Snapshot: Losing it in Lostwithiel
"Remember, if anyone asks – we are a nice, normal family!" This is what the jokey placard in a high-street card shop says, and it makes me think of this picture. It was taken in Port Quin in Cornwall during a somewhat stressful family holiday in August last year. It was stressful because our daughter Clementine, 10, seated on my knee, was suffering from a nasty spate of epileptic seizures at the time and wasn't really enjoying life, let alone a holiday.
We were there with our other two daughters, Lucy, 13, and Pippi, two, and our dog Jasper. My husband, Andrew, and I were the glue trying to keep the worlds of toddler, teenager and very poorly little girl together – with varying degrees of exhaustion and success. Anxiety and sheer joy were mixed emotions, like salt and vinegar on seaside chips.
This holiday will long be remembered as the holiday when "Dad lost it in Lostwithiel" when we parked in a disabled bay and a rather angry man bawled us out for parking there, without even looking for our Blue Badge displayed correctly on the dashboard. In return, he received a guided tour of our car, children, wheelchair and oxygen cylinder from my emotional husband, while our teenager hid with her head in a towel.
This picture is on our wall at home and reminds me of the need for balance. It inspired me to look into respite care for a few weeks a year so that we could have a "holiday" holiday. This picture reminds us of the need to build family narratives, for family time is precious and childhoods disappear quickly.
Victoria James
Playlist: The elusive little red cloak
Please, Please Don't Eat the Daisies by Doris Day
Please, please don't eat the daisies, / don't eat the daisies, please, please. / Here I am waitin' and anticipatin' / the kisses that I'll get from you.
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When I was a child, new clothes were a longed-for treat that were bought only for special occasions. At Whitsuntide, all the small girls would be bought new party or summer frocks. The tradition was that we then went knocking on our neighbour's doors to show off our finery and it was customary to be given a few pence, maybe a threepenny bit or even a silver sixpence, if you were lucky.
I remember the daisies popping up in all the gardens on those May days and Doris Day's Please, Please, Don't Eat the Daisies was a hit on the radio. I only knew one line, but happily sang it over and over again.
Besides a carpet of daisies, May also brought "church walking days", when the girls wore wear white dresses and veils and carry colourful posies.
I was about nine when I first spotted a procession of girls wearing red cloaks tied round their shoulders. I fell in love with these little cloaks and wanted to know what I had to do to get one.
My mother discovered that the girls were from an afterschool social group called the Agnesians, after the child martyr St Agnes. The good news was that I was old enough to join. I loved the meetings and I was also filled with the happy anticipation that, the following May, I would also be eligible to wear a little red cloak.
Alas it was not to be. A couple of months before the longed-for parade my family moved to the leafier suburbs of Cheshire. The new church and school I attended did not have an Agnesian group and my dream of wearing the little red cloak never materialised.
Fifty years on, every Whitsuntide, I still feel a hint of disappointment, but it is always overshadowed by the annual appearance of the daisies popping up, which still makes me smile and hum that Doris Day song.
Carol Warham
We love to eat: Milly's muffins
Ingredients
3 tbsp cocoa powder
250g sugar
250g butter
2 tsp vanilla flavouring
4 medium eggs
250g self-raising flour
Chocolate chips (optional)
2 tsp vanilla flavouring
Preheat the oven to 180C / gas mark 4.
Put the cocoa powder in small bowl and slowly pour in some hot water, mixing to make a thick, glossy paste. Leave to cool. In a mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter, then add the cocoa mixture and the vanilla flavouring and beat well. Add the eggs and flour, and beat. Add chocolate chips if you like. Spoon into muffin cases – we use two dessertspoons per case. Use a muffin tray for a good shape. Bake for 20 minutes, then turn out and leave to cool on a wire rack. Decorate if desired.
We have used this recipe in our family ever since we had children. It produces a moist, delicious cake that is far better than anything you can buy. We use it to make birthday cakes (just divide the mixture between two cake sponge tins) and everyone in the house has a birthday cake made from it.
This recipe is easy to make, even for quite young children. One Sunday morning, we were awoken early by a delicious smell. Our daughter Milly, who is now 13 but was then about eight, was standing like an apparition, with a large bowl full of cake batter. She had woken early and decided to have go at the recipe.
We put the oven on and had "Milly's muffins" for breakfast. She enjoyed licking the bowl too. It really was her recipe after that and we renamed it in her honour. Milly's latest batch of muffins is pictured above.
Lesley Leeds
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