I’m sitting in bed on Sunday morning. The sun is just breaking the horizon, filtering through the leaves of the Norwegian Maple across the street.

I’m thinking about the muddle of life. The way plans and processes can be waylaid by unexpected happenings. Often events in a family, or health concerns, or the national economy.

One day we can be skipping along planning a holiday and what we’ll do over the Christmas week and the next we have broken an ankle or lost our job or our daughter has told us she’s dropping out of her marketing job and going to work as a ranch hand in Wyoming (for instance).

I am not good with messes. I had a tidy mother who liked order and neatness and passed that mindset on in her raising of me. The natural unpredictability of life makes me squirly and I struggle to accept changes as normal and not like I’ve blotted my copy book, my pristine plan splodged and Rorschach-smudged.

So sat here in the sun I’m talking with Jesus and Mother Mary about the current muddle. My tidy plan for my final weeks in Kent smudged with a sinus infection and black-dog mood music. My mind takes me to the cake I baked Friday, a lemon drizzle tray bake.

They show me the mixture in the bowl. The mess of flour, eggs and sugar, how disordered it is. And then the mixing, how all those ingredients get taken apart, muddled up, squidged.

That’s how you make a cake (like the proverbial omelette). You make a mess first. Then, apply heat and a gooey, sweet topping and voilà, something scrummy that couldn’t have existed without the goo.

And that’s it, my life as a cake mix simile. Now to see how this batch turns out.