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Exhausted. Last week was one of those busy weeks when my ‘to do list’ just kept getting bigger and bigger.
By midweek I had gratifyingly crossed off Ma Salama party 5 & 6, last book club meeting with requested vegan avocado and dark chocolate cake and a piano Etude competition, which was a very close call, getting lost in Isa Town as Google Maps decided it would be fantastically funny to send me on a wild goose chase.
But it was very clear to see I had a long way to go, especially as I still had to plan my daughter’s poolside birthday party.
As I rushed out the door on Thursday morning and with all ingredients purchased, I told daughter I would be making the M & M / Malteser gravity-defying cake the same as last year as requested.
Costing a small fortune in obscene amounts of sweet chocolate I was ready to get baking. ‘Oh no, mum, don’t you remember I asked you for the paint gravity-defying cake instead, I’ll WhatsApp it to you, it looks dead easy on YouTube.’’ Luckily for daughter Thursday was her actual birthday so I just smiled through gritted teeth.
The morning was then spent getting much better acquainted with fondant icing … and lots of it. Kneading, shaping, twisting and when it started to look like an epic Pinterest fail, throwing it.
In the afternoon, a few of her friends came over to kick start the two-day celebrations. With inflatable pool with slide booked and various pink inflatable flamingos and unicorns bobbing, distant memories of ‘pass the parcel’ and ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ brought on a sudden feeling of nostalgia.
Party day morning I woke up to see the following text message sent to me from the water slide company at 3am: ‘Madam, water slide is brook today, can we replace it with this one’.
I then download a photograph of a jungle-themed inflatable slide where the children slide out of a giant Lion’s mouth. I am sure this is every five-year-old boy’s dream but not so for 15 12-year-old girls. It’s a Friday morning during Ramadan I have two hopes as my Granddad often said: no hope and Bob Hope.
But remarkably, after a few hours of pitiful pleading and unfortunately the onset of a headache the water slide company confirmed they could fix the original slide and have it erected in time for the party. A quick celebratory dance and a deep breathe.
The rest of the party went swimmingly well, lots of love and laughter and happy smiling faces. The girls all left by 8.45pm, just in time for a quick freshen up and managed to make a neighbour’s rather special 30th birthday party.
Really exhausted now.
