ELVIRA …

Elvira at her sister Dilys wedding some way back in the ‘70’s

It is always the same… White sticky address labels stuck at an angle on brown C5 size envelopes. The white address label typed in bold black, with my name & address, each line starting & finishing at different places. Then there is the tell tail sellotape, stuck firmly over the entire white address label, I presume this is because she does not trust the efficacy of the stickiness of the address labels.

I know who this letter is from, but I flip it over, just for good measure; another white label cut in half, stuck at an angle with her name & address in bold, & just in case, her email & land line number also very visible on the label, sellotaped to the opening flap of the envelope. If you didn’t know better you would assume that this envelope contains some really important documents. But I know different, this letter is from my aunt Elvira.

Elvira, the only constant elder member of my family that has been in my life, she is my father’s sister. I spent many happy summer holidays at her house. She is the archetypal British eccentric, from a long line of them.

Pronounced EL-VI-RA. My mother-in-law used to love telling me that we were not pronouncing it correctly, “It is Ell-veer-a, Natalie! That is how you pronounce it!” I didn’t take any notice, I assumed that my grandparents knew how they wanted her name pronounced… My mother-in-law Renée, was prone to giving her opinion on things; she delighted, usually after a few whiskies, which could be from any time after 10:30am, on telling me that my parents were ‘up-starts’ as my maiden name was hyphenated! Certainly my parents were part of the new bourgeoisie.. I went out of my way not to introduce my parents to Renée, despite living with my now husband for 11 years at the time, which irritated both my parents & my mother-in-law, which now I think about it was a bit of a result! However my parents being my parents, decided to boycott my requests, I mean really what business or point was there in them all meeting? My mother & Renée, would exchange Christmas cards, for what reason I have no idea? In these cards they both put their telephone numbers & thus a meeting was organised. My mother to Renée’s, home… I found out about this meeting, not from my mother as she likes secrets but from Renée, who after a few more whiskies announced that my mother “was a social butterfly”. I was therefore to take from this that she was not to Renée’s, tastes as she was a former teaching & an intellectual! Somehow Trevor, my father also arranged a secret meeting with Renée, this time at his house, a chauffeur was dispatched to pick Renée up & deliver her to Trevor’s house Dutch Gardens. The chauffeur was a good idea, because by lunchtime Renée would have had at least half a bottle of whisky whilst she read the morning papers & did the cross word; so not surprisingly by lunchtime her driving suffered under this influence! Renée once turned up at our house complaining that her car was making a dreadful noise, blaming her daughter’s boyfriend Eric for the offending noise as he had been doing some work on her car. I looked at the car & the metal trim was at right angles to the car & there were scratch marks all the way down the side of the car. “What have you done Renée?” She glanced at the damage, “Oh don’t worry about that - that is Eric’s bad handy work!” “Renée that is not Eric’s fault you have crashed into something & ripped off the trim.” “Yes!” She replied, “I had to avoid hitting the bus so I veered off the road into the hedge then went back on the road & hit a few bollards where the men are working on the road.” I looked under the car – there was the source of the loud scraping noise, a cone jammed under the car!” Never a dull moment…

She meet Trevor at Dutch Gardens, Renée turned up as she always did with a glass bottle of Coca-Cola filled with whisky, for some reason Renée thought that the disguise of a soft drink bottle would hide the fact, mostly from her daughter that she was drinking whisky, no-stop! Why I have no idea as we all knew that she drunk whisky! On this occasion she mixed the whisky with generous portions of Trevor’s wine, thus got more *pissed* than normal, spilled all her families secrets, which Trevor duly noted for his own possible use in the future…… When Renée told me she had met Trevor, she told me he was a dreadful Svengali [something I think that he would secretly like to be called], none of them ever met each other again! For the record, Renée liked to be controversial, on most topics, which at times made her extremely unkind but at other times a riot to be around! I digress!

Back to Elvira’s document. You can’t easily open her envelopes due to all the sellotape! Sitting down with my cup of tea & a knife I prize open my brown envelope which buckled under the strain of its confinements. Pulling out the content which was a bundle of selected magazine pages taken from The Sunday Telegraph paper, which is Elvira – ‘must-have’ newspaper, it is a religion to her, she collects them & bundles them together in piles all over her house, 1000’s of them & whatever is said in them is gospel, except she is not keen on the Sunday Telegraph magazine attachment, I think it would all be a bit too modern for her! Elvira, on regular occasions will find an article from one of these newspaper piles of something she thinks of interest or relevant & sends out the copy with added notes to the recipient, something that incenses her children! …. Today was my turn … The tatty tear sheet pages stapled together at the centre to act as Elvira’s own publication to me. On the first page attached at an angle is two yellow post-it notes, which states; “COVER – Special STel Mag usually aimed at people with funds.. Usually flipped thru & angrily dumped. However Interest for you – my specific discussion area  MORGANE PULANSKI Probably a future in films she is fresh ----- untainted by the past. Xx E Now Thursday 8/4/21’  It is not immediately comprehensible what she is trying to say or what I am supposed to be interested in, but then these missives from Elvira rarely are, I plough on!

“AMPLE BODIED ROUND MODEL”

