Cautionary Tale

Tomorrow night, I must get home in time to make a cake for my ungodson's Christening. So it's exceptionally good timing that little a's favourite bedtime read at the moment is THE DUCHESS BAKES A CAKE. My husband has read it ten nights in a row now (he claims: though since he was off gallivanting round Liverpool at the weekend that has to be taken with a large dash of tabasco). So I'm in the good books for making it back in time for bedtime tonight.

And good book it certainly is. What other tales outside the Pilgrim's Progress could get away with rhyming leaven with Heaven? And this without a thinly veiled religious message, even.

I love everything about it: the simple but cute illustrations (the Duchess's daughters in little red caps, adorable), the pacy rhyme ('You'll all be delighted, for I'm going to make/A lovely light luscious delectable cake) and best of all the moral of the tale: baking's a dangerous game best left to your cook. Stick to the reading and writing ...

Asked little a what was her favourite thing about it.
Answer: 'The rising'

In a nutshell: Duchess, more accustomed to bluestockinged pursuits, sends cook on holiday and determines to bake said lovely light luscious delectable cake - only to find an improper proportion of leaven takes her right up to Heaven. Call the cavalry, but not even a shower of arrows can bring her down ('All that they hit was a couple of sparrows').

Then Gunhilde, the youngest, she howled and she wailed,
And their every attempt to quiet her failed.
"Don't cry, dear," the Duke said, "about your poor mother.
I'm sure, if you wish, I can find you another."

Turns out little G is nothing more than hungry - and can you guess how they rescue the Duchess from the top of her cake?

It is tales like this that make me glad to be in the modern world, one of civilised ingredients such as self-raising flour.