The baby on another table I'm also juggling is busy splattering ketchup everywhere and using the cheese off the cheeseboard as a play-dough substitute. I shiver at the mess around the floor, and at the macerated cheese grinding into the velvet-covered chairs. I don't do babies. Not on velvet chairs or with cheese anyhow!
Back to the party, and after a successful 3-course meal inside, they're all out in the garden for coffee and cake. Although no cake for the staff working their butts off to make this anywhere near to a success. On the subject of cake, I have the honourable job of bringing out the cake. Well, one of two cakes (two birthday's within the party), so quite naturally I 'shotgun' the Barbie Cake. Yes, the BARBIE cake. It is truly insane. No amount of description will equate to the utter amazingness of this sugar creation. So on this occasion, I will let the photo I sneaked do the talking. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words!
I follow out a colleague who has a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake (not half as phenomenal as the Barbie Cake, and may I just add that both cakes are for people over 30!), and within moments of entering the outside breeze all candles puff out. It's my own Indiana Jones moment - holding the Holy Grail of cakes, although in my opinion nothing can quite beat Marks and Spencer's Caterpillar Cake, and wouldn't it just be so funny if under Barbie's icing dress was chocolate sponge - there'd always be one to make a joke about her cacking her pants! The next stage of The Plan is singing The Song. I have spent three years of waitressing building up the courage for the bloody birthday song. I have to admit that by now I just get on with it, no fussing. When I say 'get on with it' I mean START IT. Those first 'Haaa-py Birth-' are my solo. ALWAYS. Not because I WANT to sing it - I HATE singing, and always admit to only singing 'in the shower' - but no one else has the guts (or talent haha) to start the Happy Birthday Song. And so really it saves a lot of time and embarrassment if I just get on with it, and make the best out of those first three syllables instead of a mumbled, out-of tune and wobbly attempt which only seems to encourage surrounding people to stand and watch for entertainment and deliberately not join in. OH!, and that high note in the third line is always a cringeworthy, mortifying moment, more than when you suddenly realise halfway through that you don't actually know the name of the person you're singing to... By then you rely on the fact that the party-people have used their initiative and loyalty to their birthday-friend/relative and joined in after you started singing and you can shut-up yourself and just give a cheesy smile by the third line without any singing at all!
Well, it's the first of my Listening/Reading/Writing French exams tomorrow, or third out of all four French retakes. I know this won't get any sympathy reaction whatsoever and more like a raised eyebrow and a 'you really should know better and have worked harder for this' speech from the people interested in seeing me NOT fail in life, but buying domestos and making pretty price tags for my next car boot sale is just SO much more interesting than revising about mobile phones, family life, and the media. Riveting!
To top the evening off, I decided to cook Shepherd's Pie for the house. My Shepherd's Pie speciality. Newby is my Come Dine With Me bud, and suggested how totally awesome it would be to do a CDWM in the house... even though Disappearing Dave has always...well, disappeared, and Luke's always on a no-carb diet - until the next McDonalds! Anyhow, the Shepherd's pie was a hit, with Newby giving me a 7/10 score - he marked me down on the fact it wasn't three course (as in CDWM), and he had to provide his own drink (his beer)... and there was no entertainment in terms of Belly Dancing, Magicians or bongo drums. But 7/10 is still on the way to a winner! :)
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