Under the yellow post-it note inscription is a picture of a beautiful black model in a midnight blue low buttoned dress with a fine ample bosom on show. Next to her written on the magazine, upside down & at an angled in Elvira’s handwriting with an arrow pointing at the model in blue biro, “AMPLE BODIED ROUND MODEL” – There of course is no particular relevance to this comment, but it is clear that my beloved aunt thinks that I might not notice the picture & what she believes is the relevance, so it is necessary for her to scribble on the image for my clarification. Elvira is not up to speed with the general trend in magazines to use models of all types, to ‘level-up’ the fashion industries stereotypes. She clearly thinks that this is a revelation that I must immediately be informed of? Elvira always likes to think that she is ahead of the curve & the first to notice a trend! Once sitting in her kitchen, when I was young, she exclaimed that it was amazing that platform shoes were ‘on the way out’ – This was news to me as my mother was/is a fashionista of the class ‘A’ type. Platform shoes had in fact gone out of fashion at least two years earlier! On another occasion Elvira was trying to explain to the French au pair, how to body board, she jumped up from the table, announcing that, “you must make yourself into a complete ‘flotation’ – in order to balance!” & then, as she often did, went into the ‘arabesque’ ballet poise, which instantly irritated her children, who complaint that Elvira had never even been body boarding! Reality or truth of these things never really bother Elvira, any opportunity to announce to any person whatsoever that she was a dancer was always at the top of her list; you see according to Elvira if you are a dancer you can do anything, even of course if you have never, as in Elvira’s case! “If you are a dancer Natalie – You are a medical phenomenon! Doctors ask me to advise them”…. Once much to my cousin Sarah’s utter horror & embarrassment on school sports day… Elvira took to crawling on her hands & knees after her baby son who was also crawling down a nearby slope, wiggling her bottom in the air as she went, whilst wearing the shortest mini with blue frilly knickers which were on full display for fathers! I thought it funny, my cousin was mortified.. The difference here being I am not her daughter – I am her niece!   

“LAST LOOK - TOP OF THE WORLD…”

I opened up the stapled pamphlet to the next page, the title was, LAST LOOK, this article was about a 17 year old schoolgirl who won a beauty contest that changed her life. To be honest I am not really sure what the relevance of this page is as there were no scribbled instructions or post-it notes advising me? I flipped the page again; my heart sank! ‘SHOW BREAST IN … nipple enhancing ‘tweakments’ are on the up, reports Sarah Kennedy… Was the story line – ‘MAKING NIPPLES LOOK PERMANENTLY ERECT IS A REQUEST WE RECEIVE OFTEN’!! Next to this bold statement Elvira has written in red biro, obviously this is the key article! ‘Been there!’ E x I am totally unsure why my aunt felt the need to send me this article – or why she needed me to know that she needed pert nipples, all the time? She is after all 83 – But hey who am I to be ageist! I must tell you; it has never ever crossed my mind that it might be useful to have permanently erect nipples? If anything it sounds rather uncomfortable & more than a little unbecoming, particularly if you are doing the weekly supermarket shop. The article continues – ‘When it comes to shape & size, some clients have very specific requests’, below this quote are pictures of a ten pence coin, a strawberry & what looks like clay cooking beans… ‘Dear God!’ I have just had another glance at the pictures – Please tell me those are not hard boiled eggs? To be frank, I now feel a bit revolted at the thought of having cork stop nipples at all times! Why? I have, for a person of short stature a more than ample bosom that can enter the room before the rest of me, how terrifying would it be for the occupants of that room to have to suffer a ‘Carry On’ comedy pair of breasts entering the room, ‘avec – Oeuf’ or for that matter with nipples the shape & size of strawberry’s! Revolting!

“SHOW BREASTS! - IN!!!!”

I am now reminded of sitting watching the TV at Elvira’s house with my many cousins, Elvira had been out & had drunk some wine & Elvira does not drink. It was a light summer evening, with a torrential down pouring of rain. In a fit of pique – Elvira said to us all watching TV that if we gave her a £1 fee each then she would run down to the lake & back in the nude. To most children particularly these days I think this would have caused great alarm & embarrassment, if not a bit of terror, for an adult to be making such a strange offer, but we children just glanced up at her & then continued to watch the TV. Later that evening she had us all outside running in & out of the muddy puddles in the rain, which I can assure you was more entertaining to us than her previous offer & less expensive!   

WHAT CAN I SAY????

– But to Elvira, it is all about being sexy at all times, I think that working in the Film industry all those years means that she thinks that women have to look permanently ‘on heat’ – It is really important to her, I don’t know if it is a generational thing? As my mother once told me that she felt invisible now being older when she walked into a room of men & they don’t all look at her – Which I think is quite a sad statement in its self – That the only thing that is important to her is that all the men are looking at her? If not these days a bit creepy!

Flicking the switch on the kettle again – In slight trepidation, I flipped to the next page, the next 3 pages had been stapled back to front starting with the back page first – This article is about Roman Polanski’s actress daughter Morgane. Here Elvira for ease of my comprehension had slashed the article with red biro, quite randomly as none of the so called high-lighting actually hits the words she is trying to high-light; I glance through the article – it really is not my thing – But I show willing… I closed the pamphlet. On the back page is a further ‘nonsensical’ message this time like the front page in blue biro; “IGNORE ALL RED MARKS – TRYING TO FORCE ME TO CONCENTRATE - X E X”  I know that this is not true, Elvira has just decided that she has perhaps over-egged what she thinks should have been important to me… I stuff the content back in the ripped brown envelope…

I HOPE THEY ARE CLAY COOKING BEANS NOT EGGS!!

I received periodical a few weeks ago, I have not read any of the pages, to be honest they are not really my kind of thing – Not to mention that when it comes to reading matter - I have a daughter who’s favourite thing is books, which she brings to the house in their hundreds, each day she will turn up with some new books, like she has found a little lost puppy to play with …

RED HIGHLIGHTS - MORE IMPORTANT THAN BLUE!!

Today I have received another none-seneschal email from Elvira – with the note stating that when I call her – we simply must discuss the topics sent to me in her recent correspondence… My heart sinks a bit! I have already dodged that bullet once in a recent call. Elvira lives by herself in an enormous house that is falling into disrepair – But she refuses to leave despite many urgent requests from her son. I think we have all come to the conclusion that she is going to stay there to the bitter end. I have written this piece, which is just a snap shot of some of the things my aunt has done & it is written with much affection & love for my aunt, she has been very ill with ‘long covid’ for almost a year and she has been very difficult to help, she refuses medical help & thinks she knows best about everything – At times she has been very confused, which has been difficult to deal with, but when I received these magazine articles with the mad comments, I know that she is back to her old self, so although the content is quite bonkers it is just as it should be with her. She has been a thread through my life & she never turned her back on me. We are as opposite as could be in many ways. When I was little, she would laugh at the fact that I was the most like her in terms of colouring, light skin, mine for the record is almost porcelain & my hair was light brown at the time, Elvira is pale skinned & blond, where as her beautiful children were/are all darker skinned have beautiful brown eyes & hair, like their father. This made me, the little ugly duckling of all the family very pleased. When Elvira went to the Royal premiere of ‘Entertaining Mr Slone’ in April 1970 so beautiful was she that she knock Princess Margaret off the front of the Newspapers – This was quite some achievement!

