Tuesday 1st March 2016

The Gay Mother is now officially a phenomenon. Last Monday she attended a garden meeting and was on her feet from 10.30 until lunchtime, then lunched and remained to discuss Estate affairs until gone 3pm, before self-driving to her own home. On Tuesday, she marketed and recipe-ed, including inspecting rhubarb in the covered market in quite a severe way, before on Wednesday taking 92 years, which involved floral tributes arriving every minute so she was out in the freezing cold flower processing area, arranging, then bringing vases and bowls of flowers into the drawing room. We lunched on the day at the Michelin-starred gourmet gastro in our family village where we’re all buried. The Gay Mother has now graduated to a full three-courses plus champagne and wine, whereas two years ago at her 90th it was no first course and hardly a drop. Cousin Smurry and she had a remarkable pink rhubarb pudding. Last year, you may recall,in the same gastro a trio of rhubarb dessert bled off the rimless plate and marked my bone slacks – left a whitish blotch. So now we know that rhubarb bleaches. We were lunching until 4pm and thrilled with it all. This food is gourmet and bizarre  but robust and flavoursome.

The next day we were out in the mud taking photographs for a secret purpose; then there was more flower-arranging as well as actual outdoor gardening.

The Brie with Turnip 1st Course

The Eel Starter

The Pink Rhubarb Fantasy