Mum’s the word!

This weekend marks the halfway point in the season of Lent. It’s also when we celebrate Mothering Sunday, never called Mother’s Day by me as that’s quite different and what we enjoyed when living in the USA. I suppose my insistence on the use of what might be considered an archaic name is due to my childhood, when Granny would describe how all the other staff working for the Walker family were given the day off to go home, but as an orphan she had no mother to visit, so stayed where she was, strolling in a park if the weather was good. It seems most of them took flowers to their mothers and if there was cake it was of the boiled-fruit variety, not the extravagant Simnel cake we imagine. That’s now symbolic of Easter, with it’s 11 balls of marzipan on top, representing the disciples, minus Judas. So this weekend will be one of cards and gifts – almost another birthday – not quite the same as it used to be, rather more commercialised sadly!