All cake'd up...

Home again, home again, tiddlypom...

The South of France (near Carcassone if you're interested, and if you want details watch this space over the next few days) seems a long way away, as do relaxed afternoons by the pool, gentle meanders around fragrant markets, and scrambles up steep hillsides to visit Cathar castles.

And actually, now I think about it, that's probably because the South of France IS a long way away. I can tell you this because we drove there and back, mad fools that we are. Probably for the last time. Or at least, if I have anything to do with it, for the last time in a car without air-conditioning...

And yes, I know, for those of you living in the US, Africa or Australia, a 12 hour drive is no more time than you would spend on a trip to the beach, but to us namby pamby North Europeans? A twelve hour car journey is a BIG DEAL. Especially when it miraculously telescopes out into a 16 hour drive as a result of traffic jams, speeding tickets awarded by French policemen who quite frankly have no business looking as trim as they did in their tight jodphurs and boots (bearing in mind that they do nothing but sit in their cars in laybys aiming their speed-guns at foolish British motorists trying to reach the beach as fast as possible), and torrential - no, make that biblical - rain storms. Both ways.

Anyway, as I said; more details of our trip to follow. In the meantime though, we're back in the normal swing of things.

And I knew that this was definitely the case when I returned from the gym this morning, and instead of finding the two tidily dressed small boys that I had left gently playing with trains and a husband tap-tap-tapping away on his laptop in the corner, I was greeted by a cacophony of shouts and roars through the front the door as I searched for my key. When I opened it, I saw Boy #2, bare-chested and brandishing a wooden sword almost as large as he is, herding his older brother (wearing only a lion mask and a pair of dinosaur pants) through the undergrowth of toys and books that had sprung up around our dining room table in the 50 minutes that I had been away, whilst Husband sheltered in his office reading the papers, catching up on e-mails, and generally being important.

So for now, the details of our French idyll will have to wait as I can't stop long; I have about 50 cakes to make. Oh, alright, not 50. 6. And all for my mother's birthday. (I wouldn't mind but I'm not sure she even likes the stuff. Or at least, not as much as I do...). This is extremely inconvenient timing wise; I'm supposed to be on a healthy eating regime right now. You know, the sort of thing you come up with on holiday when you're sitting by the pool glancing enviously at your friend who is 4 sizes smaller than you and for whom bikinins are not just a distant memory.

In any case, I've only just finished making the first cake, and I have already overdosed on raw batter that I scooped guiltily out of the bowl on the end of my fingers in the misguided belief that if it doesn't arrive in my mouth on a wooden spoon there are miraculously fewer calories.

Which brings me to this poem on Powder Room Graffiti. It's not mine, but if you've ever planned for a future day when you're a smaller size than now, you might find - as I did - that it rings so very true...