WELL AT LEAST SHE IS ON THE MEND!

Some years later in the summer we were sitting outside at Elvira’s house with an unrealistically huge bowl of broccoli in front of us covered in butter, with the normal, what my mother calls ‘plastic bread’ & butter as an accompaniment - Elvira is not known for her cooking, the broccoli was also covered in angry wasps from the nearby wasps nest. Suddenly Elvira jumped up, picked up the enormous serving spoon & started to smash it down on the offending wasps smashing the overcooked broccoli to a congealed palp, scattering shards of grey-green broccoli everywhere, including splattering my cousin Sarah & I with the green mush. Once she had finished this outburst she sat down again & expected us to eat the remnants, of the mush now added to the dish were the dismembered bodies of wasps – I hated broccoli for years after that!   

Left to right, Trevor, Elvira, Taller boy Laurie, my brother, Tall lady with beads, my mother Josephine short fat bridesmaid with ringlets not looking at the camera pulling my bloomers up - Me! What was my aunt Dilys thinking of with those outfits?

Having your Cake & Eating it!

Victoria Sandwich cake

If you have read any of the Me/Myself & I ‘blog’ stories then you will know that I have an extraordinary relationship with my childhood… Perhaps we all do? This memory came to me when I was making a large Victoria Sandwich cake for the family the other day..

I’ve never liked cakes, ever, even as a child, the very idea of putting that sickly sweet, glutenous mouthful of tacky wall paper glue into my mouth to find that it then sticks to the roof of my mouth & coats my tongue & teeth with edible adhesive .. It’s really not my thing! Agreed, not a great ‘intro’ to a story about cakes …

However I do love making cakes! Also, I’m not half bad at it! I don’t taste them, but to be fair who does taste the uncooked version of cake? I rely on a fantastic sense of smell & an overall understanding of the ingredients & the process, also I have many willing participants who taste the cakes along the way & enjoy testing the ultimate results.

My window into the world of cakes was via my mother who loves cakes & pastries, all things pretty, sweet & nice. Deserts give her great pleasure, she is a good cook herself, now in her latter years, she will happily spend a great deal of time making a good cake, she enjoys them and never puts on weight as she indulges in her home made cuisine! Having your Cake & Eating it very much apply’s to my mum … Occasionally she will ask my advice on a particular recipe. So it is something we have in common on some level.. Having enjoyed herself making a cake or four, she deposits them to grateful recipients in her local area. Often to “the old lady upstairs”, as it happens ‘the old lady upstairs’ is in fact younger than my mother, a minor point in my mothers world!

As children my parents would take my brother & I out on long drives from London to tea houses in the country; another thing I was not keen on, long car journey’s! “Are we there yet?” Arriving at these always busy tea houses crammed full of tables covered in ill-fitting over-washed table cloths, we squeezing through the packed cafe apologising to the already seated patrons to finally make our way to the empty table that beckoned us. Shunting our seats rather too tightly under the table, as we were taught to by my father, which meant that you were pinned to the table & unnecessarily close to the proceeding, in my case being small by my neck, my father was obsessed by making sure we were “tucked in tight”? He would jump up hold the edges of the chair & use his leg & knee to make sure that we were well & truly under the table, it made it impossible for me to get my hands out from under the table so that I might at some stage eat the cake I didn’t like! Parents are weird?

My parents viewed the menu, scanning the many delights of the cafe cuisine. Menu’s in those days were either typed up, carbon copy style with cross outs or tippexed where spelling mistakes were made & then attached to maroon clip boards, the clip boards had always seen better days the plastic at the edges of the board was invariably split & the battered cardboard centre was peeking through. Or the worse menu; the encapsulated plastic menu always a bit sticky & the edges were sharp, they resided in a plastic clip set in the centre of the table, sometimes you would have to prize them apart from each other in order to view. Yuck!

This was my opportunity to scan the surroundings, the decor, the people, but firstly the table were we sat at, I had made a mental note on these many visits & observed that all tea houses seemed to suffer with the same hygiene issues? Being the smallest therefore my face was the closest to the table it was obvious to me that many customers had already sat at this table prior to us. Thus the cloth was invariably covered in other peoples crumbs; which grossed me out! The table cloths were littered with bits of over toasted tea cake, small pieces of crusty toast & cake that had missed the previous occupants mouth & worse of all on occasions slimy bits of butter & jam that were smeared across the fabric. Also Gross!

In some of the more forward thinking establishments, they had a remedy to this problem, a metal tool that they would scrap across the table cloth in an attempt to collect up the debris of the now discarded bun-droppings, but all it actually did was ‘ruche’ the fabric into gathered pockets that would hide the bun-droppings underneath; so when the waitress had finished doing this piece of drama & straightened the table cloth out again you were now left with wavy lines of crumbs, more artistic perhaps, but still equally revolting!

These parlours back in the day, were mostly run by oddly shaped older women wearing frilly floral aprons tied too tightly at the waist; it did not escape my notice that these rosy-red cheeked women also had uneven floppy bosoms hanging over the their waistband, it occurred to me at the time that these ladies could do with what was a phenomenon at Grandmas house, both my aunts never stopped talking about the new revolution a ‘Playtex cross your heart bra’ this apparently according to my aunt Dilys ‘separates and lifts the breasts whilst ensuring the perfect fit’.. Regrettably this invention came a little bit late in life for Grandma & these ladies waiting the tables. Grandma was an advocate of a ‘girdle’, I only saw it once, hanging on the line, I think it was a secret, it was an odd creation with ‘dangly’ elastic hanging at the base, in later life I discovered this was a ‘suspender’, not that fashionable then, but now very Madonna or Jean Paul-Gautier, now the height of sexiness! Although Grandma was not quite that shape or possibly never had the inclination? Given the fact that she already had seven children!

