Old Dean Community Fun Day

By the time I'd turned it upside down and trowelled on the icing, I convinced myself the coffee & walnut cake looked acceptable enough to donate to St Martin's refreshments stall at the Old Dean Community Fun Day today, along with the gluten-free/dairy-free fruit cake.  The chocolate sponge cake is for Vicky's birthday.

Cake-wreck

I do a fair bit of gluten-free baking, successfully adapting recipes, but this time I followed the recipe faithfully as I hadn't tried making  a coffe & walnut cake before.  Here's the very sad result!  It was supposed to be for the Community Fun Day tomorrow (I've volunteered to help with the refreshments).  Do you think anyone will notice if I just fill up the well with coffee icing?

Arundel Arts Festival

On occasions when we've driven past Arundel and seen the castle on the skyline, a friend and I have commented it would be nice to visit one day.  A few weeks ago I googled and noticed there is an Arts Festival in the town in August, where the whole town becomes an Art Gallery.  An opportunity too good to miss!

I drove us down on Saturday.  We arrived about 10 am and left the car in the Norfolk Arms car park (where we'd booked overnight accommodation), had a coffee in a coffee shop and then strolled up the hill to the castle. I took lots of photos but I think these two are probably my favourites.

In the afternoon we went from house to house on the Art Gallery trail - people in the town open their homes to visitors and display the entries in the various competition categories: photography, sculpture, prints, jewellery, ceramics ... a very enjoyable experience altogether.

Besides the artwork, there are plenty of other festival happenings over the course of the 10 days, including free music concerts in the town square and elsewhere.  So much to do and to see, I think we may well go back next year.

Where in the world?

A friend rang yesterday feeling a bit jaded and wanting to be taken away from it all for a day.  I did some research and chose an inspirational place to visit.  Take a close look at the photo and see if you can work out where we went.

If you thought we jetted off to see the Sistine Chapel in Rome, it would be entirely understandable.  In fact we only went as far as the south coast of England.  In a suburb of Worthing called Goring-by-Sea in the English Martyrs Catholic Church there is the only known reproduction of Michelangelo's famous work.

Magic Summer Live

There were some magic moments at the Magic Summer Live concert, but sadly not enough for me to feel it was worth the price of the 'VIP' ticket.  My discontent began on the way in to the grounds of Hatfield House, when the car park marshalls and stewards didn't seem to be particularly interested or informed on the parking arrangements.  Even before the music began, I passed a group of concert-goers complaining it was the worst concert they'd ever been to in terms of organisation. Then there was the weather.  For a supposedly summer's day, it couldn't have been much worse!  The sky is deceptive in the first photo - notice rather the multi-coloured mushrooms.  Occasionally there was a little ray of sunshine in between the cloudbursts, but mostly it was wet, windy and increasingly cold as the afternoon gave way to evening.

It should have been a wonderful experience - the line-up was fantastic:  Wonderland, The Pierce's, The Overtones, Rumer, The Lighthouse Family, Sir Elton John OBE, along with the cast of some of the current West End Theatre productions:  We Will Rock You, Wicked, Mamma Mia and so on.  There were two stages, with a staggered programme so that the excerpts from musicals on one stage interspersed the groups playing on the other.  Sadly even the quality of the music couldn't outweigh the disappointment of finding that the VIP seating was at a vast distance from the main stage and out of sight of the West End stage.

But don't take my word for it, here's a link to a review by Backstage Pass

Ignore the blue sky - notice instead the umbrellas 

Even this camera couldn't quite capture a good shot of Sir Elton John

I liked this couple dancing. Yeah, I'm a romantic at heart

This gorgeous little girl, captivated by Rumer

Rumer 

The Pierce's

The Overtones

The Overtones - in a moment of sunshine

Wonderland

Wonderland

Old Dean Common

This evening I went for a walk over the common and was delighted to see a young male roe deer.  He was grazing about fifty feet away, glancing up to look at me now and then to check I wasn't a threat.  I stood still and watched a while, until he decided it was time to go and sprang neatly over the wire fence, quickly vanishing from sight in the woods.

The wire fences around the common are a new feature to contain the cattle that have been introduced as an environmental measure. http://odcog.org/whatsnew.aspx  I saw them last time I went for an evening walk over the common.  I could hear something large moving towards me but at first I didn't know what it was as it was obscured from view by shrubs and trees.  Then the lead bullock caught sight of me at the same time I saw him.  Curiously, solemnly, we stood and looked at each other until the other bullocks caught up with him.  They also spared a glance my way before lowering their heads to the lush green grass in the clearing.  Surrounded by his herd, the lead bullock also lowered his head and began to graze, moving forward step by step as he did so.

I enjoyed both of these encounters with grazing animals.

Last weekend I had a lovely stay with my daughter in Bradley Stoke (near Bristol).  This juvenile blackbird is a regular visitor to her garden - it appears to have some sort of deformity, or possibly a tumour on the neck, but nonetheless seems able to feed and to fly normally.

No Tool like an Old Tool

The bees love these poppies

Thirty six years ago I was getting ready to leave home to move into the Halls of Residence at the place I studied as an Undergraduate.  I bought a load of kitchen equipment, including a potato peeler.  It was my faithful tool until I had to retire it last week when it finally fell apart in my hands.  Now I'm trying to find a replacement, and it's not proving easy.  Here is the one  I bought from the shop I always think of as 'the expensive kitchenware shop'.  It happened to be very cheap, only £1.99, but it looked of a similar design: stainless steel, with a swivel blade.  

Sadly that handle isn't as ergonomically designed as my original tool - the poor finish on the edge of the metal means it cuts into your hand as you're peeling.  As the saying goes, there's no tool like an old tool.  I'm still in the market for a decent peeler, so if you see one, let me know.

Changing the subject, at St Martin's cafe today it was a pleasant distraction sitting outside in the sun watching the bees busy on the poppies.