Featuring in the Innocent newsletter certainly sends my hit counter into overdrive - great stuff! I have now put my world-famous marmalade on ebay and will soon find out just who will pay £3.50 a jar for postage because that's what it'll cost - good old Royal Mail.

Today we went to Bodnant Gardens.

We all had the National winner - thanks to a silver birch being spotted behind the artist son's garage the day before the race!

The London son is home from Dubai and has been telling us about severe turbulance over Romania on the journey home - that would have finished me off. Before he went he'd applied for an Innocent Scholarship - the lovely company he works for gives away money every quarter to someone who wants to enrich their lives by doing something special. He's always loved orang utans and wants to see them in their native habitat. While he was away he heard he'd won the award - so that's his next holiday sorted.

We've just got back from a couple of days in York - I've never seen so many blossom trees.

We visited Fountains Abbey too.

We went to see Brian Ferry on Thursday. Very good if rather depressing - lots of overweight Lancastrian pensioners rocking in the aisles. His voice is as good as ever though - I just wish he'd done Virginia Plain.

Next stop REM in Dublin!

The London son is now in Dubai, in the middle of dust storms if the daily weather forecasts are to be believed. I've found a Dubai live webcam and will endeavour to get him to stand near it while he's there, so that I can make sure he's eating properly.

The artist son's off to London on Monday. He's a finalist in the Mercury Music Art Prize competition and his work is being featured in an exhibition near Covent Garden. He and his wife are now settled into their lovely home and our son has discovered a love of gardening - so much so that he now has a frozen shoulder for his efforts.

Our daughter's booked for New York in September and is hoping that it'll be warmer than when she was there last time. Then she spent the entire week with her hands in her pockets because it was too cold to let the air get at them.

I wrote Gordon Ramsay's recipes off ages ago, after trying to make his cinder toffee. The recipe was ridiculous and I found I was being asked to add things that weren't in the list of ingredients. Since then I've stuck with Delia. But at the weekend I found a recipe for three fruit marmalade in the Telegraph. I followed it to the letter, bottled and labelled it. Twenty-four hours later it was as runny as fruit juice so I dug out Delia's marmalade recipe. She recommended double the amount of sugar that the Telegraph recipe had called for. So I tipped the lot back into the preserving pan and re-boiled with the extra sugar. Perfection! But why publish recipes that are never going to do the job?

THIS MARMALADE IS NOW ON EBAY!

The artist son and his wife have finally moved into their new home. Part of the removal process seems to involve hanging around waiting for funds to clear (why?) and at 3.55 they were round at our house tapping their fingers and swigging tea, waiting for the all clear. At 4pm the phone rang and at 4.05 (important this) they set off to pick the keys up from the estate agent's. They drove to the house, parked outside and rushed in to open the doors for the removal men. At 4.13pm they got a parking ticket, stuck to the windscreen by the friendly neighbourhood bobby. It bore the legend: "on the ocassion(sic) of parking to(sic) close to a junction." We'd have thought it was a wind-up but something told us it was small-minded enough to be genuine.



I've just had to fork out £4.70 to post a fruit loaf. Now I'll just have to hope it actually arrives. Three weeks ago I posted something by first class recorded delivery and it still hasn't arrived. Another claim for the Royal Mail to deal with.

The homemade loaf cakes are selling well on eBay and I've now had bespoke boxes made to fit them! Anyone wanting to order a banana loaf cake / sticky ginger loaf/ lemon drizzle or rich fruit can email me at deb@debsdigest.com  They cost £4.50 (except for the ginger which is £5.) They are baked in 2lb loaf tins and are pretty heavy. The postage is £3.25 - they're delicious even if I do say so myself.

Mother's Day was lovely - everyone home. Beautiful presents including tickets to see Bryan Ferry next month - can't wait! While everyone was in one place we lined up for photos....

We went to Manchester to see Peter Kay in The Producers at the weekend. It was very, very funny - I just wish the man sitting directly in front of me had kept his huge head still.

ps don't click to reserve tickets! My web design skills haven't yet reached those dizzy heights.
While in Manchester I spent a fortune in Selfridges on yet more anti-wrinkle, anti-ageing creams. I must be an advertiser's dream - and yet, even as I'm plastering the stuff on, I know for a fact it won't make the slightest difference - I mean, how can it?

The artist son tells me that his cafe royal website has had almost 20,000 hits in the past couple of months. Amazing - mine has had 11,000 in a year!