I've often mentioned the fabulous (and ridiculously underpriced ) celebration cakes made by our old friend and colleague Jan Harbon. Whenever we've had a big event in our lives Jan has turned up trumps with something beautifully creative and highly original.
Like this beautiful strawberry creation made for our daughter Sarah's thirtieth. Each of the strawberries and every leaf and flower was made individually and the butterflies looked amazingly real.
When we celebrated Rose's arrival there was this gorgeous cake made up with alphabet blocks, children's toys and, of course, roses.
And on my 60th there was this cake celebrating my metal detecting hobby when Jan recreated many of my detecting finds in icing - a truly remarkable feat.
But Jan has now taken things to a new level. I was checking out her recent Facebook posts and saw a link to her grandson's birthday cake. It's not just a cake, it's a true masterpiece that would not have looked out of place amongst the competitors in the Hotelympia Salon Culinaire. Check out this click here and see how good she is. I know that Jan is planning to make The Cake Shed Southport a business rather than a hobby so please keep her details in mind for your special celebration.
While I was watching Jan's video of her cake I remembered how I used to spend time in between taking phone calls at work watching videos on YouTube and embedding the best in my blog. I haven't had time to do this since I retired but after spending a day with our lovely granddaughter Catherine yesterday and seeing her laugh so much I remembered this one.
We managed to get out to the cinema for the first time in a couple of weeks today when we travelled to FACT in Liverpool to see Drive. The story of a very complex and nameless Hollywood stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver, it's not all Vin Diesel or Jason Statham packed with car chases and crashes. No, it's a lot more sophisticated than that with Gosling playing one of the most taciturn characters seen on screen since Clint Eastwood's man with no name (there is another similarity to Clint with Gosling constantly chewing on a toothpick instead of a cheroot). Although the dialogue is sparse there is enough to tell a pretty complex tale of mafia mobsters with a little romance thrown in to lighten what is otherwise a very dark film. It's a good thriller and well worth seeing but, be warned, it is extremely violent in parts and I felt that the violence overstepped the mark in at least one gut turning scene that had me closing my eyes.
The old routine included getting a day out with the metal detector yesterday when my detecting partner and I travelled up the M6 to Cumbria for a search around some fields near to where I found that piece of Roman gold a month or so ago. Having bombarded the farmer with regular phone calls since the end of July asking if the fields had been harvested, he finally (like the man from Del Monte) said yes. Unfortunately the anticipation exceeded the results and, apart from a worn fragment of a Roman coin I only found this Roman mount which would probably once have been fixed to a piece of Roman furniture. Although I have not found tons of stuff with the detector this year, I think that, barring a couple of hours in Scotland, most of our outings have turned up at least one historic or displayable coin or artefact. It would be good if we could increase that to three or four.
Yet another part of our regular retirement routine is going to Victoria Leisure for an hour or two work out. I've managed three visits so far since getting back from Italy and Marion has done almost four hours of intensive classes. As a result of this and sticking to a healthy diet, we're both almost back to our pre Torcello weight and ready to start eating (and drinking) a bit more.
We'll miss the routine of The Great British Bake Off which reached its climax last night when Jo was deservedly crowned winner. After weeks of effort surely she deserved something better than the ghastly trophy comprising an assortment of kitchen implements and half a dozen eggs in a goldfish bowl with a lemon squeezer on top. Great show. Shame about the prize.
