Retired schoolteacher Mrs Hope Bassett was wined and dined royally when she celebrated her 90th birthday a week ago.She cheerfully went along with the programme, and would have had it no other way with a grandson like Jerome Swainson, and the grand hostess being her daughter Sherryll Ricardo, who heads the fine arts department and is theatre teacher at Dellwood School.Jerome made the headlines just over a fortnight ago when he was appointed Director of Hotel Services at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital. At age 16 he became the youngest-ever maitre d’ at the exclusive Mid-Ocean Club, rising to the position of assistant manager before becoming director of resort activities at Fairmont Southampton.Of course he went all out with lobster on the half-shell and other succulents catering not only to the whims of his deserving grandmother, but the host of other friends and relatives who descended on the Ricardo residence at Daisy Field, Somerset. It was all topped off with the biggest candle-lit birthday cake that could be procured from niece Juliette Jackson.Upon retiring from the classroom Mrs Bassett worked for 20 years until she was 70, as librarian/legal editorial assistant in the Chambers of the Attorney General. She is the widow of E. Dudley Bassett, who owned and operated Somerset News Agency.A confirmed world traveller, having made her first overseas trip out of Bermuda at age seven, Hope’s scrap book shows her riding a donkey in her 80th year up a mountainside in Rhodes, Greece, and five years later on safari in Kenya. More recently she cruised to South America visiting Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. She continues to travel.