Friday November 8th, 2013

The exercise:

Write four lines of prose that have something to do with: cake.

I got a call yesterday asking if I could work this afternoon at the bowling alley for a birthday party. The timing worked out, despite me working from 9 to 5 both days this weekend, so I said I'd be there to help and learn.

Things started fairly well, the kids were basically under control. Then they had cake and all hell broke loose.

It was fine in the end and, as my coworker pointed out, they were still way better than some of the drunken adult party goers she's had to deal with. So it could have been worse.

Mine:

"What do you figure was the main ingredient in that thing, speed?"

"Probably, the damn fools."

"Your expression and tone tell me you'd have gone with something else."

"Yeah, like horse tranquilizers."

3 comments:

Greg said...

Kids and sugar is always a good mix! It doesn't help that most shop-bought or -provided cakes tend to be sponge cake covered in fondant icing, or, to put it another way, sugar suspended in a flour/fat matrix covered with a roughly equal amount of sugar. I don't know if the Canadians are as bad as the Americans, but cake-flour is processed so that it can hold about 150% of the weight of sugar that ordinary flour can. Whenever I make an American recipe for cake I have to experiment to get the sugar down to bakeable (and edible) levels unless it uses "all-purpose" flour.
Still, it's a good learning experience for you for when Max is older and having birthday parties (and the lesson in, "Hire someone else to host the party")
Heh, I can bet you were wishing their were horse transquilisers there! Try slipping valium into the ice-cream ;-)

Cake
The cake slipped from the tin, bounced twice on the counter and fell to the floor, smashing one of the terracotta tiles.
"It's undamaged;" reported Lyddie with a frown, "what were you planning on using it for?"
"...for the birds?" her mother suggested, standing in front of the candles, birthday ornaments and decorating kit.
"As in, throwing it at them to stun them so we can have them for tea?"

Anonymous said...

" I like cake," he said, all of two.
" I like chocolate cake. What this cake called?"
"Vanilla," I replied. "I ran out of chocolate to make it with," I qualified.

The tiny gears in his grandiose mind clicked and whirred and, after a moment of careful consideration, he came back with "Mummy has some chocolate here..."
I think if he knew the word "borrow" he would have said, "You can borrow some to make chocolate cake, if you want."

Toddlers, brilliant!
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BTW marc, yours looks as cute as!

Marc said...

Greg - oh yes, we'll definitely be having at least a few birthday parties of our own at the alley :)

Ah dear, it doesn't sound like that one turned out quite right. Best to start over, I reckon.

Or, you know, use it as suggested in your final line ;)

Writebite - oh man, so soon. I can't wait to witness Max's leaps of logic.

And thanks, we think he's pretty cute too :)