Other places have different summer highlights. In Wimbledon you’d be eating strawberries and watching energetic types lunge around in white clothes, chasing yellow balls with racquets. In America you might be picnicking and letting off fireworks. But in Castle Bailey we’ve got the Summer Festival.

I didn’t pay it much heed for my first summer here but after the dramatic food poisoning of Linda when she judged last year’s Castle Bailey Bake Off competition there was no way I was missing it this year. Linda, however, had other ideas.

“What do you mean you’re off next week?”

“Hubby and I are going to a fancy country hotel over in Westport. Jim’s covering for me. Didn’t you see the email?”

“But what about the Bailey Bake Off? Aren’t you j...

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