My sleuthing the table cloth was interrupted by mum, “What would you both like to eat?”, she said looking at Laurie, my elder brother; she actually meant what cake do you want to eat? Any public conversation with Laurie, left him speechless. Laurie did not like to talk, he was painfully shy & introspective. I came along a number of years later & took it upon myself to talk for him, something at this stage in our lives he was mostly grateful for! Food wise Laurie mostly only liked baked beans & Arctic Roll, which was ice-cream wrapped in jam & covered in sickly sponge cake, a limited diet to be fair but it kept Laurie happy & that in turn kept my mother happy & I suffered it. I have nothing against baked beans, with the exception of having to share a room with my brother, but I detested the Arctic Roll, I would peal the sponge off & give that to Laurie & try & eat the ice-cream from inside to out so as to not have to eat any jam.

Jam, on reflection I reluctantly accepted latter in my life it was contained in my favourite biscuits which for a short while were Jammie Dodgers, I like the taste of the biscuit bit, less keen on the jam, but I would suffer it. When we moved out of London into the country my parents bought me a four poster bed, which my mother loved. Having a substantially bigger house, my mother followed in the footsteps of my aunt Elvira & took to doing large shopping visits to ‘cash & carry’, the booty was distributed all over the house, if you opened the small high level bathroom cabinet you were quite likely to be bombarded with two gross worth of coloured loo rolls or if you went ‘snooping’ about the house you could well come across an enormous amount of tins of backed beans hidden in the guest bedroom cabinets, there was ‘booty’ stashed everywhere in the house?

For some strange reason best known to my mother she would buy boxes of 24 packets of Jammie Dodgers and stash them in the void under my bed along with multi packs of tin dog & cat food. I was at this time a ‘chubby’ child, so when it came to an after dinner treat, I was allowed to take 1 biscuit from the biscuit tin in the kitchen. Except when I went to bed later, I would hang upside down on my bed & pull up the lace valiance around the bed & view the boxes of Jammie Dodgers hidden underneath. I was not a naughty child particularly at this stage of my life, but if I saw that the box had been open & a number of packets had been removed I would take a packet out & regroup with it in my bed. Having eaten with gusto 3 or 4 biscuits I would feel sick, the only problem was that I was now left with the rest of the packet. This was an issue, it was not easy to hide anything in my bedroom as my mother was constantly re-arranging furniture in there & changing the theme of my room, I would often come home to find that my draws had been riffled through & the entire contents of my bedroom had been moved to a different space. She also had a penchant to raid my bedroom cupboard & throw all the ‘stuff’ in my cupboard out onto the floor, complaining that the cupboard was a mess! Which considering she had thrown the entire contents onto the floor in a heap seemed to me to have made any mess I had made in the cupboard considerably worse? I think it was a ritual for her? So there was no other choice for me to hide my uneaten biscuits & I was forced to consume the entire packet, which made me feel extremely unwell. After a couple of attempts as stealing them it put me off Jammie Dodgers for life! Another thing my mother found issue with as she now had a stash of Jammie Dodgers I was not going to eat!

Back to the cafe table; all eyes were on Laurie’s which made his eyes water up & his cheeks go red & shinny, he was never going to talk, I knew that.. Eventually my mother would say, “Okay Laurie, you have a think about it, Natalie what would you like?” Never backward in coming forward as a child, “I want a coke & a toasted cheese sandwich, please.” My mother would sigh & ignore my request, she would then order for me & Laurie & Trevor, my father. She was always trying to control my fathers apatite, as he was a chubby, & a bit of a glutton.

I have often wondered why parents ask you what you want & then just ignore your answer & order you something entirely different? What is the point of asking in the first place? To be honest I still have these conversations with my mum now. She tells me what she thinks I will like or more to the point what I should like, be it a film or a item of clothing, I say “I don’t like it, it is not my thing!” And my mum will say, “Oh you do like it Natalie!” And so the madness goes on!

On this occasion Trevor was allowed cheese on toast a favourite of mine, Laurie would get a chocolate cake mostly or on special occasions like today a chocolate eclair & I was presented with a Battenberg cake, like it or not! A multi-coloured chess board style of cake covered in sickly marzipan. That I could cope with as Trevor mostly would scoff his food & start on mine, but what really irritated me about these dining experiences & does to this day is that Laurie was always given a coke, despite having not asking for one & I was given a bottle of congealed, split sweet & bitter tasting orange juice? Because according to my mother - ‘I liked it!’.

Battenberg, was not my style of cake, either, so my mother moved onto Meringues glued together with whipped cream, I loved the cream but the over sweet Meringues were not my thing. Mum advanced onto donuts, I didn’t mind the ‘donut’ so much despite the fact that they left your face covered in sugar & stuck your fingers together but there was that glob of jam in the middle? Pastries were mostly not my thing either, but better than cake… Mum proceeded onto home made Lemon Meringue pie, this to be fair was a little better, I could eat a bit of the lemon but not the Meringue. If you are wondering why not chocolate cake, well because I I don’t really like chocolate .. either .. I like cheese if I was to have a dessert…. So I was a lost cause to my mother. And not for the last time!

Having finally accepted that I didn’t like all things sweet mum came up with another wheeze to keep cake in my life. On the understanding that “Other people like cake Natalie”. So now it was rude for me not to accept cake! Cakes were presented to me on my birthdays they were my mothers key gifts. Between the village we lived & Windsor was a village called Datchet. …&… Joy of joy’s there was a little tea shop there called The Astricot, run by two very affable old ladies, who in fairness to them had their bosoms in the right place, perhaps they had discovered cross your heart bras? These very talented ladies created wonderful ‘early days’ themed cakes. As far as my mother was concerned it was inspired. So for the next 6 years or so, these sweet old ladies made beautiful Birthday cakes for me mostly & very occasionally for my brother, who had now been exiled to boarding school, which for me was a bit like being bereaved & for him a total disaster… The cakes were inspired, [by my mother], a Ginger Bread house with a ‘smarties’ roof, was the first, I like smarties! Some of the other themes were, a frog band cake, I am not sure why? A ballet cake covered in ballerina’s, I was not so keen on this. A cake with a glass wishing well and one covered in silk flowers to name just a few. My mother just delighted in each & everyone of them, it gave her such enormous pleasure.

