'But Victoria Sponges are Wednesday afternoon cakes'
It wasn't the response I was hoping for after whipping up a Victoria Sponge one Saturday afternoon a year or so ago, but I understood what my teenager was saying and why.
This week I’m sharing some words that I’ve been messing around with for far too long, as in years rather than weeks or months. There’s no doubt that I’ve got too close to them and somehow they never quite hit the spot, unlike mum’s Victoria Sponge.
I’m not sure why I can’t quite let them go. A big part of writing memoir is peeling away the layers, delving deeper than simply retelling the ‘this happened and that happened.’ For some reason though I find it hard to do that here. It brings together themes of home and family that I feel drawn to write about and it’s a simple everyday story really. Mum visiting on a Wednesday afternoon with a Victoria sponge and collecting the boys from school, my daughter navigating from her booster seat in the back, but as with a lot of seemingly simple every day things, there’s a lot more to it.
“If you let yourself tell those smaller anecdotes or stories, the overarching capital-S Story will eventually rise into view.”
Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
‘You need to weigh the eggs’
I wonder if it was the simplicity of those Wednesday afternoons that made them special.
You’d arrive on our doorstep around 1pm-ish armed with a Victoria sponge in a decades old Tupperware, stuffing your car keys into your handbag next to a sketchbook where you’d quietly record these afternoons in pencil strokes, all while commenting on the drive over and how you’d left dad behind snoozing in his armchair.
Visiting us wasn’t new. There are plenty of memories of ‘thought we’d pop over for coffee at the weekend’ and Saturday lunches that would stretch into afternoon tea. Dad would sit with the newspaper while you’d pace around the garden soothing a fractious grandchild and sharing the latest family news while I put the kettle on. But there was something deliciously different about these midweek, mid-afternoon visits.
Was it your idea to bring a sponge with you, or mine? And why Wednesday?
And oh how we talked, sitting either side of the kitchen table, ‘shall I put the kettle on?’ our tea gone cold again, forks lying next to half eaten slices of cake, too busy talking.
Our voices weaving themselves into a conversational tapestry, two pairs of pale blue eyes mirroring each other, while the children ran past from a flickering TV in the living room to footballs and trampolines in the garden, jumping into barely there gaps in our meandering conversation.
‘Gently does it boys, gently now’ you’d say as heads butted over the cake, checking you were cutting three equally sized slices.
‘No, you can’t have another slice.’ We’d chorus.
‘I’d better cut a slice to take home to grandad now.’
‘Can we have pizza for dinner mum?’
The thing is, we were great at talking about everyone and everything but maybe we weren’t so good at talking about us, how we were. My chronic fatigue with three young children, Andy living and working away during the week. ‘Tired, fine, just tired’ words scrambled, limbs aching, slowly waking from my afternoon sleep.
The official reason for your visit was to ‘help’ me but what about your cancer, advancing but stable, or was it? And dad with his planned and unplanned trips to hospital and respite visits to the care home
I can’t really hear your voice anymore, it’s nine years since you died but I still fancy I can hear a faint, ‘you just need to weigh the eggs’ when I mix the flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder and butter.
Because I make my own Victoria sponges now.
I used to think there was some sort of magic involved in baking, that it was a level of adulting I’d never reach.
I never asked you how to make one, or maybe I did but I didn’t really listen. I didn’t need to. Because as long as you lived in Cardiff and I lived in Bath, you’d bring us a Victoria sponge on a Wednesday afternoon.
I used to think you brought a freedom and energy with you, belting across the Severn Crossing in your sky blue Fiat Agila, cheering as you passed the ‘Welcome to England’ sign. Radio 3 full volume, happy to swap a snoozing dad for a noisy chat in the kitchen with me and your grandchildren.
But maybe it was the other way round. You taking the children’s youthful energy back to Cardiff. Maybe it was both. Maybe we were all taking what we needed from those afternoons.
The visits ended when we moved to Bournemouth. We tried to persuade you to move with us, and not just because you baked a mean Victoria sponge, but things didn’t work out that way.
You died nine months after we moved to the beach and that’s when I started baking. Baby steps, lemon muffins from one of the kids cookbooks.
‘Oh, I can do this’ I thought as I whipped up a batch before collecting the kids from school, ‘Did you really make these?’ I’m asked.
Then I try a Victoria sponge, turning to Mary Berry & Google because there was no recipe handed down through the generations. It was just something you knew how to do. ‘You need to weigh the eggs’ the only thing I remember.
‘This is good mum’ the kids say.
‘Yeah, but grandma’s were better.’
I love the rustle of the parchment paper as I cut two circles to fit the cake tins. I love measuring out the flour, butter, sugar and baking powder, cracking the eggs on the side of the Pyrex bowl. Turning up the speed on the handheld mixer, the bowl careering across the worktop. I try to picture you in your galley kitchen spooning cake mix into tins. No buttercream, nothing fancy. Just two sponges sandwiched together with supermarket strawberry jam and a dusting of icing sugar.
I think I enjoy making the sponge more than eating it.
Years later here in Ilkley a passing teenager lightly reprimands me, ‘It’s Saturday mum, aren’t Victoria sponges Wednesday afternoon cakes?’
I don’t make them as often as I used to. The oven here in Ilkley more temperamental than the one in Bournemouth, but I’m not sure that’s it. There’s something else. I feel like the visceral need to connect with you through cake and memories of those Wednesday afternoons has dissipated. Or maybe it’s just not quite the same sitting down to eat a slice at the kitchen table without you, in a home you never got to visit.
I don’t know, how many Wednesday afternoons and Victoria sponges there were and it almost doesn’t matter. Often enough I guess is the answer.
Thank you as ever for reading and the love for last week’s post about friendship. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts whether here in the comments or privately. I’ve placed The Virago Book of Friendship in my basket (thanks for suggesting it ) but I’m holding off buying it until I make more of a dent in the leaning tower of books at the end of my bed!
Harriet
PS As ever please forgive any typos and stray commas not to mention the stutters in the audio!
More reflections on feeling at home from this year
A beautiful and moving post, Harriet. Here's to our mothers and all the cake bakers who have gone before.
Such a classic comment from a child...we each have these "fixed" ideas in our heads that we carry, sometimes without even knowing why. But also a beautiful comment that remembers his grandma x