I blame the sainted Delia

It's what every good hostess does. Ten minutes before her guests arrive she decides to make playdough. 

There was a good reason for it. I'd dug out the board game Cranium and discovered the modelling dough had gone hard; hence the need for some speedily squished home-made playdough. It was just unfortunate that I misremembered the amounts of ingredients - I had to go from the puta in the study to the kitchen, for goodness sake - and put in four times as much oil as was needed. Meaning I had to increase all the other quantities meaning I could now go into business selling playdough.

And when it came to it our guests wanted to play Articulate.

A pleasant evening though with our gang of friends. We missed out on our pre-Christmas meal as six of the eight were poorly so when I saw crackers in the shop reduced to £1.24 I had to have some so we could all wear silly hats and tell appalling jokes.

How it's supposed to look

Food was nice but the potato was less mashed and more liquidised. I'd planned on making duchesse potatoes so I could simply pop them in the oven just before we ate but as I hadn't made them before I thought I'd better check on a recipe, which is where I went wrong. I am very good at mashed potatoes. Usually. 

Closer but mine didn't have that much shape

At the time I thought it seemed like a lot of cream and butter (and I was using less than Delia suggested) but who am I to question Mother Superior? When I tried to pipe them onto a tray it came out as less of a swirl and more of a, well, puddle. Its only attribute was that it tasted good but, then again, Vivaldi mashed potatoes taste good as they are. Hey ho.