The Astricot ladies were also commissioned to make various cakes for the wider family, one being for my Grandmother’s 75th Birthday that was to be held at my aunt Elvira’s house. This cake was to be the centre piece of the celebrations, well that was the view my mother had! This opulent cake was decorated in silk purple flowers, [my mother was going through her purple phase at this time, there were many design phases such she went through such as gold, lime green & her leopard pattern chapter, I will cover these in another blog!], the centre of the flowers on grandma’s cake had black & pearl wired beads as stamens, these flowers were placed delicately on scalloped white royal icing, it weight a ton. At the grand unveiling of Grandma’s cake, to my mother’s utter horror, my younger cousins dived in & started to strip the icing sugar off the cake & consume it, before we had even lit the candles. My mother was furious & I agree with her… Sometimes you can have your cake but you should not eat it … Until it has been a little bit savoured that is the point in cake it is a frivolous sexy temptress, that needs to be admired.

When I had left home, I used to make a Christmas fruit cake every year, starting the preparation nearly 9 months in advance for my mother’s celebrity friends to enjoy on her annual five month holiday in Barbados. The Christmas cake was huge, opulent & drenched in alcohol for flavour, [much like my mother’s wealthy set of friends!] Each year, the cake was sent out via couriers at Christmas to Barbados, as my mother had long since departed & there was no way that she was cutting her baggage allowance for clothes down with a big heavy cake. So the cake was dispatched along with a trolley load of ‘goodies’ purchased from Harrods, this consignment also included a stash of 20 or so cans of tinned corn beef for Alan & Ray the main hosts who despite their wealth & the luxurious surroundings liked simple fare, they also liked a quality Christmas cake. One of Alan & Ray’s guest on many occasions was Bob Monkhouse, a well known English entertainer & good friend to the Barbados crowd, his passion too was the Christmas cake, however his crime one year was to eat the last piece of my Christmas cake, so irritated was Alan that he flounced off to his bedroom & was not seen again until Bob had gone back to his own villa! It is only cake … Right!?

Don’t think that perhaps I don’t like cakes because or that I was just given badly made cakes by elderly grandparents & hapless aunts. In the main I wasn’t, my parents took us to the best patisseries in London & the home counties, plus trips to Devon & Cornwall, in their pursuits of all things cake. However, one disgusting cake memory was my grandmother’s who was a very good ‘war-time’ cook, she had a penchant for making ‘junket’, a sloppy, wobbly creation like a jelly, made from sweetened & flavoured curds of milk. Grandma would colour it in vulgar clashing vegetable dyes, to entertain her many grandchildren, 20 to be precise. Grandma made this ‘slop’ particularly for my cousin Simon as he was her favourite grandchild outside two other male grandchildren, one being my brother. We all had to suffer junket at Grandma’s gatherings most particularly because Simon liked it and we were an obedient lot!

I have continued to make many cakes & I enjoy doing it, my own children have had some spectacularly wild cakes on their Birthdays & other occasions, I have never forced cake on my children, nor did I care if they liked cake or not, they all do by the way! But what I will say is that cake making was my response in some ways to my mothers love of cake. And therefore she inspired me in some way, I hope that she will take credit in that? So on the whole has been a success… So have your cake & eating it … I suppose I should thank my mum?

Please go to Food & Entertaining …. For all recipes on making Victoria Sandwich cakes & variations …. & ENJOY >>>>



Turning ‘Grandma’ into a mud Pie…

‘Pie’ … Grandma is not in this one!

Normal ‘Apparently’ … In our family …

I have thought long and hard about writing about some 'bits' of my life. If I should? .. If I can? Like most people’s lives it has been an interesting journey, particularly with regard to my family and extended family. I have a great memory for detail sometimes the memories are too vivid, however and even better I have a good sense of the bizarre and the humour that is required to go along with it. Some of my stories are very black, but my survival technique is comedy. Turning Grandma into a Mud Pie, is the first of my stories, to be committed to public scrutiny. Here I can introduce you to some of the characters in my life! Enjoy ….. (I hope)…

So welcome to my musings on a mad world …

Turning Grandma into a Mud Pie

Ten years ago, or thereabouts, we were invited to my favourite aunts home, (my ‘fathers’ sister). Her name is Elvira, she has an eccentric rambling house outside Brighton, which rather matches her character. She was going to host a large ‘Jones’ family party, in addition to which, was to include the final resting ceremony of my grandma's ashes and to celebrate what would have been her 100th birthday. Well as near as dam it! To the senior members of the Jones family around about that time … Facts rarely influenced a situation and almost never get in the way of what they want to do and how they want to present a particular set of circumstances …… They just make up the pieces to fit and if they don’t they lie or shout! … To be honest …. I come from a long line of over-reactors! They only worry about reality if and when it happens! To my reckoning it would have actually been grandma’s 103rd or 104th birthday .. But hey-ho!

Grandma passed away at the grand age of 98, whilst me and my husband and our then two children, we now have three, were on holiday in France. We did not attend her cremation, but like most of the family cremations it was held at Golders Green crematorium, all the organisation was as ever controlled by my biological father, known to me as Trevor…… I think I was asked by him to call him Trevor, which is his name, when I was about 13 and it stuck, for many reasons….. Suffice to say that there is a great deal of bad feeling between Trevor and myself!  But when you have money you have control and he was in control of grandma’s cremation arrangements. But Trevor is not the story today that is for another time. At the end of the cremation Elvira was handed the ashes until such time as the family agreed on a final resting place…. The ashes were to be safely stored at Elvira's and her husband Doug’s sprawling overgrown house for the next few years. Or so we thought! 

