There was a knock on The Mother-in-Law’s door this evening. A young man, donning a butchers apron and steaming in the balmy Bristol night, stood on the doorstep and asked – with chutzpah Oliver himself would be proud of – “Can I pick some of the elderflower from your drive?” Sadly for him I said, “no”, but it was only because I’ve been eying up the blossoms since The Husband spotted them at the weekend, and tomorrow I plan to use them to make ice lollies with the children.

This will be my second round of elderflower concocting this week; the first, a delicious elderflower fizz, went down a storm today in the garden as we celebrated the birth of The Lodgers’ first baby. A birth that I was very lucky to attend, with my doula hat on. Both recipes will appear here shortly. But I digress. Back to the young man…

His name is Jared and he’s the pastry chef at Goldbrick House, a rather swish but welcoming bar and dining room on Park Street, just down the way from The Mother-in-Law’s. He was happy to hear that the elderflower wasn’t going to waste and even perkier to learn that there were more trees a few minutes away on Brandon Hill, our beautiful local park.

No sooner had we said our goodbyes than he appeared, yet again, on the doorstep – this time bearing the gift of a heavenly and quite gorgeous dessert of ‘white strawberry (who’d have thunk it!) and elderflower syllabub with pistachio’. And boy was it good. The Husband couldn’t quite believe his luck: dessert before soup!

WHITE STRAWBERRIES! Thank you, Jared.