This morning I came downstairs to find my girls glued to the television. Of course I would rather they were engrossed in The Telegraph crossword, or studiously working on some complex algebra problem that I'd set them the night before, but I figure that children find their own level and if pushed too hard, can end up feeling like failures. Alice's favourite cartoon at the moment is 'Fairly Odd Parents', which in its singular form could be a metaphor for her life. She knows I'm not like other mummies, but does seem to get confused with my title. It may be that I'm getting a bit hard of hearing, but I'm pretty sure that when she says, 'My mummy is a widow', what she's actually saying is, 'My mummy is a weirdo.' Just a slight change in inflection can make all the difference, and it really helps when you're trying to get rid of double- glazing salesmen, or those doleful young men who come to the door and try to sell tea towels.

I like to let my girls go at their own speed, and was delighted when Alice recently decided that she wanted to forgo her chosen career of pop star/hairdresser for that of a doctor. It was the Dorling-Kindersley build-your-own body kit, which sparked her imagination. It was fiddly as hell, but once all the tiny plastic innards had been correctly assembled beneath the Perspex body shell, she decided that it was time to progress to her cuddly toy collection. It did cross my mind that that's usually how serial killers get started, but Alice is just too sweet to be a bunny boiler.

She asked if she could dissect one of her teddy bears, which did make me raise an eyebrow, but I told her if she was going to do a spot of Burke and Hare dressing, it would have to be on a neglected pet. She found an old cuddly seal under her bed, and ten minutes later, I came into the sitting room to discover that she'd performed an autopsy, and had carefully laid out the seal's various internal organs on the table, complete with labels. It was just piles of grey stuffing, but in Alice's mind there was blood and bone and bile. I felt sorry for her and said I'd help her make a proper body out of papier-mâché the following day, but once I'd given the matter proper consideration I thought it best to find another modelling medium. Weeks later I brought home a colourful selection of air-dry modelling clay, and one night we all sat down and began to make Mr. Man.

He was just a torso, but oh, what a torso. Rosie modelled the top of his chest, complete with six-pack, which was to sit over the rest of him like the top of a clamshell, and Alice and I began to fashion his heart, lungs and stomach. Alice is quite an expert on all the bits and bobs, and was soon busy making his pancreas and spleen. We had to try to make all the bits fit into his body cavity, and, with a bit of deft manoeuvring, once his ribcage was in place, we were able to place his chest wall over the sum of his parts and our man was complete. I then made a skull, and Rosie made a purple brain to fit inside it, and our job was done. I cannot remember a more enjoyable evening spent with my children, and I'm only sorry that we didn't have enough clay to carry on and make the rest of his body.

I showed our Mr. Man to my good friend Dr. Burrell, and he was suitably impressed. I think I might go into production with Alice if things don't improve at work. I reckon we could make about 10 Mr. Men per day, in various sizes. I'd never considered it before, but it's amazing just how much fun you can have with a man's organs.

It's time for the annual spring tart-up. My kitchen's been looking a bit shabby of late. Too many micro-scooter circuits have taken chunks out of my doorframes and there were also those unfortunate sticky toffee patches to deal with. Old toffee isn't a new Farrow and Ball colour; it's the legacy from the great banoffee pie explosion of 2000.

In those days I threw my energy into entertaining, and my banoffee pie was the talk of the village. People came from miles around to sample my puddings and I had to work flat-out just to keep up with demand. Making banoffee pie is a relatively simple process, but the secret of the toffee filling is a closely guarded secret. I can share it with you now because I've decided not to go into production. Mrs. Miggins' Pie Shop is on the back burner, along with Pork Swords, the sausage shop that I was going to open with my friend Deb.

But back to the secret recipe, which involves putting sealed tins of condensed milk into a pan of water and simmering them for 3 hours. This process mysteriously turns the milk into a delicious fudge-like substance. You generally need two tins to make a decent-sized pie, but on that fateful day I was making a really huge pie, so I used three. I was slaving over my keyboard at the time, so my mind wasn't really on the job. I could hear the cans bubbling in the pan, but when I write I get so caught up in the screen and my own little world that I cannot be distracted. You are supposed to check the pan regularly in order to top up the water, but I was with my muse and forgot all about cooking. Time passed to the steady tap-tap of the keyboard. I ignored the smell of roasting metal, but I couldn't ignore the sound of the massive explosion, which rent the cans asunder, spraying beads of molten toffee around my kitchen like a great gooey Gattling gun. If I'd walked into the kitchen a few seconds earlier I would have been killed - no doubt about it, and on my gravestone a kindly stonemason could have carved the inscription, 'Here lies Kate Boydell. She was famed for her puddings, but came to a sticky end.'

Somebody was watching over me that day. I was saved from being turned into a human toffee apple, and instead my whole kitchen bore the brunt of the explosion. Saying the kitchen looked a mess would be something of an understatement. It took hours to remove the sticky gloop for every conceivable nook and cranny, and the experience quite put me off making banoffee pie for years afterwards.

I thought I'd done a pretty thorough cleaning job, but lurking around the kitchen were a few rogue spots of toffee. I found them the next day and tried to remove them, but they were stuck fast. (I have exposed iron joists in my ceiling, which are a legacy from the days when they were needed to strengthen the floor in the storeroom above.) I don't know exactly what kind of chemical process takes place when molten toffee hits iron, but what I do know is that when dry, it produces a compound that is impervious to hammering, chiselling and swearing. In the end I decided to paint over the offending lumps with Hammerite and pretend they were a result of an inept village blacksmith. The last remaining spots in the uppermost reaches of my walls were yesterday covered in a rich, antique cream and now I have a blemish-free kitchen.

The only problem is that now I've started tidying up the paintwork, I've begun to notice just how much more there is to do. Time to get back into my painting overalls - oh the fun just never ends.


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