Sitting at the kitchen window on the 3rd floor of a London flat yesterday I observed with astonishment the capers of a dog and a fox in the garden below.Feeling slightly dazed which of course had nothing to do with the bottle of wine the night before......I thought I must be hallucinating. But no,the dog was running up and down the garden,barking madly all the time in the excitement of heading off this urban fox from his patch. The fox,obviously totally oblivious to the concept of a chase decided after about 10 minutes that this was rather tiresome and gracefully leapt up onto the top of the very high garden wall and proceeded to run daintily along it for 5 minutes until he got bored of bating the dog and leapt into the adjacent garden and disappeared. The dog looked rather disappointed and retreated for breakfast and so did I.
Back in Herefordshire today and it is the much longed for Red Nose Day. Not by me I hasten to add but by the Pink Lovely aged 7, who had, I am told, carefully laid out all her clothes, red nose and £1.00 coin for school today at least 3 days ago! She had been on count-down ever since! Apparently, the excitement of not wearing school uniform was almost more than she can bear! Sweet! When we arrived at school this morning you will not be surprised to hear that nearly the entire year 3 was in......yes..... PINK. Rather a shock to the system at that time of the morning.
Sunday morning,a day of rest............Well not exactly! Having watched the Royal Upstairs Downstairs last night on iplayer the Pink Lovely had decided that we should make the exact shortbread that was made in this Scone Palace episode for Queen Victoria's visit. She dutifully copied down nearly all the recipe while watching a repeat and this morning on entering the kitchen I was haled by the entire set of ingredients and utensils all carefully laid out ready for immediate action! This is not easy before breakfast but when you have to translate ounces into grams and guess the amount of butter to use,it is quite nerve racking! My 1936 copy of Mrs Beeton was ceremoniously brought down off the shelf and the recipe located for Scottish shortbread to give me a clue as to how much butter to use. Rather surprisingly, we have a huge tray of gorgeous shortbread but unfortunately I cannot remember how much butter I lobbed in! So it can never be repeated! A Royal Treat indeed!........................
