What a lovely Saturday for a minus 4 degrees day in Yorkshire. It’s so cold! We had our first sprinkling of snow this week and every morning I have had to scrape the ice from my car. I’m not a morning person at the best of times but when I have to de-ice my car, I’m even less of a morning person. Added to that the fact that on Thursday morning I ran out of coffee beans, this week has not been the week of good morning starts for me and Thursday morning I was definitely better off being avoided.
Today though has been a lovely day. I have been treating a very special lady……..my Mum!! It’s a little bit of an annual ritual now is ladies treat day. For 30 years she cooked Christmas dinner and for the last 20 years I have cooked Christmas dinner, and Mum and Dad come to me. Anyone who is responsible for Christmas dinner will know it’s a bit of a stress. Lots of food to cook and lots of mouths to feed. So, I make a point, on a weekend a couple of weeks before Christmas, of taking Mum and myself out for our very special Christmas meal where we get pampered and waited on and don’t have to do any cooking or wash the dishes. Just us two!
When I was on my Camino, I had a lot of time to think. You realise how fast time flies and how you don’t really take time, or have the time, to appreciate a lot of the people and events in your life. I think it can be a little bit like that with parents. You sort of take it for granted that they will always be there and they never seem to get any older, then all of a sudden you realise that they do seem so much older and times are precious and limited. One of the things I promised myself I would do would be to spend more time ‘in the moment’ and appreciate the simple things in life that I sometimes take for granted, and that won’t be there for ever, and Mums and Dads are one of those things.
You can get a little bit fed up of turkey though by the time it gets to Christmas. There are friends to meet up with for Christmas dinner, work nights out for Christmas dinner, so this year we decided not to do traditional Christmas dinner.
So where have we been? We’ve been to lovely York……one of the best preserved medieval cities in Britain and the historic capital of Yorkshire.
Mum loves York and it’s a bit too difficult for her to get there on her own now. She loves the shops, the medieval buildings, the beautiful York Minster…………………and we both love Betty’s!
Betty’s, for anyone who is not familiar with it, is a great Yorkshire institution. It is a tearoom that was first opened in 1919 by Frederick Belmont. There are various branches of Betty’s now in Yorkshire but the largest are in York and Harrogate. Frederick Belmont and his wife, in 1936, went on the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary ocean liner and he liked the art deco interior of the ship so much that he hired the interior designers to fit out his tea rooms. So today we have been to the Belmont Room in Betty’s of York for the quintessential British afternoon tea, but at Betty’s it’s a ‘Yorkshire Afternoon Tea’. It’s a small fortune to go as far as afternoon tea prices are concerned but for a special treat it’s worth it and this special lady is certainly worth it……..my Mum not me I mean! It’s so eloquent, bone china tea service, silver cutlery, pianist playing the grand piano, attentive waiters and waitresses and the most delicious selection of finger sandwiches and cakes. It has a tea menu so long with loose leaf tea from all over the world, and being a Yorkshire girl, I love a good cuppa. At home it has to be Taylors of Harrogate ‘Yorkshire Tea’ but at Betty’s it has to be Golden Valley Darjeeling, no milk, just Darjeeling……perfect.
I couldn’t see Mum for half the time as I swear she is shrinking and the plate of cakes and sandwiches was so big I could just see her head poking over the top. It was delicious and was a nice change from roast turkey dinner.
They even box up what you can’t eat in a pretty little box to take home. This is Mum’s by the way. It will be no surprise to anyone that I managed to eat all mine!
Then we had a lovely wander around York and up to the Minster. It was so pretty with all the lights in the trees and Mum wanted to see the new stone statue to the side of the main door of the late Queen Elizabeth II which was unveiled by King Charles (I still can’t get used to saying that) in his visit to York last week. It was quite impressive but needs a little time to weather, it was so obviously new alongside the other stonework.
All in all it was a lovely Mum and daughter day and a nice relaxing start to what tends to be the busiest week of the year……….. the last week at school before Christmas, the week I really get into it at home and go a bit over the top with the tree and Christmas decorations and get more excited than a child on Christmas morning. I love Christmas!!! The tree has been purchased yesterday, that once a year trip that I try and squeeze a full size Nordmann Fir into the back of a Mini (I managed it yet again!). My light up reindeer has been extracted from the loft. The first lot of mince pies will be baked tonight. I still have presents to wrap, house to decorate, Christmas cake to decorate, tree to put up, boys to pick up from the train station next weekend and then I’m ready. Oh, and tomorrow I’m attending a very special craft class……..you know how I like a ‘learning to do something new’ class, so all will be revealed in due course. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!