September 2014

Those souls who reside in the United Kingdom and who still consume the products of the organisations both private and public that engage – for better or worse – in the televisual arts, will have been unable to avoid over the last year or so the nationwide enthusiasm for the category of comestible cookery that utilises prolonged dry heat by convection rather than by radiation… known more commonly as baking!

I refer – of course – to the ‘Great British Bake Off’.

The Kickass Canada Girl is a fan. I don’t mind it being on in the background. The recent ructions on the show – which need not detain us here – have done little to impinge on its overall veneer of gentle British whimsy which has proved for many a welcome corrective to the endless diet of so-called ‘reality’ shows.

Naturally, our broadcasting and other media corporations – never known to go easy on an expiring equine – have parachuted aboard the passing bandwagon and all things bakery related have now been hailed as the best thing since – er – sliced bread!

Thus is was that I found myself on a recent Saturday morning listening to one of those Radio 4 (a sort of talk radio, for north American readers) programmes that is a miscellanea of items comprising in the main interviews with interestingly ‘normal’ people (sometimes in extraordinary circumstances but just as frequently not so) only to discover that this particular episode had a ‘baking’ theme.

One interviewee in particular caught my ear. Louise Johncox – a journalist who writes for publications such as The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian – comes from a long line of bakers and confectioners. Her father ran a tea shop for more than forty years in the Home Counties and she grew up surrounded by the smells and tastes of fresh-baked bread, cakes and patisserie.

The object of Mrs Johncox’s appearance on the radio was to promote a book that she has recently had published. The Baker’s Daughter is a charming cross between a memoir and a recipe book. Mrs Johncox speaks well and passionately on the subject and has a clear love of all things related to the baker’s art.

Given my ambivalence on the subject you might be surprised that I am expending precious words on it. Well – as you might have guessed by now – there is a hook. Mrs Johncox’s father’s tea shop – Peter’s, Weybridge Ltd – was located in the small Surrey town in which I grew up.

Peter Johncox and his wife Frankie moved to Weybridge in the spring of 1960 – in the same year as did my parents! I was six at the time and I remember this delightful emporium existing virtually unchanged throughout my adolescent years. Peter’s was famous amongst other things for its Welsh Rarebit which I swear – no doubt erroneously – that I can still remember. The recipe for this treat is – fortunately – included in the book. The tea shop stayed open until after the turn of the millennium, by which point Peter Johncox had become too old and infirm to continue its management.

What really took me by surprise – as I listened to Mrs Johncox’s reminiscences on the radio – was just how teary I found myself all of a sudden. My mother never drove a car and thus could for many years be seen trundling her shopping bag on wheels the mile or so from our house down to the centre of town to do the shopping. Once all had been crossed from her list she would repair to Peter’s for a much need cup of tea and – mayhap – a sweet treat – as a means of recharging the batteries for the fully laden return trip up the hill!

My mother died in 2010 – a mere two years before Peter Johncox. Peter’s – as with so many other such familiars – is long gone, and I rarely now find myself with a reason to visit Weybridge.

The book is a delight – both as a culinary treat and as a reminiscence of times past. I thoroughly recommend it.