Victoria Sponge Cake

Ingredients

175g Unsalted butter
175g Caster Sugar
3 Eggs, beaten
175g Self-raising flour
3 tbsp strawberry jam
No cream (which still causes controversy to this day)!

The Heart of a Seaside Town.

The heart of Paignton is Paignton pier. Forget the natural beauty of the sea, the golden sand or cliff views, it is the pier that sticks in my head like a half chewed hubba bubba. Every vague memory I have is punctured by the long wooden walk way, the magnificent, tacky, noisy, beautiful walkway that is lined on both sides with ruthless arcade machines. As you enter the pier, it says, rather informatively:

WELCOME TO PAIGNTON PIER

There is a fish and chip shop, a donut stand and of course a small mechanical pirate ship. Then, as you enter the wooden doors it hits you. The freighting volume of whirring, buzzing, boinking, bonking and clattering of gun fire, mad cap cartoon bravery, simulated fist on simulated face - it is deafening. I can hardly hear what Nan is saying...

"Phil, Phil, don’t go wasting your money on all that rubbish."

"I’ve only put 10p in Nan."

The trip to Paignton

Packed in tight with duvets and tin foil sandwiches. Dad is driving, mum is in the front and me, Adam and Gemma are in the back seat. It usually takes around four and a half hours on the motorway including the short stop at a service station for fuel and jaffa cakes. The motorway as we all know, provides little in the way of entertainment for children. So me Adam and Gemma engage in the rudimentary travel games of guess who, eye-spy and lets see whose knuckles bruise first.

The motorway does have one cultural highlight to keep us awake though - the infamous cardboard camel, that a good humored farmer has placed at the end of his field parallel to the motorway. This brown humped, ram-shackled statue usually quenches at least thirty minutes of M5 boredom. The twenty minute anticipatory spying of the camel, the moment we actually saw the camel and then of course the sort of post-camel chuckle that rippled through the car. We named that Egyptian beast Colin, Colin the Camel. Crudely alliterative I know but as a family we enjoy naming stuffed animals, it is part of our thing, and Colin the camel was no exception.

We see Colin and we know we are heading for Devon. Devon is where my Nan lives, where my Grandfather’s ashes are scattered and where I’ve left not only my heart but also my appendix. We see Colin and we know we are getting closer and closer. The motorway turns to country road as we pass through -

Templecombe, Sherborne, Yeovil Junction, Crewkerne, Axminster, then the brambles really start to thicken. Honiton, Whimple, Pinhoe, Exeter, Starcross, Dawlish Warren, Teignmouth, Newton Abbot, Torne, Torquay and finally Paignton!