Phew.

I've come back to work for bit of a rest this week, after the half term holiday juggling and the Weekend Of The Sixth Birthday Party. All went off without a hitch, apart from a few banged heads on the bouncy castle, but not without some impressive military-style planning orchestrated by Kath Bower (Eden's best friend's Mum and co-party-planner), as well as a great deal of help from the angelic sister-in-law, Becky (who indulged in much baby-cuddling and toddler entertaining while I was indisposed, despite being a full nine months pregnant and indeed looking very much as if she might deliver the baby any moment now), the ever-helpful (and beautiful and - yes - clearly slightly mad) cuz Melanie (I say mad, cos she's young, free and single and yet willingly spends whole weekends with me and my kids) and the possibly slightly even more insane but very loveable Ed. Oh, and the cake! Well, it looked *vaguely* like a princess castle. At least, Eden and her friends were pretty convinced of this (which was the important thing) and thought it was 'fantastic', though Kath did mumble something about Madonna's tits, and I'm sure someone else made reference to the Millenium Dome at one point.... Still, it resolutely stuck together, the 'turrets' did not slide off the top (due to the engineering skills of Mel, who patented the toothpicks-as-internal-scaffolding concept over the weekend), Eden enjoyed decorating it (flamboyantly) with lots of pink stuff, and it actually tasted really quite nice. The answer lay in the end not in Annabel Karmel (Good. I never liked her anyway) but in customising the one cake recipe I know (the good old chocolate fudge) and adding a dash of inventiveness (swiss roll turrets with ice cream cone spires, covered in lashings of icing). Pix to come soon....