At the start of May I invited Mr F's coklleague Sophie and her family over for lunch. 

She's super foodie and we'd bonded over foodie tweets and laughing (fondly) at my husband. 

He'd said he was sure we'd get along. So was I. So I rashly invited her, her husband and two boys over for the Bank Holiday Monday. 

You know I'm never one to pan ahead, so on the Thursday or Friday I started thinking about what to make them. That, for me, is forward planning. 

The weather was forecast to be Ibizia hot so Mr F suggested a barbecue. To set the scene, we've used our gas barbecue (donated by my parents when they sacrificed their garden to downsize to a first floor flat) twice in severn years. Expert grillers we are not. 

On the plus side, the pending visit prompted my husband to get busy in the garden. An entire day was spent weeding and taking clutttr to the dump. First garden tidy in seven years. I should invite his colleagues over more often! 

But what to cook? Burgers seemed a safe option for a group of adults and children. But would eyebrows be raised if I served up bought meat patties instead of my own hand crafted versions? I was not confident that mine would stay in one piece, so we had a trial run the day before. 

And then there was the question of buns. Should they be posh brioche-style or bland baps? To add the pressure, the supermarket, not having stocked up for a sunny bank holiday weekend were clean out of simple burger buns. Posh ones it was - the only ones I could get. 

Then