Is that a blurry photo of a strangely large exotic insect or is it Mr. Lacer’s new birthday present?

It’s a miniature helicopter, I found one rather cheap on Amazon and I knew it would appeal to Mr. Lacer’s inner boy, even though he’s now one year short of 40. The kids got him the game Frustration, which I remember so well as a kid, which it turns out Mr. Lacer never played, so only 30 years too late then.

Rather sweetly this year Girl Lacer wrote all of Mr. Lacer’s birthday card, she recently graduated from just being able to write her name, to also being able to write mummy (who says computer games are bad, she learnt to write mummy after watching me type mummy in the second player name box repeatedly). So with a little (quite a big help actually) with the spelling, Girl Lacer wrote the card.

After the birthday present opening I had just enough time to stick a birthday cake in the oven, telling Mr. Lacer that he’d have to get his own birthday cake out and then me and Girl Lacer were off to the first ballet dress rehearsal. Set in a proper theatre it was like being in a pre-teen version of fame. Then on to meet Mr. and Boy Lacer at a pizza restaurant for a birthday late lunch. Then Mr. Lacer took both kids home and I had to run to the supermarket, during which I couldn’t help but check out the sale in John Lewis, coming out of it with three very cheap art activities for Girl Lacer (£1.95 each) which will be good spread out over the holidays, two sponge cake pans (you’ll get why later) and some sports socks for me. Then onto Clarks, which I’d popped into on the way to the supermarket to look at the sandals as my favourites, I’ve lived in them all spring – summer shoes (you can see them in my blog header photo, I love how they remind me particularly of conkers in that photo) have literally got their sole falling off on one of the shoes. So I popped in, saw a nice range of T bar shoes in a range of colours, I quite liked the red ones and then I saw the bright pink pair . . . Honestly I never was a pink girl, but one of the many benefits of having children is that they reintroduce you to your inner child and Girl Lacer has put it this way made me somehow see the benefits of pink. So I went away, thought about it as I went around the supermarket, kept thinking “red would be more sensible” (see actually I’m not that sensible when I think red is sensible, if I’d wanted sensible I’d have gone for the blue or black pair) but as much as thought red was sensible (and they were nice) I still kept on thinking like my petulant 4 year old “but I want the pink pair!”, so I brought the pink pair.

So, much as I’ll miss my Clarks Originals Conker Red shoes, I think I’ll enjoy wearing these, I think they’ll look especially nice as the summer turns to autumn with my jeans.

Back home it was birthday cake time. You may recall yesterday, amongst other things, I was debating what birthday cake to make Mr. Lacer. Mr. Lacer wanted sponge, I didn’t have the right ingredients or tins and didn’t have the right ingredients for my stand by cakes either. So, I forgo my current faithfulness to Bill Granger and my life long loyalty to Nigella and dug out my copy of Cooking With Daisy by Josie Klafkowska, a wonderful ‘charity’ cookbook with an incredibly sad story behind it, but the recipes in it (donated from the public) are generally lovely and really family friendly. I made the Victoria Sponge, from a recipe donated by Daisy’s grandmother, using the fruit sponge variation. Mine was a little flat due to probably not using the right size tin and not adding enough baking powder when I had to switch from the recommended self-raising flour to normal flour, but it was still pretty delicious, everyone liked it and it was lovely and moist. I used blueberries (thank goodness for my supplies of frozen fruit, from the supermarket I should add, I’m not that efficient) in the freezer, as this was a real rummage round my kitchen cake) but you could use any fruit really, it’s just blueberries are Mr. Lacer’s favourite fruit to put in cakes.

Now the kids are in bed and me and Mr. Lacer can celebrate properly, in our own traditional way, eating junk food (our early courtship involved trips to corner shops and going back to bed with the newspapers, we were students, that counted as entertainment!), watching mmmm Jeremy Clarkson. I’m hoping though to visit the Salon tonight, as I don’t know about you but the more complicated and hectic my life is, the more I want to sink into a good book, even if it’s just a few pages before I fall asleep!