I was made hugely happy this morning by the arrival of a couple of glass dome lids for putting over plates of cakes.
I have coveted these for ages. If I have managed a successful batch of baking it is far more likely to be remembered in hungry moments if it is sitting attractively on the table than if it is shoved in a tin in a cupboard.
Anyway I have got a dresser now where I can put a plate of fruit buns on the shelf and feel as though I am a paragon of virtuous efficiency. Obviously it was something which should be done.
It occurred to me last week that the ownership of cake-covers could be achieved really very simply, and so with a couple of clicks and a wave of Mark’s magical credit card I transformed my status to that of a person who owned their very own beautiful glass domes for covering their cakes.
They arrived this morning.
Actually in the event I wasn’t at all pleased about it, because of being in bed asleep. Mark completely failed to hear the delivery man banging on the back door, and in the end I had got to get up myself and trail down the stairs to admit him.
I discovered then, with my bare feet, that Roger Poopy had had an accident, and the subsequent yell of horror got everybody out of bed.
I forgave Roger Poopy because he was so forlornly sorry about it, and guilty, and also because I was very pleased to have some cake covers.
I wanted to start baking straight away, but of course I couldn’t because of it being Saturday and a working day. I took the glass covers out of the boxes and admired them for a while, and then had to put them carefully on the bottom shelf of the dresser until Monday, when I can bake things.
I am going to have a go at making a version of Grasmere Gingerbread, because Oliver likes it. The thing is that you can only buy Grasmere Gingerbread from one place, which is in Grasmere, obviously, and the recipe is a dreadful secret never to be revealed to anybody anywhere.
Oliver likes it very much. He has it at school, because the people who make it have got a boy in the fifth form there, and when he got home he requested a supply.
I don’t go to Grasmere very often, except when the staff from the Red Lion have been out nightclubbing and need to be taken home: and the gingerbread shop is not open then. I rang them up, and it turned out that we all knew each other anyway, because of a daughter in Lucy’s class, and so they very kindly offered to deliver it, which to their credit they did, a couple of hours later.
Lovely as it is to have hand-made, personally-delivered gingerbread my soul rebels at the very thought of purchasing biscuits. Biscuits are to be made, to our own specifications, and are supposed to include lots of the things that we all like, like lumps of chocolate and brown sugar and nuts.
I sampled a corner of the Grasmere Gingerbread and think that it does not have too much ginger but does include nutmeg. I am going to have a go as soon as I can stop trying to earn money after the weekend.
It will have to be Windermere Gingerbread, and will be even more exclusive than Grasmere Gingerbread, because it will be available only to Mark and the children and any visitors.
It is such a nuisance to have to earn a living. I think I would go completely mental if I were something like a banker who was expected to stay at work until ten o’clock at night and go for drinks with colleagues, and who had to pretend to be interested in working things.
No wonder I have finished up driving a taxi.
