Did you hear the one about my son's birthday cake?

If the weekend starts on Friday evening then all I can say is “what a start”!

It was my youngest’s 10th birthday and he was bringing his friends home, allegedly for a party.

Now I have to confess that 15 years ago I was still young, energetic and incredibly enthusiastic about my children’s birthday parties.

I organised some amazing ones – there was the one at New Walk Museum in Leicester where all the kids got to handle huge fossilised mammoth’s tusks, followed by homemade food for all 30 kids AND their parents.

Yep I was a keen bean.

Not so any more. The excitement has worn off.

So I tried my very best to encourage Mr Small to have “a really lovely party (NOT IN THE HOUSE!) – you know – what about a chocolate making party? Now that would be nice, wouldn’t it”

No, NO NO!

OK, so I resigned myself to it being at home – I’d prepare a cake and some food and then – so I was told – they would all watch The Voice because they all really really wanted to watch The Voice.

Okaaaaayyy.

I can cope with that.

So homemade meal and cake it was.

All was going well until we got to the all-important cake bit.

The lights went out, the candles were lit and everyone sang happy birthday.

Fine.

Now it was time to cut the cake.

Out came the knife.

Could I cut the cake?

Nope! Not a hope in hell: the cake was resisting.

The cream in the middle started to squidge out of the sides, the top layer was now leaning at a worrying angle and the whole thing frankly looked a mess.

Perhaps I had overcooked the cake? You know, baked it into a brick-like substance worthy of heavy construction work?

So I removed the top layer to inspect.

Now that was a surprise!

I had forgotten to remove the base of the cake tin and had sandwiched cake, metal base, cream and Nutella all together!

Offending item removed, the kids all devoured the messy chocolate cake.

Phew, time to watch The Voice, I thought.

No such luck, The Voice was off the agenda.

Time for a Nerf Gun war instead.

Great! That’s all I need to start the weekend!

And as you know, there’s always a truly deep and meaningful moral to my Mumday Mondays and today it’s this: leave birthday parties to the experts whilst you head off to a relaxing café and sip cappuccino over the day’s paper ;)