It is Cora’s birthday tomorrow again so of course some time has been given over during the last few days for preparations.

That preparation started, in part, on Saturday morning with the purchase of the biggest pumpkin they had from the greengrocers on Oxton Road. Time was then spent on Sunday morning looking for a suitable face to first of all be marked out on the side of the pumpkin in black ball point and then carefully carved by father and children with a variety of sharp knives.

There was, of course, some friendly discussion between father and children as to who should do what. No fingers were lost and we now have a proud pumpkin.

This evening we had Cora’s favourite supper – noodles.

For Cora all she really needed was a plate of noodles in broth – anything else would be a distraction and extraneous to the noodle eating to be done.

That would have been boring for the rest of the family so peppers and baby corn were sliced, garlic, ginger and spring onions diced  and chicken breasts chopped. Similar chopping was applied to a lump of tofu for the vegetarian option.

The woks were taken up from the basement, cleaned off and put on a high heat with a glaze of corn nut oil.

Ten minutes later we were done and sat down slurping at the table. The sauce was a combination of bottles that needed using from and cupboard – mostly fish sauce and plum sauce and a teaspoon or so of red curry paste that has been lurking in the fridge and looks like it needs eating up.

It was not quite all finished and there should be enough left for me to have cold for lunch tomorrow.

We listened to the dream pop of Beach House – not that anyone else in the family noticed.