Actually I have three friends with this birthday. This particular friend, Klas, is an eccentric swede currently obsessed with wild plants and seeds. So I baked a lemon poppyseed pound cake with gorgeous fat lemons I got at the outdoor market and köy tereyağı which was a half kilo plastic bag of fresh yellow butter. For all my care, the cake turned out rather homely and I wasn’t really sure what to do so I covered it and waited.

Selma came home at 7:30 and looked at the cake. We have to do something about this, she said. Yes, I know, I said. We were supposed to take it to the bar at 8. She poured us raki and şalgam suyu (pickled purple carrot juice) and we set about in a flurry of amused cake rescue decoration. She whipped up some soup while I found a packet of cocoa for chocolate sauce. The marmalada (quince paste) I had made earlier was rolled into cute little balls and covered with coconut. I grabbed the clippers and ran outside in my slippers to pick roses.

The thing is, my mother used to make and decorate fantastic wedding cakes that would sell for sometimes a thousand dollars. I used to help her as a kid. I was laughing at the incredibly botched cake we were preparing: my history had deserted me! But after the roses and pomegranate seeds it looked passably quaint: like a donut going to a christmas party. We hurried out the door only 20 minutes late.