it was my birthday yesterday. the kid got herself out of bed and crept into my room with coriander and dumpling (stuffed cat and rabbit, respectively). happy birthday, she intoned cheerily, you’re thiiirrrty-eight.

“mmyes,” i replied. “but at least i still have all my teeth.” the kid lost her first tooth three week ago — somewhat unsettlingly, there are no signs that anything is growing back to take its place.

the kid cocked her head. “you’re not so old,” she said, reassuringly.

but the time, she goes by. my mother came to town; my cousin got married; i went to melbourne for a week to see what life could be like. i started packing up a house — 16 cartons of booksmagazinecomics and counting. packing stalled; meals consumed; mortality confronted; cancer averted, for now. my father came to town; we jetted off to hamilton island; we discovered there are places in the world where people will pay $8 for a packet of smiths crisps. i became the sort of person who sits in a restaurant while a waitress brings over a cake all aglow with candles and a sparkler (the restaurant was azuma kushiyaki where the vegetable special of the day was a ramekin of garlic cloves roasted in butter; the cake was an entire maccha chiffon cake from the patisserie next door, festooned with fresh berries and whipped cream and a biscuit plaque with my name writ on in chocolate, organised in the best — read: worst — superspy manner by my good mother) and the live jazz trio will play happy birthday while the diners in the room sing along, and it will not be as excruciating an experience as i may have thought.

and yesterday, we caught a couple of buses with large zumbo cake box on my lap, and showed up moist and wilted from heat and humidity, for morning tea at ms d‘s tidy haven in ashfield.

it is the height of civilisation to be offered a glass of iced tea upon arrival, and to have an electric fan directed at you, while in the kitchen — shimmery from the heat of the oven and the smell of cheese — a small feast is assembled. fat pickles into vintage green pyrex; mustard into sturdy china. while dispensing ham onto a platter, ms d kept a watchful eye on the gourges. it made for good eating, all salty-moist-crunchy-sour in a pleasing palette of yellow-pink-green.

there was pink cake too. the one we’d picked from the counter at adriano zumbo patisserie was a hefty spraypainted block of raspberry-lychee teacake, lavishly adorned with a single rose petal, freezedried raspberry crumbs, and what i’d assumed to be shards of meringue. later, we were to discover that it was rose-flavoured sugar, perfect for nibbling on after the cake was gone.

i haven’t had “normal” cake from zumbo before. there’ve been tarts, viennoiserie, moussey this, chibousty that, more macarons than necessary, even a flourless chocolate fondant or two in my time… but never just “cake”. here is a fine specimen: dense and moist with a sturdy crumb, and a distinct rosey flavour, and, every now and again, a surprise bit of sodden lychee. the kid abandoned her slice just short of halfway, but kept returning for the fragrant crunchy decorative sugar. it was like crack, i tells ya.

but this came late in the afternoon, when what i’d thought was maybe 3 o’clock turned out to be 5. a short time after the savoury course, lloyd had ducked downstairs to collect something, and when he returned — from the next suburb — it was with this baroque vision of a gelato cake from pasticceria papa.

behold: custom-curated scoops of lemon, raspberry and chocolate, artfully arranged on a biscuit base with an expressionist drizzle of chocolate. the icing on the cake, so to speak, was strategically placed strawberries and lemon slices, frozen, and the crowing glory of a rocher wrapped up in a curl of lemon rind. just gorgeous.

we ate quite a bit of it before it could melt away — the smooth, mildly tangy lemon sorbet was most therapeutic — and then sandwiched second helpings of rich chocolate gelato into homemade chocolate chip cookies. the makings of third helpings were packed into an esky and delivered to our doorstep, with us in tow, as the drizzle kicked in at sunset. much later, waiting for cheese and tomato toasties to brown, i learnt that the rocher was actually a sphere of mudcake rolled in chopped nuts.

so this is how it ends: an unexpected cake sneaks in at the end of a sweet birthday; the cheese on the edge of the toastie is especially caramelised and delicious; indy saves the children from the clutches of the evil mola ram; a bitter edge encroaches, from the realisation that some favourite people will soon be too far away. x