Birthday flowers for Matilda, who turned thirteen yesterday (I can’t quite believe we have a teenager in the house): roses Gertrude Jekyll and William Lobb on one side,

Gertrude again, alongside Ferdinand Pichard, on the other, and none of them smelling as lovely as they should because of the damn weather.

A birthday cake, the usual, Nigella’s buttermilk number filled with a layer of strawberry jam, a layer of sliced strawberries and then lots of whipped cream, and more cream and strawberries on top. It began as a tasteful, slightly Jubilee-inspired affair, and then…

And sticking with the Jubilee theme, I made Coronation Chicken using the original Rosemary Hume recipe via Rose Prince, from her lovely book Kitchenella (stuffed with great recipes – I highly recommend it). If you are interested, you can find the original recipe here, but I think Rose Prince’s version is more straightforward. And I simplified things further by poaching chicken breasts and thighs rather than roasting several chickens as I knew time was against me.