VICTORIA SPONGE

A quick look through social media today shows that anybody who's anybody made a victoria sponge cake today and put a picture of it up.

It's a light fluffy cake of caster sugar, butter, eggs and cream, split into two sandwich tins and baked, then brought together with a filling of cream and jam in the middle. Apparently, Queen Victoria was mad for them with her afternoon tea - though, to be fair to Her Majesty, she enjoyed the little ones - presumably small enough to pop in all at once, and not, as has been filling my flimpbook feed, the large cakes we're so patriotic about.

I listened to an old wax cylinder recording of Queen Victoria once, at a museum. It was probably made in the 1880s or 1890s when she was in her latter years, and it carried her voice very faintly in an ocean of gramaphonic noise and interference. What I distinctly heard the Queen say though was:

"We all had a wonderful festival"

... in a rather German accent. I raised an eyebrow at that, but of course Victoria grew up speaking German; she courted Albert in German, her grandfather (George III) and her father (William IV) were to all intents and purposes, Germans. It made sense that she would say 'vunderful' and flatten her vowels, even though the crisp sound of English aristocracy was there in her voice too. It was really interesting.

As she sat in Buckingham Palace, eating sponge cakes and recording her voice onto Edison's new-fangled device, her descendants across Europe were already on course to light the touch paper. It wouldn't be long after she died that the old remnants of Empire disintegrated into war, and the Twentieth Century kicked into a desperate and terrible gear.

That first dreadful conflict left Germany, the land of her fathers, bereft of hope and on the brink of collapse. It needed pulling from the ashes, a restoration of national pride and hope; into the dreadful vacuum stepped a man who offered all of that - a strong and powerful leader whose heart beat the language of the land. The drum of invasion and the burning torch of fascism followed him through the bleak night and into war once again.

It's that war in Europe that came to an end 75 years ago today, and it's that day we're marking with bunting and victoria sponge cakes.

For the first time in a long time, I looked at it today and really wished I could have done something. There are no street parties - we're all locked down still of course - but there were folk on doorsteps with china cups of tea and fairy cakes. There were gazebos, and even the water tower was illuminated in glorious red, white and blue. I wished I'd been able to make a sponge, or a coronation chicken, or even rice-krispie cakes with a little union-jack flag or something. I wished I could have taken tea with my parents and remembered my Grandpa, who drove troops and equipment across North Africa. Or countless other heroes who did so much for so many, but never came home to have grandsons like me.

Victoria sponge. Two halves of peace, sandwiched together over a layer of blood-red filling; the coming together of nations, the friendship that followed the middle of the Twentieth Century, in ways that Victoria could not have imagined. The sweet taste of freedom.

I hope we never take it for granted.