The day began by looking quite grey but brightened up in the afternoon.
This morning we joined with half of the world's population and watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, both the service in Westminter Abbey and the solemn procession to Hyde Park. We're not monarchists but this was too historic a day to ignore. The BBC did a good job of their coverage with almost no commentary during the service allowing viewers to soak up the atmosphere of the service in the ancient building. I also appreciated the way the cameras never stayed too long on anyone's face not looking to find a real or imagined reaction to what was for the family a sad and deeply personal moment.
I guess now the real world will hit us all with a thump as the politicians try to wriggle out of taking responsibility for the mess the last 11 years have got us into. No surprise that our PM is lifting the cap on bankers' bonuses or that she has no plans to stop the multinational oil companies from making more and more profits. Nothing to do with the fact that she once worked for Shell or that the oil companies fund her and her party.
This morning I also did a batch bake of bara brith, some for now and the rest for the freezer. It's more economical to use the oven only once but it does get hard to mix up nearly 6lbs of ingredients. That said bara brith is Peter's current favourite cake. Later in the afternoon I went out to do more gardening. The car should smell lovely the next time Peter takes the big garden bag to the dump as apart from all the perennial pea that I cleared off the trellis in it are a lot of fennel seed heads, some Thai celery and some sage that was looking a bit sad. I've also pulled up all of the seedlings that turned out not to be aubretia.
This plant is growing in the front garden having arrived this summer. I'm pretty sure it's echium pininana, I've seen them growing in Cornwall and a neighbour a few doors up has some that also just arrived one year. Could be interesting.
(Photo from the web.)
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