Wedding Cake - Celebration

A cake is a recognised symbol of any celebration and has been for centuries. A wedding cake has always been a traditional centre piece to the occasion of a marriage, but it has taken different forms. Originally called 'Bride's Pie', it was a savoury dish and the main food shared by guests. There would sometimes be a 'Groom's Cake', which was a dark, rich fruit cake described as heavily laden with liquor. Over time, the savoury pie gave way to sweet cake, sugar coated and often tiered. The whiteness and refinement of the sugar and the number of tiers, was a sign of wealth.

The term 'Royal Icing' came from Queen Victoria's wedding cake. She wanted pure white icing to match her wedding gown and the icing had to be strong to hold the tiers.

Wedding cakes take many styles, becoming an artistic feature, like layered cupcakes of different flavours and assorted colours. Fruitcake, chocolate, carrot and sponge can all have a place. Instead of building tiers supported by posts, cakes can be placed one on top of another, or separated on to cake stands of various heights and linked together by ribbon.

My, or should I say, our, wedding cake was as special as it could be. It was made for us as a gift by a lovely lady, the mother of a long-standing friend. Her kindness and generosity meant a great deal. The cake, traditional dark fruitcake, in tiers, iced in ivory with pale peach sugar flowers and silver coloured tiny charms, was a breath-taking work of art. It tasted delicious and was commented on for years. 

A Good Wedding Cake

4lb of love

1/2lb of sweet temper

1lb of butter of youth

1lb of blindness of faults

1lb of pounded wit

1lb of good humour

2lbs of sweet argument

1 pint of rippling laughter

1 wine glass of common sense

A dash of modesty

Put the love, good looks and a sweet temper into a well-furnished house.

Beat the butter of youth into a cream and mix well together with the blindness of faults.

Stir the pounded wit and good humour into the sweet argument, then add the rippling laughter and common sense.

Work the whole together until everything is well mixed and bake gently for ever.

                                                                                                                     Anonymous

Thanks for reading. Pam x

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My Bedside Table - My Space

A mock Tiffany lamp with a dimmer feature sits on top of my bedside table, which is a fitted unit matching the headboard. A Mr and Mrs pair of teddy bears from the Outer Hebrides and dressed in authentic Harris tweed occupy the remaining space.

Below this, my bedside table is a work of art in the style of Tracey Emin’s unmade bed. The clutter is contained within the small area, and I know where everything is. It’s functional and how I like it. A biography of Agatha Christie, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, a couple of poetry collections and a fantasy/horror novel make a tower of books topped with a notebook, a journal and a box of tissues. It never looks balanced or neat. Hand cream, an assortment of pens, a bookmark made by a child and another with ‘Desiderata’ on it, a straw coaster, plastic water bottle and just enough room for my phone which I rely on for an alarm. Don’t mention the dust.

Half a dozen perfumes, mainly Christian Dior are grouped together on an internal shelf. I have no sense of smell anymore, but I remember my favourites and still use them. Also on the shelf is a small torch, just in case. A jewellery box which belonged to my late mother and contains some of her things, special to me, takes up the rest of the shelf.

I keep my glasses in the drawer, with several spare pairs, a few charging cables for various devices and an iPod Shuffle music thingy full of Moody Blues albums which I take on holidays.

Beneath the drawer is an open space where keepsakes and bits and pieces are safe in a perfectly fitting box.

I would love a tidy, minimalistic bedside table. It will never be, not in my busy house.

My Haiku,

I do not lose things
They’re on my bedside table
With everything else.

It’s only some keys,
They will be under something
Not exactly lost.

A crumpled tissue,
Used for cleaning my glasses
Had covered them up.

PMW 2025

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Elephants - Jumbo Jet

 

My recent travels have taken me to Cheshire, Yorkshire and Scotland over the last five or six weeks. Most of it has been during some of the warmest summer weather and at each location  I’ve benefitted from the comfort of my long, loose-fitting, printed skirts. I’m not really one for wearing a skirt but I’ll make an exception to stay cool. I don’t like to get dressed up either, so these are perfect with a tee-shirt.  The appeal, besides the easy-wear, easy-travel fabric is the print of decorated elephants creating a circular pattern.  Yesterday I added to my collection when I couldn’t resist an elephant-print dress in a sale.  This was me not supposed to be buying for myself but life’s too short.

I like elephants. I haven’t got a problem with their trunks up or down, facing doors inwards or outwards, or any other associated superstitions. My grandmother is probably wagging her finger at me from the after-life. Birds are surely worse, aren’t they, Nanna?

Elephants crossing the promenade used to be a pleasing feature of my drive to work in the summer. In those days I lived in South Shore and worked in North Shore. My preferred route, in my Austin A40 a long time ago, was to get on to the front at Harrowside and enjoy the sea views all the way up. I tried to time it in order to reach Central Promenade when the circus elephants were being escorted out of Blackpool Tower for a walk on the beach and a dip in the sea, depending on the tide. Many times I queued as they plodded across the road, trunk to tail, enormous and magnificent, and wished I was in the first car.

Information from WWF websites: Both African and Indian elephants are classed as endangered species. Illegal activity in poaching and ivory trading goes on and for African elephants there has been a loss of natural habitat due to the expansion of the human population and land being used for agriculture. The WWF is working towards preventing both these situations from worsening. 

To end on a lighter note, I found this poem by Spike Milligan,

 

Jumbo Jet  

 I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,

     I said ‘You don’t belong in here,’ he said ‘I beg your pardon?’,
     I said ‘This place is England, what are you doing here?’,
     He said ‘Ah, then I must be lost’ and then ‘Oh dear, oh dear’.

‘I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti’s Plain’,

     ‘Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?’.
    He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing Lane,
    And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.

The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small,

     So they tied him to a lamp-post and he slept against the wall.
     But as the policemen lay sleeping by the twinkling light of dawn,
     The lamp-post and the wall were there, but the elephant was gone!

So if you see an elephant, in a Jumbo Jet,

     You can be sure that Africa’s the place he’s trying to get!

Spike Milligan  (1918-2002)

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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