So, for this momentous family gathering various members of the Jones family clan were shipped in from all over the UK and from far flung corners of the world. The party was to be a two day event…  I did not attend the party on the Saturday as Trevor was attending… He cannot abide to be in my company … And it felt fair to me to give him and his long term partner Hilary some space with his siblings and others. My totally eccentric aunt Elvira kindly invited my mother and I to meet up with the rest of the family on the Sunday, as Trevor would have left the proceedings. So I took my mother and my nine year old daughter to meet grandma’s children, my aunts and uncles and her great aunts and uncles. I thought it would be an exciting occasion for us all … If not illuminating… 

Grandma I was told had thirteen pregnancies and seven surviving children, five boys and two girls. Which, in itself is quite an achievement as my grandparent’s contempt for each other was so extreme that they could not bear to be in the same room together, in their own home, so as not to come across each other, with the exception of bedtime, she had the front room he had the back room… When they were out together in public there was a heartfelt and palpable atmosphere of utter disgust between them…  One of my earliest and most shocking memories of my grandma Doris Margaretta Jones was that she would regularly have outbursts of a varying pitch and level at my grandfather publically. Saying in response to any comments he may have made…. “He makes me spit! He makes me SPIT!” She would during the day repeat this comment with unfettered distain toward him… As a young child this was quite shocking and alarming, as to me grandma was a pillar of society and the matriarch of the family, whom I felt safe around, which in my childhood was rare at times. To me she had the highest moral values. It was out of character to ever imagine that grandma would lower herself to spit… Like a navvy in the street! Simply shocking! … Although being the type of child I was, I was kind of excited to see her do it and wonder what effect it might have on my mother’s sensibilities … Wicked child I am!  I can confirm that to the best of my knowledge grandma never did spit and over the many years I just came to accept that is what she said when grandpa was around..… Another childhood dream of seeing her spit was dashed!

It was a further source of equal bewilderment to me that grandpa, with equal regularity, when we were all out, in a restaurant, in an airport or any public place, he would hold up his hand and point out the signs to the Ladies toilets? …Raising his pointed finger at the sign of the WC and booming at my grandmother ….. “Doris there’s the Lavatory, ….. THERE…  The lavatory Doris …The lavatory’s are there Doris.” I realise now, it was his way to irritate her and embarrass her…. But as a child it seemed very strange that grandma could not see and read the signs for herself and why would she not be equally interested in where the restaurant was, for example? I mean she was partial to a cup of tea?… Never once did he not do this …. He would then slide up behind me, grab my arm with the most painful iron like grip, which made my legs buckle under the pressure… And hiss his laugh in my ear through the front of what I think were his dentures, this gesture always ended in a quiet throaty whistle…  Her obvious response was that he made her spit! But still, to my irritation, no moisture was ever forthcoming! 

Growing up in this strange world, finally at the age of about four I realised that my grandparents could not stand the sight of each other but were tied to one another in some form or other … Possibly because it was a generational thing … ? They were never to my knowledge kind to each other, except on two occasions, Grandpa was knocked over on his bicycle on the North Circular Road, on arriving at hospital he was given a pain killer for his injuries; unfortunately he was allergic to the drug and he had a major stroke, which rendered him unable to speak … He would stutter, stammer and shake, however I do remember on occasions he was able, under his breath to hiss the audible words, at grandma .. Bitch and Fuck … At times of his frustration … Despite this …. She sat with him day after day, for over a year, such was the determination of my grandmother to coax him back to health. Writing endless sentences and doing sums for him to copy and say to her out loud. 

She would put a heavy glass ashtray in front of him to pick up, to try and reverse the paralysis in his arm and hand. After a year or so …. I think in order to get away from her he made a full recovery… He wanted to get back down the bus depot where he was a bus conductor and where there were men and free whisky! She had done her job and he was off her hands again. The second time there was some kindness from him was when he was dying and she was at his hospital bed and he wanted her to hold his hand …. She refused … 

For the party grandma’s ashes must be found … So the search was on … To put you in the picture and describe Elvira’s and Uncle Doug’s wonderfully shambolic and rambling home. You approach the property via a joint driveway shared with the large old house next door which has been converted to an old people’s home, their house is on the right as you approach. This Sussex property has beautiful views over the adjoining countryside. The house has a large number of rooms on the ground floor, on the second floor is a more open planned area, stuffed full of their life’s accessories, bits and bobs. To the back of the house there is a large acreage of overgrown scrappy lawn that has been vaguely tamed into walkways by a ride on lawn mower, to be frank it is really too much for two people in their seventies to handle, but this is the way they want to live their lives.  To the left of the house, on a lower level is a 1970’s style building housing a very old and rather frightening swimming pool, with water that has more than its fair share of shades of green and in one corner looks slightly like a swamp.. Beyond that is further bumpy scrubland lawn with a five foot hedge denoting the perimeter of their property to its neighbours, the old people’s home. However the hedge just stops and you can walk around it onto the neighbouring lawn. To the right of their property there are a number of scattered outhouses one of which is a dance studio, where my aunt has been a very successful dance professor. There are many glasshouses scattered around the main house, that are filled to the brim with overgrowing plants that have pushed their way out through smashed windows. Other outhouses are filled to bursting with more relics from their past, Doug who was in the film industry, has containers of scripts and reels of films billowing out of boxes in these storage huts. Under the house is my aunt’s collection, thirty plus years of The Telegraph newspaper, bundled into piles tied with string. Elvira needs these newspapers just in case she may require an article contained in these precious documents, she has a penchant for cutting out snippets of articles and sending bits of news to you in order to demonstrate a particular point or to inform you of something you might not have known or understood, in a previous life!  I have received a large number of cuttings over the years as have the rest of the family. Nowadays Elvira sends the information via email. Interestingly the emails arrive in the most unusual staccato format that is sometimes difficult to follow, she uses stars, exclamation marks and full stops like some people use emoji.  Without exception Elvira always signs off her notes or emails with; ‘So busy’ or ‘In haste’. Both ‘sign off’, comments over the years have really irritated and infuriated her brother Trevor. Because he likes to think that he is the more important and busier than anyone else! Families and their foibles … Don’t you just love ‘em! It makes me laugh!

