Eighteen With A Custard Cream

It was my daughter Lucy’s eighteenth birthday this week.  I’m sure this will seem familiar to many mums, but when the dickens did little Lucy get to be 18?  I’m sure she wasn’t anything like that age last time I looked.  However, there it was.  And Lucy (with some justification) thought that steps should be taken to celebrate.  The trouble was that two of her friends were also 18 last week and the prime time slot of Saturday night had been taken, as was Friday, so that pushed us back to Thursday.

It went like a dream.  There’s something to be said for being the first in the line of the party-givers, because everyone is fresh and ready for it, whereas come Saturday night, a certain amount of party-droop has set in.

There’s more to giving a party than meets the eye.  You have to hire a room, hire a DJ and – of course – decorate the place.  We covered the tables with blue paper with gold stars, which looked nice, had blue and gold helium balloons and lots of decorations saying 18!!!  That, plus the disco lights, made it look great.  And, of course, there was the cake.  For as long as anyone can remember, Lucy’s favourite biscuit has been custard creams.  She can consume vast amounts of them (without putting on any extra pounds as far as I can make out) so, when it came to a theme for her cake, there was only one real candidate.

Enter the Custard Cream…



It was about two feet by eighteen (how appropriate!) inches and was a real hit.  It’s not really a big biscuit.  All the decoration was laboriously shaped out of icing and put on by yours truly.  It took hours. Was it worth it?  Of course it was.

And then there were the pizzas.  It’s a waste of time doing a “proper” buffet for a teenagers’ party.  Everyone’s dancing and far too busy to eat, but pizzas sounded like a good idea. So I ordered pizzas from the local take-away.  Now let me see… About 60 teenagers equals about 30 pizzas plus 20 pizza-sized garlic breads.  That’s about right, isn’t it?  Er, no.  Have you any idea how much room 50 pizza boxes takes up? As yet more pizza boxes arrived, I felt like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia doing the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  You know, when he casts the spell and all the brushes and buckets come to life and he can’t turn it off.  Pizzas! shouted everyone enthusiastically and proceeded to ignore them in order to get on with dancing.  At the end of the evening, I stood by the door, giving them out like party bags.  Apparently there were a lot of teenagers eating pizza next day in college.  One of these days they’ll work out how to eat at the party but that’s when sober middle age strikes.  Hopefully that’s a long way off.  I’m still getting over the fact she’s eighteen.