First guests and Naaarnia

Our first visitors.  So exciting.  I baked a cake in their honour, but was unfortunately distracted discussing Mum’s 70^th with Dad.  Instead of coming downstairs fresh from my shower 45 minutes later to slide a fabulous Guinness cake out of the oven before going out to dine with friends (eat your heart out, Nigella) I found the cake all over the bottom of the oven and not even a crumb to try (laugh your socks off, Nigella).  The cake has topped my Disastrous Cake League – worse even than using self-raising flour with baking powder consoled only by my mother’s helpful comment “well at least you have tall ceilings, dear” as Ian’s birthday cake rose, collapsed over the side of the tin, rose again, and collapsed again.  At least that time the cake did cake – until it collapsed.  This time there was no cake at all.

I digress, except to say there was no cake to celebrate our first visitors, only flapjack and sausage rolls from the oven and the usual ham, cheese, cucumber kind of suspects from the fridge .  I am not yet quite ready to try and cook on our inherited hob.

But they liked it, I think.  The house that is, not the lunch.

Perhaps the highlight of their visit for all the girls was the discovery of a Secret Passage.  It was Henrietta and Oriana that made the discovery, if that’s what it should be called.  Oriana described her fabulous find with uncharacteristic modesty, “I found the hole in the wall.  I just leant on it and it fell in.”

The girls were inside the fitted cupboard in the end bedroom and the passage runs from the side of the cupboard right along the end wall, behind the bathtub.  I gather it turns the corner at the end too, but there were so many little girls crowding in that I haven’t yet been to investigate yet myself, assuming that my bum would permit me to do so.

Courtney texted to say that Henrietta and Florence now want to live with us, or at least near us.  Hooray.  Time to tell Bob to hold off on the swanky London house purchase and busy some wellies.  Let’s hope so.

On the way home I asked the girls more about the room.  “Did you find yourself in Narnia, Oriana?”  Not a fair question as Oriana hasn’t read the Narnia Chronicles.  Ruth stepped in to put me straight, “She didn’t find herself in Naaarnia, she found herself behind the wall.”