It is Mark’s birthday, and we have had a lovely day.
We have all been at home together, and last night whilst we were at work the children made him a birthday cake.
I did not actually observe the manufacturing activity, merely acted in an advisory capacity over the telephone occasionally, but it sounds as though some interesting times were had. Most of the difficulties were eventually patched up with colossal amounts of whipped cream and jam, which made for an absolutely brilliant birthday cake.
They discovered a tub of edible glitter in the baking drawer, and Oliver took responsibility for the decoration. Underneath the edible glitter he covered the cake with whipped cream, icing sugar and a great quantity of marshmallows.
It was ace, my favourite sort of cake. They hid it in the back of the fridge so that he wouldn’t find it, and even though he did open the fridge to look for sausage to give to the dogs last night, he didn’t notice the cake at all, even though it was huge, just like you don’t notice a gorilla when you are watching basketball.
The children came to join us in bed this morning. Mark opened his birthday cards and we had surprise birthday cake with candles and sang Happy Birthday. We had to wash the sheets afterwards, especially because we shared it with the dogs, but that was all right because we had such a brilliant time. The children thought that they had discovered lots of things about the function of the kitchen, and Oliver thought that he might like to bake lots of cakes for ever. I thought that I liked cake made with lashings of strawberry jam and cream. Lucy thought that she might start her diet tomorrow, and remembered that she had in any case left her trainers at school, which would make gym attendance problematic.
Mark thought that he was having a nice birthday, and once we were all dressed he went to potter about the garden organising his roof trellis. He thinks that he is going to make a battery up there and generate power to run some lights. I think that perhaps he needs to think about it when he has got a bit more spare time, which is not now.
When we had all recovered from strawberry jam cake, we went out for lunch. This was lovely. We went to the little bistro across the road where you can sit in the sunshine at the outside tables. The dogs lay under the table and growled at everybody walking past, and we waved at everybody we knew. We sat in the sunshine together and ate far too much, so it was a good thing that Lucy had postponed her diet.
After that I had a little snooze and Mark and Oliver played computer games, and then Oliver had a shower because it was his day of going back to school.
We were all so sad to say goodbye to one another, but it is not for very long, and then it is the long summer holiday.
School looked as though it might be good fun, except that Oliver remembered gloomily that he has got Latin tomorrow. They were just starting the barbecue when I left, and there were small boys charging about all over the place. I hugged him goodbye and drove home, I have well and truly had enough of driving this week.
When I got home Mark had got fed up with being at work. We took the rocking chairs into the back garden. Lucy joined us and we sat contentedly in the cool evening drinking tall glasses of Prosecco mixed with cassis. Lucy is practising getting drunk before the school party in a couple of weeks, and this was a useful start.
We agreed that it had been a lovely birthday.
It has been the nicest time, sunshine and good food and children.
I hope the summer lasts for ages.
