Before lockdown commenced, Cat Daddy and I had a conversation about the May bank holiday, which has always been the first Monday in May but, this year, it has been moved. That conversation went something like this:
Me: “They’ve moved the May bank holiday from Monday 4th to Friday 8th.”
Cat Daddy: “Why have they done that?”
Me, after Googling: “To commemorate 75 years since VE Day.”
Him: “Oh, right.”
Me: “You know what this means, don’t you?”
Him: “No?”
Me: “Louis Catorze’s extended birthday weekend isn’t going to be an extended birthday weekend anymore. It’s just going to be a normal-length birthday weekend.”
[Silence, tumbleweed, crickets]
Him: “So you’re objecting to honouring war veterans and remembering the dead, because it interferes with our cat’s long birthday weekend?”
Me: “I’m not objecting. I’m just saying.”
Cat Daddy: “And besides, you don’t work on Mondays. I don’t work on Mondays, or any days come to think of it. And Louis CERTAINLY doesn’t work on Mondays, or any days.”
Me: “…”
Him: “So whether or not the Monday is a bank holiday makes absolutely no difference.”
To be fair, he had a point.
Now, of course, things are rather different. Not only is a bank holiday of even less consequence, but even the normal week days and the weekends run into one another and we have lost all grasp of time. And our plans for the party of the decade are now shot to hell, which is probably just as well for our friends because I was going to invite them over under some random pretext, then announce that they were here for Louis Catorze’s 10th birthday, by which time they would be trapped and unable to leave.
Anyway, my challenge now is to plan a quarantine birthday party menu whose ingredients can be sourced from places other than the supermarket (too virussy / too many stupid people who won’t respect the 2-metre rule) or Ocado (delivery slots are rather like total solar eclipses, only happening once every 375 years or so).
And Catorze says we can choose any cuisine, as long as it’s French:
louiscatorze.com 
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