 52 Festive Road. Putney was home to the man who created Mr Benn. When the humble bank clerk wasn’t solving problems for dragons or elephants or cavemen, he lived just round the corner from Cakes4Fun and is commemorated on a paving stone outside the original house. This thrills me out of all proportion.

Once again, the other ladies on the course had come from all over the world – Budapest, Johannesburg, Dubai, Arizona – so my journey from Newcastle seemed neglible.


My knowledge of flowers is minimal and stretches as far as “red ones, white ones, yellow ones” so I had plenty-plenty to learn. Monday was a gentle start making a plaque with non-wired flowers.

Work started in earnest the next day with a woodland bouquet using the pulled flower method. I finally found out a) what the holes in a celpad are for (Mexican hats), b) what the mysterious little celpad stick is for (Mexican hats) and c) what a Mexican hat is.  The pulled flower method had the highest casualty rate and it was a lot of work to create a small bouquet. I love the blackberries.

The next three days covered wired flowers – open rose; lilies and orchids; and a bridal bouquet.

At the end of each day spent cutting, veining, wiring and dusting petals comes the heartbreak of binding, when you have to say goodbye to some petals that break or don’t stay on the wire. It’s sad to spend so much effort creating a beautiful petal that in the end doesn’t make the final cut. Like spending years raising a child only to have him support Sunderland. The back up plan, apart from having lots of children and dressing them in black and white, is to make lots of spare petals for the reserve bench.


My favourite flowers in the bridal bouquet are the apple blossom and Sweet Williams. Kate Middleton included Sweet Williams in her bridal bouquet and the flowers were renamed Prince Williams in our class. My own William is sweet as a little pie and it turns out that Mr Benn's first name was William.

Sweet Williams

Sugar flowers demand concentration and it was surprisingly tiring work. Luckily we were kept energised with a constant supply of delicious cakes, cake pops and cookies.

I had a great time on the course, met some lovely people and felt that I learned a lot. Making sugar flowers taught me to open my eyes and look closely at a flower with all its idiosyncracies in the hope of recreating it in sugar. 

In other London news:

Helen and her fellow illustration graduates put on a successful exhibition at the Coningsby gallery and I bought three more pictures of cats for my pension plan office wall. I mentioned Helen’s work here and am very proud to say that, having graduated this summer with a first class degree in Illustration, she already has a contract to publish her first children’s book in spring.

Annabel is becoming increasingly addicted to courses at Cakes4Fun. Having got her hooked with the soft stuff (“go on, try a cupcake course or a cakepop lesson, you'll like it”) she’s rapidly moved onto the harder fixes of stacking tiered cakes and today has made this beautiful butterfly cake. The bag of chocolate truffles she made at an evening class was excellent company on the train home.

I had a lovely time staying with Petra and Dylan, both of whom celebrate a birthday this week.

STILL in our 30s

Petra had a birthday dinner with friends and Dylan is celebrating his first birthday today by holding a soiree for his two best friends Rico and Cookie. I’ve said it before, those London doggies live the life. Happy birthday, handsome!

Aga cake

My friend Heather has asked me to make a cake for her sister Helen's birthday this weekend. We hummed and hah'd over which passion Helen would most like on her cake - her garden, her car or her kitchen and plumped for the kitchen. Heather sent me some photos of Helen's beautiful cream Aga in her kitchen decorated in hot pink and lime green and I came up with this cake. I'm not sure if fridge magnets really would stick to an Aga in real life, or if the top of the range is the best place to keep a vase of fresh flowers, but the great thing about the medium of cake is that it allows you a lot of artistic licence.

The cake is two 8" fruit cakes, dowelled and stacked, as it needed to serve 60. Heather is part of a large family. She is the youngest of five and has four children of her own, the eldest of whom is 15 (this seems ridiculous as it was only five minutes ago that we were 15 ourselves) and the youngest of whom is two and has the most beautiful head of auburn curls that you will ever see on a child.

Heather is my oldest friend (in terms of how long I've known her, not in terms of age. I have some friends who are MUCH older. Some are even in their mid 40s). We used to get the bus to school every day together and talk about boys, until Heather passed her driving test, at which point we would drive to school every day in a Nissan Cherry called Norman and talk about boys. Heather's family have also been very welcoming to me - some of my happiest teenage memories are of chipping off wallpaper in the Cheviots and listening to Paul Simon. Or drinking cider in Blyth park and wobbling back to Heather's house to stay the night. 

Heather emigrated to Canada a couple of years back with her husband and children (it would have seemed rude not to take them) so I don't see her as much as I'd like to. She's back this summer and brought me a little present from Canada. I mentioned turtles in my blog from Toronto and complained that my Canadian family have been hiding them from me all my life. Finally I have my own bag. Thanks Heather! And happy birthday Helen!

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.