Mostly about a certain small boy

Mark was 7 years old on Friday (30 March). Last weekend (24 March) he had a party with ten schoolfriends (and his sister) at a place called The Sensation Science Centre, where they watched a marginally informational but very entertaining 3D film, ran around the cool exhibits, and built homemade volcanoes in the education classroom. I had been going to make a volcano birthday cake to go with the theme, but after the second bl&*dy b#*&ery attempt fell apart getting it out of the Bundt cake tin, I gave up and made these instead, which were a tremendous hit with everyone including attendant parents and the Sensation staff. (The remnants of the volcano were piled on a platter in the formation known as Dinosaur Rock, and this "eroded" very quickly.)

So anyway, now Mark is 7. His second birthday cake, for his Birthday Tea on his actual birthday, was the planet Saturn--blissfully easy and a change from the Fire Engine Birthday Cake which he has requested, and which I have dutifully produced, complete with flashing lights, every year for the past four years. The Saturn Cake was inspired by our recent trip to the Dundee Observatory, where we saw stupendous Saturn, its rings in all their glory, and four of its moons including Titan. We also saw the Double Cluster in Perseus and the Andromeda Nebula (according to Wikipedia this is an archaic name for the Andromeda Galaxy, news to me, but the expert guiding the telescope is retiring this year so maybe he can be forgiven for being old-fashioned). Now, none of us had ever looked at Saturn through a telescope, and it was a school night, and to get to the observatory you have to drive along an extremely tortuous lane through woodland up an extinct volcano overlooking the lights of Dundee city, so by the time we arrived we were all keyed up with the atmosphere and the nighttime excitement of it all; and seeing Saturn's rings really kind of boggled us.

Mark was also boggled by the observatory's dome, which is made out of papier mache (it is one of two existing papier mache observatories in the world) and can be rotated via a manually operated crank.

As an aside… Our rabbit, Bru, who was much loved but only with us for 3 months before he died, arrived on Easter day last year--so Mark was really convinced Bru was the Easter Bunny. Now I am worried he is going to be known by other kids as that horrible boy who not only breaks the news that Santa is not real (he says: "I HATE the pretend about Santa!") but also this latest: "The Easter Bunny is DEAD!"

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Speaking of Easter, this weekend I will be at Contemplation, this year's Eastercon. As far as I'm aware the only programming I'm involved in is the children's literature panel on Mon. 9 April 11.00-12.00, discussing 'the nature of children's literature - why are some classics are no longer considered "suitable"? What do children today want, and what do parents want for them?' I think originally sdn was going to be on this panel too but unfortunately she's not going to make it, citing work commitments as her top priority at the moment, and I can tell you this is TRUE because she is working on MY book (among many others!). Last week she sent me Cliff Nielsen's wonderful sketches for the cover of The Empty Kingdom, which is the second half of The Mark of Solomon and is due out spring 2008. I have stuck them up over my desk, where images of Telemakos Meder now outnumber images of John Constantine.