Preparing For The Party: H M The Queen's 90th birthday

In case you'd forgotten, the queen's 90th birthday is coming up. Celebrated in Britain and no doubt around the world. Any excuse for a party, especially if you support or are fascinated by the royal family. The supermarkets have kindly reminded us to prepare. 

Waitrose has an iced fruit cake, decorated with a yellow crown, the letters ER, the number 90.  Around the edge of the cake red and blue bunting.

It costs £10, is vegetarian with lots of organic ingredients. You can read the ingredients on the Waitrose website, though they do warn that recipes change so check the ingredients in store if buying in store. 

If you were wondering about making your own centrepiece cake, or individual teacakes to match the central cake, here are some ideas for colouring and motifs.

To celebrate or picnic at home, a great offer on English sparking wine by award winning Nyetimber. We stood by the offer checking online for the usual price, the year, the maker, and our own stocks of wine. (If you have a short memory, keep last week's shopping list.)

An article about Nyetimber is in this week's Weekender free newspaper from Waitrose which you can pick up in the store. (Lots of great articles. My favourites from this issue were on tracking whether you have hedgehogs in your garden with a hedgehog tunnel which records hedgehog footprints. Another article features looking after bats.

Twinning tea tin with patriotic red, white and blue design.

To carry home or store your goodies and tea time treats, a bag featuring tea pots.

Another design of bag, this time more red.

My experience is that you need plain coloured clothes to go with a patterned bag, plain bags to go with patterned clothes. So if you are buying a red white and blue bag, look out your plain red, plain white, or plain blue dress or travelling outfit. I just bought a white baseball hat which goes with everything.

When is it? Thursday 21st May, but H M THE QUEEN will be performing walkabouts the day before.The place to be, or watch on TV, is Windsor. Expect the queen to walk about, and horse guards in a pageant.

More information from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36025967 (Details of the Queen's events.)
http://www.waitrose.com/shop/DisplayProductFlyout?productId=497938#BVRRContainer (cake)

http://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2016040130677/the-queen-90th-birthday-plans/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.