Note carefully.

When you next find yourself having to place birthday candles on a cake (say for a close relative, like for instance, your mother) make sure that all candles are stuck into the cake with the wick up and the little holder thing in the cake. Otherwise you will end up with a number of wasted candles.

The choices in this instance are:

1. leave the candles unevenly spaced around the cake

OR

2.rearrange the candles to be evenly spaced around the cake, but end up with extra telltale holes in the icing.

I’ll leave to you to guess which option I chose.

The upside was, however, much mirth from the other people in the room when I admitted my nitwittedness.