VICTORIA SPONGE OR TEA IN A STORM KETTLE

Despite the best endeavours of assorted authority figures, I regret to admit that carelessness remains one of my stronger suits……and spelling one of my weaker ones. I was reminded of this fact specifically a couple of weeks ago. We were then discussing, were we not, over several posts in the Common Room, the possibility of a Purple Coo calendar, in which the braver souls among us might charitably parade in various states of dress …..or even undress.

Declaring that I wasn't a particularly brave soul, I said that, by chance, I had recently watched the film Calender (sic) Girls, again. The obvious and elementary spelling mistake has been preying on my mind ever since.

A calender (a spelling that I shall now add to my spell checker) was originally either a steam mangle, or a mendicant Dervish from Turkey, both of which meanings look as though they could have escaped from 'Call My Bluff' or, alternatively, one of the racier episodes of Mde Loufoque's chonicles.

Later calender came to mean the steel rollers between which cloth or paper was pressed and thus a calender girl might have been someone who operated the calender, rather than someone who took her clothes off in public for charity. Though a calender girl who happened to step too close to the calender might quickly find herself in the same condition of nakedness: smiling sweetly while groping for a large watering can.

Of course, neither calender with an 'e' or calendar with an 'a' should be confused with Callander, the Scottish town at the eastern entrance to the Trossachs and within, I suspect, hailing distance of HM's study.

But let us return to the (now correctly spelt) 'Calendar Girls.' You will remember that one of the early scenes features a Victoria sponge cake that embarrassingly wins first prize in a local WI derby, but which, for the usual motherly reasons of a hundred and one things to do before breakfast, had not been so much home-baked, but purchased from Marks and Spencer's.

This is not the place to criticise, just keep in mind, if you will, the deliciously light texture of that prize winning cake, the perfection of the sponge, the evenness of the baking, the delicate dusting of icing sugar, the inside reflecting the taste and colour of super-fresh, organic eggs.

Well, that is what I tasted today, sitting in a field on a camp stool in the deep countryside, the cake washed down with an admirable mug of tea brewed from a storm kettle and in the company of someone whom I call the Cake Maker who before today I had known only by sight but who, after an hour's chat over that heavenly cake, I would now count as a friend and would go a long way to meet again.

How did this come about? Well, most of us, I expect, being thoroughly domesticated, even in our mis-spent youths, no doubt built various sorts of rudimentary dwellings from whatever materials and with whatever assistance we could scrounge at the time. We built, dens, hideaways, shacks, sheds, tree houses out of cardboard, plywood, straw, corrugated iron, hessian sacks, blankets, sheets, timber stakes…….

I remember helping to build one deep in an artichoke thicket to shield it from prying eyes. It came complete with a little iron stove, which we found one day discarded in the hedgerow and persuaded some enterprising lad to carry back for us chez the artichokes. On this and in old tin cans we cooked potatoes and anything else we could dig out of the ground or steal from the kitchen. Such cooking would have passed no hygiene tests, but was more tasty than anything you could imagine and came with the added advantage of guaranteeing to its consumers a cast-iron immune system.

Well, I am glad to report that the practice of building 'dens' has not completely died out and we have indeed a rather superior one located only a few fields away. It is a family affair as it happens and is well constructed and furnished though so tiny that only two can enter at one time and on little more than hands and knees. I have been there many times. It is open to the public, if you know where it is. There is even a visitors book and a tub of sweeties (or a mince pie at Christmas) to speed you on your way.

Sadly, it falls prey occasionally to vandals and so when I noticed this morning that the door was open I hurried over to seen if everything was still in order. As it happened, the Cake Maker, herself, who as Mother of the gang that built the Den, now has the job of looking after it, was bent double and invisible behind the little wooden fence. She was planting out violas.

I introduced myself. "Let's have a cup of tea," she said, emerging from the Den with a magnificent storm kettle, which in case, like me, you haven't previously encountered one of these contrivances, looks like a rather large Thermos flask with a hole in the top and a spout on the side. Like a Thermos there are two tubes inside, one inside the other. The outer one holds the water and the inner one is a chimney. The bottom unscrews and in it you put paper, sticks and a few more sticks down the chimney. The fire catches, air rushes in through a vent, thoughtfully provided, and in no time at all you have a kettle of boiling water.

So we had our tea, seated outside in the sunshine, in the Den's little garden under the hawthorn tree. And then the Cake Maker - who is, as it happens, a real Cake Maker - produced that delicious sponge. And we chatted, and we chatted and in less than an inkling an hour had passed and I found that I had consumed two cups of tea and eaten two slices of cake.

Who could imagine so much pleasure from a shed, a cup of tea, a cake and a chat?