Placing in the SCBWI Sue Alexander Grant Competition tossed me into a novel-revising fever since my last post, interrupted by actual fever/flu and the teen getting fever/flu during the same week the husband got Covid and was quarantined in our bedroom for a week and then, just as all of us were finally healthy again, my in-laws arrived and I don’t know how you feel about your in-laws, but I’m crazy about mine and it’s very difficult to write/revise feverishly or at all when they’re here because we want to take them to restaurants we love and help walk their 2 little dogs that are also our guests and there are so many TV shows to view together, like ‘The Perfect Couple’ and ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ (especially Mothman/Bigfoot/Dogman eps) and there’s that new lady detective series on–can’t remember, but my MIL loved it and she and I stayed up late watching it together and giggling like kids.

Also during my in-law’s visit, my MIL and I and a friend toured the home of The Welsh Baker, a mum and dad operation specializing in Welsh cakes–which are like a thick cookie, but not a cookie and not a scone, although filled with scone-ish treats like currants and chocolate chips and fruit.Welsh cakes are also miners cakes–which I write about in my current work-in-progress–the WIP that placed in last year’s (that would be 2023, do not confuse with recent 2024 placing ha ha!) SCBWI Sue Alexander Grant competition.

For a year I’ve been writing about miners cakes, never having held them in my hands, smelled or tasted them. Until last Saturday.

I watched the cakes being made, ate samples served with clotted cream and jam and the Ted Lasso shortbread (they make that) and a side of Scotch egg (not my first Scotch egg experience, but definitely my best). I asked the bakery owners many questions about the cakes and who knew? That in my little mountain town (we’re actually a population of over 300,000 but you wouldn’t believe it if you lived here) and only a few miles from my house there was a bakery producing the very thing I’m writing about, the treat my protagonist loves more than chocolate or ice cream or vegetables (no matter how they’re prepared).

Yours in unexpected local gifts,

PB.

PS. I also purchased jars of clotted cream, lemon curd and black currant jam–which is black currant velvety loveliness it’s actually legal to consume.