Help

You know you're getting past it when your youngest child, in your mind hardly out of nappies, but in fact all grown up with two children, offers to help by baking a birthday cake for you when you admit to having had a culinary disaster with the last sponge baked.

There was a time in my hey day when sponge birthday cakes rolled out of the oven at a prodigious rate with little thought to their production; but with the birthday chicks having flown the nest, so to speak, the art has flown with them and I consider it a monumental achievement to produce a sponge that is a credit to my kitchen.

The reason I feel the need for such a cake is the not so small matter of his Lordship's birthday tomorrow, a birthday such that the local fire station is on standby, lest the conflagration of attached candles gets out of hand.

On other matters,the grandchildren's visit yesterday passed off without the need for playpark attendance. They seemed happy enough to run about on the grass outside, after having predictably spilt the tub of bubble blowing liquid within 2 minutes of its being opened.
Thankfully, detergent was a good equivalent.

The day concluded with an attendance in St Cuthbert's Church listening to a massed choir of 250 from Leeds and Newcastle singing in aid of the charity 'Help for Heroes'.
They sang without sheet music, word perfect, and lifted the roof with the sound.
It was goosebumpingly awesome!