B is for...

BAKING!

I've done a little adjustment on my daily instruction from Karen M. Jones in The Difference A Day Makes. She asked me to find a common cause to contribute towards. She gives examples such as cleaning up the park or repainting a wall or something as things the community can mobilise and spend a day doing.

As I've been meaning to join the National Trust for ages, I figured I'd scale this up a little. Stately homes and gardens are one of the many things the National Trust looks after and membership with them recognises, in a way, a dedication to a common cause to preserve history. It also gets you free entry to tons of cool places. I figured it sort of fitted it with my instruction for the day.

So I went along to Ham House yesterday to join up...


...and while I was there, I asked about volunteering as it suddenly struck mw that they have a kitchen garden and a cafe where they produce food made with the vegetables growing outside. Omygoodness, I'd be a bit like a farmer if I volunteered to work in the gardens here, I thought, while enquiring about it.

The lady who looks after the volunteers took me to the office to chat and talked about all the different things volunteers help with and in amongst it all, I heard this....

"...and we have some volunteers who work in the big old 17th century kitchen and do baking demonstrations for the visitors...."

O. To the M. To the G. This is so me! Baking! In a big beautiful old kitchen! Talking to people about baking and then feeding them!

"Oo, that one! Can I do that one?" I exclaimed. The lady seemed equally as excited for me to get involved.

"Would you be willing to be in costume as well, when we get round to doing a fitting?"

"Would I?! Of course I would!"

So the scene has been set. I am to be added to something called Google Calendar and to just add myself onto a day when I'm free. I shall wear a 17th century outfit and hang out in a kitchen all day baking cakes and biscuits and talking to people and feeding them. I don't know how I could be more excited.

The lady who talked to me actually also lives in Ham House and I reckon, if I play my cards right, I could get in there too. It could be mine and Danda's holiday home. Our Ham House holiday home.

If you don't know anything about Ham House, go and watch Never Let Me Go or the new Anna Karenina - they were both filmed there. Then think of me dressed in my 17th century outfit, baking biscuits.