Tag: cake

Poppy’s Baptism

Dump haul

This morning we took the remnants of the wheelbarrows photographed yesterday to the Efford Recycling Centre. As usual, we returned with more than we dumped. Today’s haul was two sets of wrought iron gates, a lawn aerator, and a mirror. Can anyone guess what the gates are for?

Chris NZ, Kate, Matt, Poppy, Tess, Jackie, Claire, JoMatt, Tess and PoppyDerrick, Jackie and Poppy

This afternoon Jackie drove us to Mat and Tess’s home in Upper Dicker for Poppy’s Baptism. We gathered with other relatives in their flat above the village shop, then went outside for group photographs on the village green, before proceeding to Holy Trinity Parish Church for the ceremony. Naturally the infant in whose honour we had assembled had a good cry, thus delaying the making of pleasant photographs. Many local friends turned out for the occasion.

In the group photo above, Tess’s sister in law, Kate and her husband Chris are to our left of Matthew, Jackie peers round Tess’s mother Claire, and Jo, one of the godparents stands on our right.

Rev David Farey playing guitar

It is not often that an Anglican Christening is begun by a guitar-playing vicar leading the singing of Amazing Grace, but that is what the reverend David Farey gave us today. When he performed the baptism he was compelled to raise his voice to combat Poppy’s yelling.

Poppy

Back at the shop we enjoyed Tess’s usual high standard of catering. We were given pizzas, sausage rolls, quiches, crisps, and a deliciously moist iced fruit cake made by Tess’s mother Claire, who had come from New Zealand to help out for a while. She had also made Poppy’s silk dress.

Cake cuttingToasting Poppy

Tess led the toasts, and we all enjoyed conversation for a hour or so.

Our return journey was hampered by the A27 being closed in two places, necessitating long diversions. Our ex coach driver friend, Barrie, had provided us with a very entertaining CD offering a pretty route to Upper Dicker, but as this would take us up to two hours longer to make the journey, we didn’t try it today, although it is possible that our diversions overlapped with some of it.

Ruby

Misty morning

Slowly, mist dispersed from the garden as we drank our morning coffee.

Jackie drove us to The First gallery for midday where we joined the party celebrating the fortieth year of the artwork exhibitions at the home of Margery and Paul. This was a very happy occasion with friends gathered by this mother and son over a lifetime. We are pleased to be counted members of this honoured group.

In keeping with the theme there was a ruby coloured beetroot soup with a number of other ingredients. The ingenious Paul had devised a method of topping the soup with a creamy Ruby soupSoup with female symbol40. This was done with sterilised garden wire dipped into the mixture and laid on rather like the shamrock sprayed onto the head of a pint of Guinness by dextrous bar staff. I was fortunate enough to be presented with a perfect specimen, but they didn’t all come out like that. One young woman decided that hers, also including a lentil version looked like the female symbol which she invited me to photograph.

We had all been invited to bring an inflated red balloon. On arrival we were informed that there would be a prize for the last person to hold an unburst one. The secret was to keep yours out of the way of broach pins and forks, toasting or otherwise. Leo, the youngest member of the group clung to his two until the very end.Leo and his Mum

Margery had made a splendid selection of small snacks and a superb chocolate sponge The First cakecake which formed the centrepiece of the desserts table which was soon emptied.  She made the first half cut Cake cuttingacross and directed Paul to complete it. He was, after all, part of the partnership and moreover had decorated it. We toasted the pair with Champagne heavily laced with cranberry juice. One guest was keen to help our hostess protect her balloon. MargeryElizabeth, in the foreground of this picture, didn’t have a red balloon, so she painted the legend: ‘I AM RED HONEST’ on  hers.

Leo was very quiet throughout, but the conversation at one point did turn to methods of preventing small babies from disturbing parents’ slumber. When Jackie told us a story about one of the elderly ladies she had cared for thirty years ago, a tongue twister competition ensued. This client’s childhood would have gone back to the end of the nineteenth century when her mother had the perfect antidote to nighttime tears. She would make a ‘tea’ with a ‘penn’orth of poppy heads from the apothecary’. Quite a lot of spluttering accompanied somewhat inebriated efforts to repeat this.

It was quite close to sunset as the party broke up and we all went home. Driving due West into a magnificent sunset Jackie turned off the M27 taking the Fawley road, in an effort to get me into the forest before the sun disappeared. She didn’t quite manage that, but, as Sunsey BeaulieuSunset Dibden PurlieuSunset Beaulieu RiverSunset Hatchet Pondso often, the shots were more attractive with clouds lit from below. The pools on the heathland near Debden Purlieu, the Beaulieu River, and Hatchet Pond all added their reflective charm to the views. This was perhaps the perfect close to a ruby day.

By the time Jackie dropped me at Milford on Sea so that I could walk home via the cliff top and Shorefield, darkness had set in, but there was just enough light reflecting off The Sunset with cow parsleySunset over The SolentSolent for me to catch a bit more of sundown along the coast. As I walked up the dimly lit Downton Lane I removed my black waterproof coat and carried it so that the headlights of oncoming traffic could gleam on my buff sports jacket.

After the spread laid on at The First, a small bowl of Jackie’s chicken jalfrezi and egg fried rice accompanied by the last of the Cotes du Rhone Villages (red, of course) wine sufficed for our evening sustenance.