Cakes, Mice and Tricycles

It is good to feel slightly more human. I will take small improvements any time! The snow never materialised, and the winds died down, and so it was business as usual by Friday. Sigh. A long weekend would have been perfect. But I can now say that half-term is NEXT WEEK! Well, on Friday next week. At the end of next week. Soon!

Meggie asked about the mouse and the fridge incidents ........ Yes. A real mouse! Mum's friend, Auntie Myra, made us the most amazing birthday cakes as we were growing up, and so help me, I can still see that cake up high on the cupboard as I speak. Marge had a "Sing a song of Sixpence" cake one year, complete with the four and twenty blackbirds etc, most beautifully iced. Or was in Humpty Dumpty? I can't remember.

(My own favourite was Swan Lake, with flood-iced ballerina doing an arabesque in the centre of a mirror, standing on her toe, with 4 swans around the edges, all 3D and stunning, and cascades of 3D flowers all over the sides, but I digress....) The cake. After the party, it was put in the kitchen as only about a third had been eaten, and a few days later, when we went to get it down to have some, a tunnel had been eaten out all the way round the cake. The icing and marzipan held the shape in place, but there was no cake inside. A mouse. That cake went into the bin. I don't actually remember the culprit being found, but that could have something to do with my lifelong aversion to rodents!

And the tricycle..... There was a table in the centre of the kitchen, and we loved to race round and round it. On foot or on wheels, as in those little tricycles. Mum was busy getting something out of the fridge, and lost her balance as we whizzed around, and grabbed onto the fridge to stop herself from falling. Unfortunately, she fell, and took the open fridge with her, and the whole thing landed on top of her on the floor, with the contents all over and around her. We were both under 5 at the time, and I can't remember all the details, but I do know that we were not happy to see Mum under the fridge, and understandably she was not thrilled to be there either. She wasn't badly hurt, but I think we were banned from creating racing circuits in the kitchen after that. I have a feeling that the homemade gingerbeer exploding might have been linked to this event too. Just thinking about it, I am very thankful that in those days the fridges were not as ginormous as they are nowadays!

Yes. Tricycles were rather different back then in the dark ages. And from the photo, I am QUITE sure that it was Marge's one that was whizzing round the kitchen, as mine was clearly far too huge to fit in there, and most probably far too slow and cumbersome to do any whizzing! But it had a bell. It was hi-tech.