I have been baking.
We are going to go on holiday next week, I hope…oh, I hope.
We are going to go on Monday night and come back on Friday. We are not sure yet where we are going, although I imagine that Blackpool will feature, simply because it usually does. It is important to go now, because we have only got both children for this week. The week after Lucy has got to go back to work. Hence, whilst we are all together, we are going to take the camper van and go and shirk for a few days.
I am absolutely longing to do this, although I am not yet quite confident that it will actually happen, because of cash, and work, and the still unresolved tiresome MOT, and the various demands of demanding things that impinge on such best-laid plans. Even if it does, I am not quite sure what we might do when we go.
It will be in the camper van, obviously, and we will not be going to restaurants because of the stupid compulsory holiday that might follow, and so we will need to eat.
Hence the baking today.
I made four cakes, because we have eaten all of my birthday cake now. I made two lemon drizzle cakes and two brandy drizzle cakes. These work on much the same principle but have a different degree of acceptability if you are Oliver.
Even so, I am pleased to tell you that Oliver has become a far more adventurous eater than he used to be. He actually ate some vegetables with his dinner last night. He never used to do this voluntarily, and it was both a joy and a sad little sign that he is growing up.
When he was very little he used to spit things out that he did not like. Mark once finished up with a handful of chewed popcorn and had to hold it for the entire film after a distressed moment in the cinema. For some reason for a while his chosen spitting place was the doorway to our bedroom, which did not end well if you were barefoot and the light was off.
As he got older he learned to manage rather better, although there was a long series of teachers and doctors and nutritionists who worried about his lack of interest in almost all food, and consequent skeletal frame. I have had four children and learned that they do not starve themselves to death, and let him get on with eating what he liked. In return he faithfully tried everything we gave to him, although most unfamiliar offerings led to a wide-eyed stare and some manoeuvring with a handkerchief.
Now, although we had a misadventure with some single malt a few weeks ago, he has got a fairly wide diet, and it is getting wider all the time. Yesterday he cheerfully ate a plateful of rice studded with an assortment of different textures and colours of vegetables, and we knew that he is not going to grow up into a weirdo after all. Everything comes out all right in the end.
All the same, I think that cake packed not only with nuts, but also with fruit and assorted vegetables, being carrots and courgettes, and then drenched in brandy might prove too much.
Oliver’s cakes are lemon. Lemon is safe. You know where you are with a lemon.
There are cakes for eating at the weekend at home, and cakes for taking on holiday. I am feeling pleased to have made a start. It has brought our holiday a tiny step nearer.
I have also, by way of bringing the holiday closer, given the dogs a haircut. This is because of the new carpet in the camper van, and because they were smelly.
They did not like having a haircut at all. Roger Poopy was asleep on the sofa whilst I was getting everything out, but at some point he must have opened one eye and realised what I was doing, at which point he slid away quietly and hid under the table.
I found him because of the tablecloth wagging about due to his frightened shivering, and dragged him out without mercy.
It is very hard to cut somebody’s hair when they have curled themselves up as tightly as possible into a little whimpering ball.
I managed to do the underneath bits by wrestling him into submission and jabbing my elbow into his throat.
The same followed with his father, who needed his claws trimming as well.
Every time I shifted my grip, his paw shot back into his chest like a stretched rubber band.
There was no bloodshed, but it was a jolly close run thing.
It does not matter. We are a little nearer to having a holiday.
Fingers crossed that everything else is all right.
