BOOMF

The Tiniest Trefusis is incorrigibly sociable - a walking Facebook. Yesterday, I asked her to tell me which friends she wanted to invite to her birthday party, in the vain hope they might number six, and we could have a small tea party at home with pass the parcel and musical chairs and cake, but after the thirtieth name, I gave up and changed the subject. 

There's been an awful lot about birthday parties and presents and so on in the news lately, and the whole shooting match is much more complicated than it was when I was a child, when the norm was to have a party at home, with mum-tertainment. There was an exception - I was at school with a boy whose parent's owned a circus and the whole class was invited, except me. It obviously still rankles after nearly forty years. 

Anyway, the TT has a grand vision of her perfect party, much like the ELLE Style Awards, but with the TT as the only celebrity. Like managing a client with expectations far in excess of their budget, the best way to tackle it is to present her with a single affordable option and dress it up to sound impossibly novel, glamorous and imaginative. I have no intention of breaking the bank for an eight year old, but creativity and novelty requires time and effort.

One of the quirky things that may just float the SS Demanding, is Boomf's brilliantly bonkers customised marshmallows. They're the brainchild of a friend of mine, Andy Bell, who likes food and square photos (his previous wheeze was turning your instagram pictures into fridge magnets), and you upload either your best instagrams, or Facebook pics or a selection of other photographs onto the website, and 9 customised, square marshmallows will come winging their way by first class post all nicely boxed, or you can go to the concession in Selfridges (near the posh chocolate on the ground floor) and your personalised Boomfs are yours in about five minutes.

"Despite initial hoots of derision, Boomf sold more than 8 tons of marshmallows in its first year, all in individually personalised 15g squares"

There's something in me that really really wants to do 9 pictures of Octavian and Marmalade the cats. Is that an effective use of posh, personalised marshmallows, or have interweb cat lolz destroyed what little brain I have left.

Valentine's Boomf: more novel than chocolates and at £15 a tenth of the price of a dozen red roses. And if you visit Boomf at Selfridges there seems to be a brilliantly pagan ritual going on called 'Roast Your Ex', which if I have it right, involves uploading a picture of him/her onto a marshmallow, and then toasting it. There's something oddly appealing about this, I haven't got an ex, but I can think of someone for whom performing this ritual would be immensely satisfying, not to mention cathartic....

Actually, I've just had the most marvellous idea - I'm going to create a box of Boomf for SJ Watson's Books That Built Me - with his six books That Built Me and the two he has written, plus the Books That Built Me logo, there's my nine squares. Never mind planning the TT's birthday, Books That Built Me Boomfs will be much more fun.