Inspired by the Queen 21 March 2018
The guest speaker at the Woodhouse Eaves WI meeting on 21st March 2018 was June Norris, and her talk was entitled “Inspired by the Queen”. We did not know what to expect – would it be about works of art? Or possibly royal memorabilia? Perhaps June was a milliner and would describe the Queen’s hats? Some of us thought horse racing (or corgis) might be the topic for the evening…How wrong we were!
June began her talk by describing going with her father, a delivery driver, to the Weetabix bakery on Humberstone Lane in Leicester in the early 1960s and how she remembered the lovely smell emanating from the bakery. Her mother was from Cornwall and summer holidays, spent visiting family in Launceston, were memorable for the home-made Cornish pasties and home-made Cornish fairings. Aunty Gwen taught her young niece how to make these spicy biscuits…
At this point we had a surprise! June handed out recipes, produced the dough she had prepared earlier, rolled it out and showed us how easy the biscuits were to prepare. Not only that, a tin of Cornish fairings was passed round for us to try – they were delicious!
After leaving school June went to work at Thorn Lighting as a catering apprentice, with day-release at Southfields College. Jobs at the Mad Hatter next to the Haymarket Theatre and in London followed. By this time June knew she wanted to specialise in cake-making and pastry work and she applied for a job as Pastry Chef at Konditorei Macopa on Clarendon Park Road, a small but exciting bakery run by Siegfried Berndt, a German, and his Austrian wife, Maria. Here June learned all the tricks of the trade…
Another demonstration! June showed us how to turn a block of puff pastry into Eccles cakes, cream puffs, fruit turnovers and cheese straws. It was a delight to watch her at work, so quick and skilful. And the results were (again) delicious!
Mr Berndt was well-known for his chocolate creations and in April 1982 he entered the record books by making the world’s largest Easter Egg. Weighing in at 3,430 kg and standing 3.05m high, it was so large that Green Watch firemen from Lancaster Road fire station were called to remove the gates to the bakery so that the egg could be transported to the Blue Peter studios.
After a break to bring up her children, June discovered she had a flair for teaching and studied after work to become a trainer. She eventually became the manager for hospitality apprentices at Brooksby Melton College and in early 2012 she received a phone call asking if she could provide some apprentices for silver service at a forthcoming function. Fortunately, she could! June was being asked to attend and serve, with her students, at a lunch for the Queen at the start of the Diamond Jubilee tour on 8th March 2012. It was an amazing and inspirational occasion.
The last demonstration was to show what can – and did! – go wrong when the lunch was served. Although the cutlery had been put into the correct position by the waiters and waitresses, some guests moved their dessert spoon and fork so that the rather long and narrow dish with its trio of light desserts would not fit into the space between them! The apprentices had to place the dish as best they could and use it to push the fork and spoon apart, an awkward and noisy operation.
June’s enthusiasm and photographs showed how much she enjoyed her work. The WI certainly enjoyed listening to her talk and sampling her biscuits and pastries!