Warm comfort

We have some strange requests.
Tuna and chilli jacket potatoes.
Ham salads without the salad.
Skinny latte and the biggest piece of chocolate cake we have.
Yesterday we were asked for hot water.
Or rather we were asked if we would fill a lady's hot water bottle.
She'd come straight from the dentist after having a tooth out.
She sat smiling, cradling the hwb to her cheek.
I hope cake didn't have anything to do with the extraction....

Home forts from abroad

In late afternoon a group of German students came in. They drank cappuccinos (cappuccini?) and ate coffee and walnut cake and Tyrells crisps.
Then their teachers arrived and drank coffee and ate scones.
No one ordered tea.
Two of the girls left a message in the visitors' book surrounded by hearts: Sweet garden and we love your castle.

Them apples

Bank Holiday Monday went well.
Apart from the fact that we ran out of panini in the first fifteen minutes.
Poorer weather didn't affect us too much because of the Art & Craft Exhibition running in the Church. Thank goodness.
I had a confusing conversation with a man who'd just finished a piece of apple cake. He asked me if there was jam in it. I checked what he'd had. No. No jam.
His daughter giggled and said he was trying to get the recipe out of me.
"I'm 90," he said, "and I make cakes just for myself so I want to know if it's real apples in there or apple jam." The penny started falling...No. The apples are Worcestershire ones. No jam involved. 
He wanted more.
Do you cook them before they go in?
I explained that the cakes were made by Angela in Abberley and there's no way she'd tell me her recipe but I'd guess they went in raw.
He took her card and is going to call her to beg her method.
I don't fancy his chances.

Bread and Whine

That was the busiest day of the season (so far?).

Off to bed to recharge for Bank Holiday Monday. Although the forecast looks really dodgy.
Whatever happens we won't be serving many panini tomorrow. I thought I'd ordered enough for three days (our bakers aren't working Bank Hols) but we only have four left.

My feet ache.

In stock

We are bursting at the seams with cake and milk and cream and strawberries. In the last week I've had dozens of deliveries. We are not going to run out of local apple juice. We shall have enough jacket spuds. I've cooked two hams today. Phil the cheese has brought me SIX half moons of his Elgar Mature for the ploughmans.
The fridges are working overtime.
This weekend is the last Bank Hol of our season and we have to be prepared despite what the weather people say. There's an art and craft exhibition in the Church all weekend which will draw a crowd.
Am hoping the crowd members will be desperate for a cuppa.
I also have a new gluten and dairy free cake with which to tempt them. It's Lemon and Courgette and crumbs it's bloomin' good. I accidentally cut a piece so badly today that I had to eat it.
Strange how these accidents occur.

Someone's written in the visitors' book: "try the gluten free cake even if you don't need to".

This Is Your Life. Parts I and II

Another busy one despite an astonishing downpour late morning.
It was panini-central again - the kind of day when i think it would be useful to have a larger panini machine. Or a second one.
Yesterday I'd been surprised when my former boss and his wife turned up on the way home to London "from seeing Everton beat Man United". 
Today a woman approached the counter and called me Gillian which means one of two things. Either she knows my Dad (who only ever calls me by my full name) or she was from my school days before I took to introducing myself as Gill. I know it's only marginally better but it's all in the margins.
Anyway.
Standing before me was my high school PE teacher. The woman who 30 years ago wrote on my school report that I was very "timid" on the hockey field. A true understatement since I never turned up for hockey. I had a piano lesson instead (in which I was equally timid. Or bored).
Anyway.
She had a cappuccino and a piece of millionaire's shortbread and went and sat outside in the sunshine. 
We chatted for ages and as she left I told her I was surprised she could remember me given how rubbish I was at all sport and physical education.
She said she remembered me because I was "effervescent".
Wow, I thought, and went back into the kitchen to tell Freda.
"Effervescent," said Freda, "What? Like Andrews liver salts?"

No wonder she remembered me if I had the same effect. 

Tea and Jerusalem

This has been WI week.
On Monday we hosted a tea party for the Great Witley group as well as the Salwarpe members. Two separate groups in the same conservatory.
Then yesterday Fernhill Heath WI  managed to take their  tea and scones outside.
All  using the china teacups and saucers (and tea plates)  I gathered for the wedding last year.
It made me quite nervous serving afternoon tea to the queens of cake.
We got away with it though.

Today should have been quiet. It poured with rain.
Shows what I know.