I've been living in a state of dreaming

 

Summer flowers are in full swing.

All colour and highly scented like morally loose women.

The temptation is too much for my poor customers.

sometimes i feel like the woman out of Chocolat or a pimp

whichever

The outtakes

from a thing.

The customer is not always right

sometimes you just have to smile so so sweetly and say

"Tesco is just across the way, they will have what you are looking for"

 Kill them with kindness.

Then i spilt my quinoa salad all over the floor

that will teach them.

and they'll meet one day

 

far away and say
I wish you I knew you
I wish I knew you before

 Mr Rock n Roll

Philadelphus was the star of the weekend, jugs full of the stuff, woven into head garlands, thrown into vases, it's scent beguiling all who came into the shop.

It was the only thing flowering in my garden........

Also mackerel roasted in a hot oven stuffed with fennel and lime, chilli and sea salt scattered, an attempt to get eating habits back on track. The wedding season is a smorgasbord of bread and crisps otherwise.

and thank you to BBC2 for putting George Clooney on whilst the football played out.

and I have also learnt to say no to work, enormously liberating.

Today the streets are being scrubbed, and weeded in preparation for the Olympic torch, the actual one, what with The Queen and Freddie Flintoff, it's quite a summer here.

you know Freddie, the one from the Morrison's adverts, wears white, quite good with balls.

Nigella Lawson is not a domestic goddess

Today is the 30th birthday of my beautiful and talented friend Clara.

She came to stay last weekend, I made her a cake, because you can't have a birthday without cake, it's the law.

A Nigella Lawson recipe, her Birthday custard sponge cake.

I love Nigella, I preferred her in her Vogue days, rather than the parody she has become, but nobody pulls off a Vivienne Westwood dress quite like her, and she has nice hair and good use of eyeliner. Although Claudia Winkleman is my all time hair/ good use of eyeliner heroine.

I just wish, somebody in her home economics team checked her recipes. There is invariably a step missing, the quantities are way out, or an oven temperature is wrong.

This doesn't matter in the slightest for most things, I rarely stick to a recipe anyway, rather like with the Satnav, I always think I know best. The arrogance.

With this recipe it is the chocolate topping, it makes enough for 26 cakes.

The cake was good, suitably kitsch, but add a drop of vanilla extract to the sponge mix, and halve the topping amounts, and let it cool before applying it to the cake, and ignore the bit at the beginning of the recipe that says add ALL the ingredients, she means all the sponge ingredients.

Serve with a dark and stormy.

also Chaukah candles make great birthday candles.

also tomorrow i am making many corsages, buttonholes and hair garlands for prom. Yes prom, for those former SHS girls incredulous that there is a prom, i know. It's the U5th, did we have a ball then? do i remember something about kissing boys in the quad?

All the boys are loving this image.

Flower School

I must learn to take more photographs

I love that everyone leaves with confidence, baskets of flowers and wearing a head dress they made themselves.

Laughter, Pinot and pizza shared along the way.

Details of other courses are here, more dates will need to be added to satisfy demand, so email if you would like to come along at some point, and we'll work something out.

and yes, there is always a head dress.

amongst the chatter of life and loves, there was talk of how wonderful it is to just do something completely different for the day.

I would love to do something creative for the day that didn't involve flowers or weddings.

I have a hankering for learning how to turn wood.

Probably after watching this. 

I am open to suggestions, Miss P. does........

a lot like that column in Tatler years ago.

Don't say Dallas.

Dreaming

we've both got so much to lose
but here in your arms it's heaven
i can wait for you now but not forever
 i was surprised by how happy i was
don't ask why it's just because
down by the harbour in the dawn
it's not a star it's a satellite
the thought of it keeps me from sleeping
or am i already dreaming?

Do you know of Allo, Darlin'? it's what i call Super 8 music.
The soundtrack to sunny days, with bicycles and straw hats and picnics, a life lead on Super 8. although the video is actually freezing cold London

Carnations, and fabric that isn't CK, and some birds, and a message in a bottle, and a pewter hound.
and an open gardens with chickens and peaches, and step over apple trees, and standard wisteria, but it was the scent of of the honeysuckle that had me. Simple pleasures, a reminder of my late grandmother. 

Top tip, when leaving an open garden, and you bid farewell to the owner, and he asks if you liked the garden, don't say

" yes, i would love to cut it all down and put it in a vase"

I will never forget his look of horror. Gardeners and florists are so very very different.

and Dave and Julie came from Leeds to meet The Hound.

For once he behaved, and did his 2 tricks.

Sit and paw, that's all he does, we will never win Britain's got talent.