Back to the party …. As ever with all families there is always a back story, ours is a black comedy drama. Grandma's final resting was agreed to be in the back garden of Elvira and Doug’s house. A marquee had been erected and vast amounts of food had been ordered from Marks and Spencer to see us all through the weekend, as Elvira now refuses to cook. Grandma's seven children and their respective wives and partners and some of the eighteen or so grandchildren and any vague relatives with the similar surname were wheeled in for the event. The Jones have a strange ability and need to find distant relatives to enthuse over, I think this is mostly as they don’t particularly like their actual close family who have seen them for whom they really are! Therefore new shinny relatives are always handy and welcome at any event. Having the common surname Jones you can imagine we have a lot of potential new family members to choose from! 

The final resting place for Grandma was to be under a newly planted tree, by the hedge adjoining the neighbouring property. The placing of the semi-mature tree turned out to be significant and was to be paid for by Trevor. Uncle Doug had confided to Trevor that the position of the tree was critical, as he and Aunt Elvira like to sunbathe in the nude, this had sometimes confused the old people in the nursing home next door. Particularly the Captain, who resided at the home, and whose window looked down on to my aunt and uncles back garden. Confused or not the Captain sometimes with other occupants of the home would wonder over into the garden, to join the fun, possibly in the hope of something more than your average cup of sugar? If you get my drift? ..

I suppose, if you think about it, sometimes the days in an old people’s home must drag a bit so the occupants must look for other ways to be amused? Elvira and Doug provided perfect adult entertainment in this regard! …. So to avoid unwanted guests the tree needed to be placed in a precise location. Some of Trevor's many staff were dispatched prior to the ceremony to plant the ‘modesty’ tree.

On the day we were there, drinks were flowing well and my uncles were making a great deal of fuss over our daughter who is always rather pleased to be the centre of attention and enjoying the fuss, and why not! As ever in the UK the weather was living up to the “not as summery as it should be” factor, in fact it was quite chilly and there was a hell of a wind. So instead of eating in the marquee, which was bellowing in the strong breeze, we were to eat in the main house. One of my cousins, Elvira’s child, was entertaining me, telling me all the gossip about various members of the family and all the goings on at the party the day before. Really is that not the point of these meetings … The gossip? My cousin told me to look at the fireplace, “we could not find grandma’s ashes anywhere in the house or in the out buildings!” Elvira had put grandma somewhere safe but she could not remember where? Therefore Elvira had had no choice and was forced to scrape out the ashes from the fire place for the event until she could lay her hands on the real grandma! I told you at the beginning of this story … facts or reality rarely affects what the Jones do! Totally irreverent of both us, but it added to the humour of what was to come! And it was most probably true!

After lunch we were all forced out of the house to undertake the main event and indulge in a little mud pie making! My beautiful mother dressed as always like a supermodel was asked by Elvira to make her way to the back of the marquee, where my mother came across a wheel barrow of soil and another wheelbarrow filled with dried manure! Elvira holding grandma’s ashes in a canteen in one hand and a desert spoon in the other explained to my mother that she had worked out, presumably into a kitchen bowl a night or two before? That each of the family had two and a half scoops of grandma’s ashes, to mix. The plan was to scoop out your allotted amount of grandma into a Tupperware box then take two spoon full’s of manure from the wheelbarrow deposit that on top of grandma and then sprinkle an appropriate amount of soil of the top of the mixture! Yes really!! There was a watering can on hand so you could pour some water over the grandma mixture and combine her into a smooth ‘roux’.  Finally, the wet human slop was to be deposited in another wheelbarrow located nearby, which had a net covering it, containing the contents of the day’s before ceremony of grandma’s “bake-off” mix congealed together by other members of the family!  … Quite literally turning grandma into a mud pie! 

I could tell something was up as I could hear shrieks of hysterical laughter from my mother, there is no stopping her once she gets started, and then you could hear loud chastising from my aunt who was trying to control my mother’s guffawing. To my aunts horror and my mother’s lack of reverence in the face of the ensuing ludicrous task. My mother’s attempts to deposit two and half scoops of grandma into a Tupperware box was being hampered by the wind and the ashes were being blown away. My mother, due to her violent laughter attack was not quick enough to secure grandma’s ashes under the manure and soil and slosh her with a gloop of water.... So as a result some parts of grandma became unattached, blown away by the wind and are now residing somewhere over the Sussex countryside, a lucky escape for that bit of grandma if you ask me!

When it came to mine and my daughters turn .. I went all haughty and said that I could not be involved in turning grandma into a mud pie, the idea was quite ridiculous! In hindsight, writing this, I think this was wrong .. And I should get a life!  Perhaps grandma would have found it quite acceptable ….. And funny … Let’s face it some memorials are boring!

The interesting thing was that once we had a barrow load of grandma’s mud pie mix. It sort of just sat there and no further progress was made on that day…. We just got chatting and the scattering of the ashes got put to one side! Grandma was immortalised into a mud pie, so I guess she could wait, other things were going on. 

A bit later, having gone into the house to hide from the weather, I had an interesting if not surreal conversation in the kitchen with my aunts and uncles, with the exception of Elvira and Doug, they took me to one side to discuss on where my aunt kept the breakfast cereal? Not exactly a scintillating conversation, but each to their own! My aunts and uncles, knowing how close I am to Elvira told me of her habit of repatriating the breakfast cereal back to the bottom cupboard in the kitchen, they were all taking it in turns to put the cereal into one of the top cupboards. However each and every morning, the cereal would find its way back into the under counter cupboard! … As you might imagine, I could not quite grasp the importance of where the breakfast cereal was housed, I mean did it really matter? But they were most insistent that I discuss the matter with her! Delving further to see what the actual problem was, why does it matter where the cereal is kept? Well you would think!!?? It transpired that Elvira has always kept the breakfast cereal in the lower cupboard… For my Uncle Doug’s delight and personal enjoyment!

