Talking to the hand

I emailed Daughter this afternoon. In her reply she said, 'Someone hasn't been to pick up her prescription yet has she?'

I was only slightly tetchy. And, for goodness' sake, how can it take 48 hours to do a repeat prescription?

So after I'd collected my happy pills, I went to hire some tins for the wedding cake. I explained to the lady what I wanted, or rather, I told her roughly what I planned and hoped she'd tell me what I wanted. She said, 'Have you thought about a dummy?'

Archie Andrews sprang to mind. I grew up listening to Archie Andrews on Sunday lunchtimes and it only recently struck me how odd it was to have a ventriloquist act on the radio. But I digress.

She showed me the dummy cakes that 'loads of people use these days.' They come in all shapes and sizes and the advantage is that the cake stays looking nice all day because the bride and groom only pretend to cut it anyway. A separate square cake or one fruit and one sponge are available for cutting. And big stacked cakes are very heavy. And all in all it was a very convincing argument. But I can't ice a dummy. Actually I can't ice anything but that's a problem we'll deal with later. (I hope Daughter-in-law-to-be isn't reading this.)

So tomorrow is the big day: baking the cakes day. Mother-in-law has been expressing surprise that I haven't started yet. There's still two months; plenty of time to lace the cakes with brandy. Enough brandy and no-one will notice the wonky icing.