Londoners Diary

On Monday I soaked eighteen pounds of organic raisins, currants and sultanas in my husband's Christening Armagnac (he's away this week) in preparation for the enormous wedding cake I am making for great friends who are marrying next month. I feel a little responsible for the union. You see the whole thing was my idea years before the couple's very first kiss and it's so good of the parties concerned to have come round at last to my way of thinking that really the cake is the least I can do. Also the baking gives me an excuse to linger at length in my favourite shop Party Party in Ridley Road Dalston, the best cake decorating outlet in the universe. It really is to icers what daffodils were to Wordsworth. There are sugar roses in eight different shades of pink which come in four sizes made from hard icing or from soft sugar paper. There are cake-topping bride and groom statuettes in almost every combination of race, height and hairstyle. They even stock a crestfallen looking couple labelled reluctant bridegroom. The staff at Party Party are so helpful and well informed, brimming with sympathy and expertise for all your sugarcraft dilemmas-they even run courses- that if you said you were desperate for a three inch red headed groom figurine with an earring accompanied by a Japanese bride in full traditional dress I'm sure they'd have one out the back.

As it was the Glorious 12th on Tuesday I encouraged my glamorous next door neighbour Kate to come out with me for a Grouse at WIlton's. Kate is a world expert on gender and the workplace who specialises in the subtleties of office politics and what she doesn't notice in life really isn't worth noticing. As we sat amongst the bespectacled plutocrats fingering their dividend certificates at the table -how common- I thought I bet she could teach them a thing or two. But when the grouse arrived they were so tender and delicate in flavour that it was impossible to think of anything else at all, let alone speak. It was only my modesty and the prospect of sherry trifle oozing seductively in the wings that prevented me from calling out to the green and white striped waitresses 'Same again, please. Quick!'

My great friend the novelist Wendy Perriam took me out for lunch this week and as usual impressed me with her generous good sense and cheer. I have just handed in my fourth novel which is a black comedy about a marriage guidance counsellor who goes off the rails called ONLY HUMAN. We drank a watery toast to the book and naturally the talk turned to relationships. 'If I were a marriage guidance counsellor I'd give two pieces of advice,' Wendy began. 'Love and sex and money are all very well but if you are a tidy person you really shouldn't marry an untidy one and if you are a night owl, you mustn't marry a lark.' 'But what if, like me, you get really upset if the place isn't tidy but you cant quite bring yourself to clear up?' I inquired. Wendy looked sympathetic.

This week a cynical acquaintance of mine pinpointed a social trend amongst the women he knows in London which he has named the 'flip.' Newly 35, it has come to his notice that many of the girls who a decade ago would not have dreamed of returning his phone calls, have now made it clear that they wouldn't mind a trip down the aisle with him at a mutually convenient church sometime soon-and that's just their small talk at parties. He's not sure what to make of these vastly attractive, accomplished women he has known for years, who have recently taken to seeking him out all the time, practically stalking his Chambers, when formerly the best they had for him were frowns and shrugs or sniggers of crushing froideur. But he is not exactly complaining.

By the time I finished the fifth tier of the wedding cake the house was throbbing with the smell of cinnamon and dried fruit and alcohol a smell that put me in mind of only one thing: December 25th. Perhaps it was also the bread sauce that accompanied the grouse -who knows? - but suddenly I found myself really longing for the yuletide season my all time favourite part of the year. How can I improve on last years festivities? I asked myself. Remember to decorate all the cereal packets again, I made a note. I jotted down one or two ideas for presents and before I know it four pages were filled with exquisite yet reasonable gift suggestions for those aged 8 months to eighty.

It may be a hundred degrees outside, but in my heart it's always Christmas.