Mothering Monday

My children are taking me out for a meal this evening - one day after the Sunday rush - and I've had little time for pictures today. So this fence is a quick blip on the way home.

I like the old-fashioned term 'Mothering Sunday' for what we now call 'Mother's Day'. I think we should remember the history of children in service being given a day off to walk home, gathering wild spring flowers as they went, to see their families for the first time in a year (the rich house was much too busy at Christmas to let them go, and would be busy again at Easter).

Sometimes they would also take a Simnel cake that they had been allowed to bake in the kitchen of the big house, though that traditional cake has now been shunted to Easter.

Imagine - 10-year-olds and their parents meeting only once a year...