The Greatest Story Ever Told/Nanny Kipling

Once upon a time, back in the nineteen fifties, there was an old lady who lived alone in a small cottage in a quaint little village, somewhere in England.

Being long past retirement age, and having been widowed just before the out break of the Second World War, she had acres of time on her hands-but kept herself busy by baking cakes for the Women’s Institute, church fetes, for friends-or her beloved granddaughter, when she came to stay during school holidays.

The old lady really enjoyed making cakes. It was her little personal helicon.

She wasn’t the most adventurous of cake makers – or indeed, the greatest of cake makers.

But it didn’t matter to her.

She just loved baking.

One sunny afternoon, she took out her old cookery book, that had belonged to her great grandmother, from its usual place on the kitchen shelf, and leafed studiously through the pages.

She came to the recipe for rock cake, gathered together the ingredients she needed – and started making it, following the recipe to the letter.

A handful of hours later, the cake was ready-and resting on a griddle on the kitchen counter.

The old lady made herself a small pot of tea – and, as it was a nice evening, she decided to sit in her garden, with her tea-and a slice of the rock cake.

However, when she plunged a knife, made of best Sheffield steel, into the dessert – the blade snapped clean in half.

She had, quite literally, baked a rock cake!

Not liking waste, she fed some crumbs that she managed to grind off with a pestle, to the birds- but when they attempted to fly away, they couldn’t because the tiny fragments of cake were too heavy in their bellies, and they just dropped from the sky.

She tried using the cake as a paper weight – but it was so heavy that she could barely move it to retrieve any papers that she put under it.

She thought about using it as a doorstop, even – but she feared for the welfare of the mice who would come and try and gnaw at it.

By bedtime, that night, she was all of a quandary regarding the cake-and what to do with it.

Now, at the time, her neighbours were having the local builders in, to do some slight renovation work to their cottage.

Having seemingly exhausted her options regarding the cake, the old lady called them round, the next day, at the start of their lunch break.

She said that she would pay them both dearly, if they could find a constructive use for her problematic tea time snack.

So, ever keen to earn an extra bit of cash, the builder and his mate scratched their heads and, after some deliberation of the cake, the pair retired to the pub, telling the old dear that they would think about it more, over a beer and a spot of lunch.

After a pork pie, and several pints of beer, the builder’s mate came up with an idea for how to use it.

He told the builder how, one day, when he’d been painting the picket fence, at the front of the cottages, he’d noticed that, although it had a hefty clasp on it – that the old lady’s garden gate would never remain closed – and that it only took the slightest breeze to knock it open, even when it was clasped firmly shut.

He suggested that, if they were to nail the cake to the garden gate, then no amount of wind was going to succeed in opening it.

The builder thought that this was a fabulous idea, and suggested that they get to work straight away on the project.

By tea break, an hour later, they had nailed the cake to the gate, and painted it the same colour, to blend it in.

When they showed it to the old lady, the builder’s mate explained to her that she’d now gained a self closing front gate, that he figured wouldn’t blow open in a hurricane, let alone a meek summer wind.

The old lady was delighted and she paid them kindly for their efforts, with fifty pounds each – and a late afternoon tea of cucumber sandwiches and scones and cup cakes.

The two work men left her house with their wage, and bellies filled with the cucumber sandwiches, and lashings of home made lemonade. However, they politely declined the old lady’s offer of scones and cupcakes.

Now, many years went by, almost in a flash.

The old lady sadly passed away, and the little cottage where she lived became someone else’s home- and then someone else’s – and then someone else’s – and then someone else’s after that.

Over time, the house was redecorated, inside and out, according to each inhabitants taste and style.

Things were added – and taken out, according to various fashions and fads, and so on and so forth and, more and more, the little cottage looked less and less like it had when the old lady had lived there.

Then, one day, the old lady's granddaughter, who was now grown up with children of her own, passed through the village, where her grandmother had lived, while she was on the way to a work conference.

She hadn’t been there since her grandmother’s death, and decided to take a look at the old lady’s cottage, where she’d spent more or less every school holiday, until she was a teenager.

When she reached it, she discovered that, as she’d expected, there had been some huge changes made to the property.

However, there was something that had remained unchanged, from the time when she was a girl, and this surprised the woman greatly, so much so that she found herself doing something completely out of character, and knocking at the front door of the cottage.

When a young newly wed couple answered it, she blurted out to them ‘I can’t believe it’s still there- after all these years!’

The young couple, somewhat perplexed by the appearance of this mad woman, on their door step,and her seemingly random statement, simultaneously looked at one another, and the young wife asked the grand daughter what it was that she couldn’t believe was ‘still there’.

Still a little stunned by what she’d seen, the old woman’s granddaughter blurted "the cake – that my grand mother baked over thirty years ago –it’s still fastened to the gate!"– and, indeed, it was!