Then the penny dropped … It emerged that my aunt does not wear underwear in the mornings a long standing arrangement between her and her husband, she wears the equivalent of what we would call a baby doll nighty, I guess having being a sex kitten of the 1960/1970, why not??.. Incidentally, to her credit at the opening of the premiere of the film Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton, produced by her husband July 1970, Elvira knocked Princess Margret off the front pages of the newspapers at the premiere  … So beautiful is she? 

However back to #cerealgate. In the mornings when Elvira enters the kitchen, to her siblings and respective wives horror, who are happily sitting at the table eating breakfast …. Elvira bends down, full ‘flash’ to get her breakfast cereal!??… What can I say??? And indeed that was my question to my aunts and uncles….. What do you want me to say to her? The general consensus was that I am close to my aunt and I would be able to make her see sense … Christ this is my family, no one sees sense! But okay … I will give it a shot …!

Elvira came into the kitchen to collect some more food so I seized the moment and took a deep breath. Whilst my uncle and aunts shuffled conspiratorially behind me to see what the response would be! “Elvira!” I gesticulated toward the assembled members peering on with childlike interest. And they shuffled back slightly, again! “Elvira why do you or Doug keep moving the cereal from the top cupboard where your guests are putting it, back to the under counter bottom cupboard? Did you realise they can all see …. Well, em see your naked bottom?” She turned around with condiments in her hands and stared at me, seemingly with her mind elsewhere, so I continued, as if to try and point out the obvious … “these are after all - your brothers?” Without even a blink she shrugged her shoulders, glanced at the assembled crowd and just confirmed.“ Oh they never see my front bottom they only ever see my back bottom, I do it for Doug!” And off she went out of the kitchen … To stunned silence … What can you really say? Well I am sure we can say a lot …. But I suppose the nub of the matter is that it was their home and she can have her cereal in whatever cupboard she wants to put it … I guess?? …. Each to their own! … I turned to my aunts and uncles, picked up my glass of wine and attempted to copy my aunt’s aplomb  .. Suggesting that they admired the ceiling in the kitchen when Elvira was deciding whether to have Rice Crispys or Co-Co Pops! What can you do! … Clearly they are nudists!

As I said, grandma, or what was left of grandma thanks to my mother’s hysteria was never on that day, consigned to the ground as on this family occasion talking and musing on life had taken over and the weather became windy and dull so grandma remained quietly in her wheelbarrow… As it turned out this happened to be a good thing … As some weeks later the ‘modesty’ tree which had already been planted with a hole left to one side for grandma’s ashes… Died before the ashes had been scattered! It had been planted over a Nissan hut which had restricted its root system and killed it off. I have to say another bodge-up by Trevor. 

So some weeks later another tree was purchase and delivered to the house for replanting in the same location… Two more Polish workmen were dispatched to my aunt’s house to undertake the planting of this fine new specimen. However before planting the Nissan hut needed to be dug out first, as you can imagine a fairly major job, particularly by hand! These poor men dug and dug, extricating chunks of concrete as they went. The weather had improved, it was now a heat wave and the sun was shining down upon their backs, making it not only back breaking work, but they ran with sweat in the heat. They dug and dug and dug over a number of days.… Eventually they were close to the end of the job.. Back filling the hole with manure and soil ready to plant the tree. The hole was deep enough at this point for the men to stand with just their head and shoulders above ground level…. 

In the house there was a knock at the door and it was Elvira’s teenage granddaughter; who had been taking a student gap year and had turned up to see her grandparents. To see her granddaughter was a great excitement to Elvira. She wanted to show her the progress of the final resting place of grandma, which her granddaughter had missed due to being abroad … In the ensuing excitement Elvira on the way out of the kitchen door to the garden, grabbed a canteen that was on the shelf, proclaiming to her granddaughter that she too could be part of grandma’s final resting place as these were grandma’s ashes … Elvira ran toward the two workman, slogging away, digging in the hole, glimmering with sweat … And in a moment of supreme dramatic gesture, ripped of the lid of the canister and threw the contents into the air directly above where the two workman were digging, both who had stood to watch what Elvira was doing…. Too late to get out of the way, the men were open mouthed at this performance, yes grandma’s ashes flew into the air in a blacken smoke only to land on the sweaty workman … Sticking and clogging to their wet skin …. The men spat and gasped and spat again trying to rid themselves of the dried ashes of grandma … Scraping at their bodies trying to brush off the dried powdery residue of grandma off their shiny wet bodies …. 

To this day I am unsure if the two workman were fully aware of what was thrown at them, really not nice … But a number of things spring to mind? Firstly, I do wonder at the quantity of ashes grandma managed to create, she was only a small woman. There was the measured out number of spoonful’s at the earlier family party occasion and a further canteen of ashes thrown at these two unsuspecting workman. And secondly, I feel somewhat gratified, as grandma had spent most of her life announcing that she wanted to spit and to my knowledge never managed to carry out this threat.. So at least in death she managed to make someone else spit and I secretly think that she would have been pleased… 

As a footnote to this story, some years later when my uncle Doug had been diagnosed with a mild form of Alzheimer’s. I called the house to speak to Elvira and Doug answered the phone.. We got chatting and he advised me to his delight that Elvira was riding on the lawn mower … Presumably mowing the lawn? He then told me that she was knicker-less! This is not the sort of thing he would have normally said to his niece under ordinary circumstances therefore I was desperately thinking of ways I could divert this type of conversation and so to speak … Get him off topic!! …. Then he announced that he was sitting watching Elvira with his Percy … To this day it makes my toes curl.. I mean what the hell do you say to that? I was stammering over my words ..  Anything to move on with a different conversation …. One of those dying moments… I carried on chatting about whatever came into my mind other than my uncles Percy! … Then over the line I heard a meow…. “What is that Doug?” … “It’s Percy my new cat … He was a stray and he has adopted me…” Well as you can imagine not only a welcome relief to me … But a lovely moment .. As Percy gave them both such delicious joy in the years to come and Percy, I am guessing had no problem with where the cereals were kept!  

I guess all families are like this right! ?? ….