Yesterday, my local supermarket had English strawberries – first time this season. They immediately reminded me of my favourite dessert, even though that recipe calls for a tin of strawberries, not fresh ones. So memory goes. Thinking about the dessert brought back to mind the person who gave me the recipe and then I thought I’d write about her here, partly because she was so striking in herself, partly because she raises an interesting question.

How is it possible that someone you meet can remain a huge influence even when, later, you scarcely remember anything at all about them? I guess we storytellers hope it’s so with our storytelling – that a story we tell or an occasion when we tell it may leave an impression that becomes a lasting influence on some person who receives it.

A woman of influence

Cicely Williams-Ellis was the sister-in-law of Clough Williams-Ellis, creator of Portmeirion, the fantastical Italianate village on a luxuriously wooded hillside on the coast of north-west Wales. She was in her old age when a colleague and I went to visit her. At the time, we were doing research for an investigative piece for The Sunday Times about the country’s National Parks. Meeting Cicely was of interest because she’d played a leading part in the movement to form the National Parks and also the CPRW, the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales.

But what do I remember of Cicely Williams-Ellis now?

I have a dim recollection that the house where we she lived was some way up a hillside and that she herself was rather small in build and looked extremely well-weathered. I also remember that she reminded me of a woman called Miss Codrington who’d been significant to me during my teenage years in St David’s. Miss Codrington was very elderly by the time I knew her. The mother of one of my gang of friends at school used to go and clean for her and often that friend would do messages for her. As a result, Miss Codrington began allowing us girls to go and stay in her chalet which was a wooden cabin of a building right next to her house. She let us spend many weekends there and sometimes half-term holidays,  generally mucking about together and laughing ourselves silly.

What I liked most about Miss Codrington was her independence. From time to time, we’d call in on her. Often she’d be sitting on her verandah, The Times crossword on her knee, a pencil on the table beside her, and she always appeared to be completely contented in her own company. But we sensed a history behind her too. One of the things she told us was that her family had been the first in Pembrokeshire to possess a motor-car.

Cicely Williams-Ellis was much the same. Although I can now recall very little of anything she said, she has remained important in my mind, not only for the fact that she was able to live in evident contentment all alone in the middle of what the cliché would describe as nowhere. Her passion for Wales also affected me deeply. It must have been the reason why I afterwards became a member of CPRW, the organisation she loved and cared about deeply. 

Another reason why I’ve remembered Cicely Williams-Ellis is that when she gave us lunch,  the dessert was such a delicious concoction.  I asked her what was in it and, assuring us  it was very simple, she asked us to guess the ingredients. Then she explained how she’d made it. So, yes, I suppose I have remembered something she said and by now I must have made it so many times that friends probably now associate it with me just as I associate it with her. I named it Old Lady’s Delight.

Old Lady’s Delight.

Ingredients:

2 or 3 big cooking apples; 1 tin of strawberries in juice; 1 medium carton of single cream

Method:

Peel and slice the apples and cook them in the juice from the tin of strawberries until they are well pulped. Take off the heat.

Add the strawberries from the tin and whisk the mixture until nearly even but still a little bit rough. Sweeten with sugar if desired. Then add the cream and whisk again but not too much.

 Turn into a bowl and leave in the fridge to chill.

 Enjoy!

Tags: apples, Cicely Williams-Ellis, CPRW, influence, recipe, strawberries

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