Now I know I’m getting old. Cupcakes, DIY cuts and flowers

If you happen to see the Wee Lad marauding around the town this week, please don’t laugh at him. And please don’t laugh at the following which only served to remind me that I’m hurtling into middle age and getting more like my Auld One every day.

First to domestic matters, and then to DIY haircuts, the effects of which are still being felt. Spring has been in the air the last couple of weeks, and with it, and Mother’s Day of course, came a slew of flowers that were just begging to be bought. I love flowers, but in previous years, I have taken them out of their wrappers and dumped them into vases. However, with the onslaught of middle age comes an realisation of sorts, coupled with the fact that I’m obviously spending too much time with the Ma, that these flowers can be arranged in an attractive way.

Like, I don’t have enough to be doing with my time, but a couple of weeks ago, I will admit that I spent a happy half hour arranging €9 worth of flowers into four vases. And last Saturday, I spent a further 15 minutes ‘refreshing’ those vases, taking the dying ones out and putting new ones in and topping up the water. Jesus, I was turning into the Ma who can spend whole days doing this type of thing.

Not that anyone notices, certainly not the males I live with. The Big Lad pretended, for five seconds, to be interested, while the Wee Lad gave the flowers a single look with a single eyeball. The Husband didn’t even do that. But, like the Ma, I don’t care and the flowers, if not the males, make me happy.

And when the flower refreshing was done, I decided to have a go at making cupcakes - a test run ahead of making them for Easter. The Great British Bake Off is safe from my efforts, or should I say the joint efforts, for the hand mixer was no sooner out of the cupboard than the Wee Lad had pulled a chair up to the counter, rolled up his sleeves and enthusiastically offered his ‘ help’.

Every sinew of my being was screaming ‘no’, but that’s a word the Wee Lad doesn’t comprehend and there was no point in denying his assistance. I will say no more than this: he’s very keen. About everything, particularly eggs and the exact measurements of flour and sugar. And he likes using the electric whisk, a lot.

Still, despite his best efforts to ruin them, they turned out OK and with a few adjustments, they may well be edible for Easter. But again, who, other than middle aged women, are making test batches of cupcakes on a Saturday afternoon?

And it was while the Wee Lad was beating the life out of the cupcake batter that I saw just how bad his hair has got. Encouraged perhaps by the spring sunshine, it has, like the grass, been growing wildly these past couple of weeks and with the brother in law’s WEDDING (now in capital letters because of its importance to the world at large) just two weeks away and the Lads on page boy duty, I was worrying again about the Wee Lad’s refusal to even walk past the hairdressers, never mind sit in the chair and get it chopped.

I think you get sudden urges when you’re middle aged and it was while I was combing his newly washed hair on Saturday evening that I suddenly got the urge to do something about this sheep-like mane. I told the Wee Lad to close his eyes, which, like the trusting Lad he is, he did. I was not properly prepared, so I grabbed a pair of nail scissors from the bathroom drawer and started cutting. I got halfway across the fringe before the Wee Lad realised something dreadful was going on and started bucking like a foal. I continued, and when he turned to the mirror, he roared like a lion and said I had ‘ruined’ his hair, telling me he looked ‘ridiculous’. The Big Lad came to see what all the fuss was about and laughed his head off at the cut of his brother.

I told the Wee Lad anyone who laughed as only jealous of his beautiful hair. But laugh is all you could do.