The birthday cake

Your mother is only 80 once. If you remember, she and Anne had been out at Christmas. In the couple of days of solitude (bliss!) after everyone had left in early January, I dusted down Delia Smith (if you want a traditional recipe - she'll have it) and set to to make my first ever rich fruit cake. The works. And it worked. So it had been sitting gently maturing since January.

Oh yes - a hint if ever you decide to embark on the chatelaineship of a domaine such as Le Colombier. In the cold winter months the mice don't have a lot to eat. You can't keep them out of the cave. But you would be advised to store home made christmas puddings in a thick safe deposit box. Aluminium foil alone hadn't managed to repel the advances of the christmas pudding hungry mice a few years back. Lizzie had made 2 puddings 12 months previously. On christmas eve we found that one had been half eaten through. Lizzie was not amused. Nor were we as our portions of pudding had to be re-calibrated.

So anyway, the cake had been maturing, wrapped in foil, in a tin, inside another sealed box, for a few months. I had spent the previous night adding marzipan, icing it, and decorating it with 80 marzipan balls. Yes, at 2.00 in the morning, I made them and counted them all.

It was actually going to be the actual birthday the day after the group left (28th April) - but my plan was that if we did the stuff with the candles etc on the first night - they could take a piece of cake with them each day for their picnic on the walk.

So cake was produced, candles blown out, slices distributed. Jean arrived. The house party retired to bed. And Jean and I took a bottle of wine out to sit under the tilleul tree and watch the stars. All, finally, was peaceful.