BY GOD, BUT THE SIMNEL CAKE

Back at Ingleside for a week so I steal Dad's cardigan. It's dark green with coloured flecks, oversized, and has 'Town Wear' embroidered on the label. My mother bought it for him years and years ago for Christmas, but now makes that look whenever he wears it. Best I have it really, to give it a good home. Especially as I may have mopped up a little mojito with the cuffs on girl's night out... I am a person who wears their father's cardigan on girl's night out in toon, where everyone is orange and clad in tiny sparkly things I can't describe and speaks with the most lovely vowels you ever heard. I also wear it with wellingtons in the woods.

I try to write about a poet who is all hell bent for the heart but get distracted in my old room that has all changed yet is still so familiar. It's exactly how I would have liked it when growing up here if I had actually listened to my mother and not been such a brat who insisted on hanging a hammock above her bed. There's the painting on the mantelpiece of a sheep that looks like it's wearing a big knitted jumper made out of its own wool. According to my farmer uncle who came for Easter lunch today 'sheep are the new chickens'. As well they might be, considering two plump chickens were lunch. Plus all the trimmings. I love trimmings and the logistics of dish navigation and serving negotiations when there's eight round a six-seater table and everyone has a wine glass.

I've started The Land of Green Ginger which I've read a million times, though had read to me more. Dad doesn't know how I'll do the voices when on the megabus back south tomorrow. I'll have to do them in my head. Boomalakka Wee is my favourite.

Two things have made me smile today. Firstly, an interview with bonkers Jilly Cooper who says the word 'soppy' a great deal and spouted this heartening gem: 'I'm not a real writer because I get drunk at parties when I should be observing things'. Secondly, with the smile more sickly, is my mother's simnel cake. It's like exquisite death. She didn't leave room for marzipan ball Judas on top. He would have just been eaten up anyway. Sweet almondy disciples.