Candles and Pink Sugar

We decided to celebrate Di’s birthday with a shopping trip. She came over and we set out en masse for Bath, losing ourselves in the recesses of the Charlotte Street long stay car park whence Elder Daughter appeared, glued to her mobile giving us Sat Nav instructions of which exit to take and where to cross the road. Where would we be without mobiles? Lost, clearly.

No matter, a marching band comes up the street, wearing strange uniforms reminiscent, it seems to me, of the IRA. They are playing all the usual brass instruments including xylophones arranged vertically, which look very pretty, but as they are tall I would have thought must rather obstruct the forward vision of the marcher.

When they get closer I see they all look about fourteen. This is confirmed when one stops and spends five minutes doing up his shoe lace. he is trying to figure out whether left goes under right or over it. Bless!

No sooner does this band disappear round the corner than another one hoves into view. Bath is obviously pulling out the stops for us. We hurry round the corner and out of the envelope of clashing sound.

First stop then, Marks and Spencers, for a mild, mid-morning, carbohydrate overdose washed down by cappuccino, or in the Di and Elder Daughter conspiracy, a frozen latte. Suitably fortified we embark on the serious business of clocking stores. M & S, certainly, then Gap, Monsoon, Country Casuals, Hampstead Bazaar, Rossiters pausing only to admire the new Bath spa.

Here you can swim, apparently, ‘sous les belles étoiles’ in water heated in the bowels of the earth. You lie on your back and float as the steam rises into the blackness of the night; the sensation being made even weirder by placing the pool on the third floor of the building so that the effect is, so says Elder Daughter, as if you are floating above the town like something out of Peter Pan. I must say it did seem excellent value for £20 the two hours.

A final flurry into Waitrose, buying a little bit of this and that so I can justify some cash back to replenish the reserves, sorely pressed on account of the past couple of hours. Actually I haven’t bought much - a Bridgewater cereal bowl, just to show willing, but then I found myself passing the tempting Julian Graves shop crammed with every kind of dried fruit and nut and ginger and chocolate that you can imagine. And all in sensible kilo or half-kilo bags. So I feared that I should be stranded on the wrong side of the Severn Bridge without a top-up.

They are always so nice in Waitrose about cash back that you feel positively embarrassed about asking. I wonder each time what is the most tactful way of approaching the subject. Should I go to pay with cash, pull out a battered fiver and exclaim, ‘Oh dear I thought I had more than that?’ How much can you ask for without seeming greedy?

Still we are now fully loaded and struggle to the car park where of course we have lost the car. It is starting to rain and we are hungry. Elder Daughter saves the day and she was not even there when we parked. We head southwards towards Frome, making a diversion on the outskirts to the Frome Farm Shop for even more stocking up with fresh organic comestibles and esoteric bread flour. Surreptitiously, I buy a Victoria Sponge Cake.

We arrive after taking the scenic route down the hill into Frome Town centre and the up the other side. Frome is a town where no-one has a heart condition. Those that did have one have long since been accounted for by those hills; the remainder are fitter than anyone else in the country. It’s the visitors like us I worry about.

Elder Daughter’s husband has made vegetable soup. We produce a bottle of wine. There is home-made bread and then cheese and fruit. It is time to produce the cake. “Find some candles, I tell ED, in my most parental manner.

“I haven’t any,” she says, returning empty handed.

“Have you a scented candle, I say becoming desperate, “or a even a night light?”

She rummages furiously among the kitchen drawers, finally finding what look like three night lights. They are a fetching blue, pink and green and without their aluminium holders.

They’ll do. We put them on the cake and light them. They burn at a great pace. Di takes a big breath and collapses with laughter. “I can’t remember the last time I had a cake with candles,” she pleads.

“Blow,” we command imperiously. “Then we shall sing.”

She blew, we sang Happy Birthday and then we all laughed. And then it as time to go and, yes, thanks to Waitrose, we even had money for the Severn Bridge.

Photo shows ED and Di