Monday 1 September 2014

Highlight of the weekend


The previous post but one has lost me a follower, I notice. They must have taken me at my word.

London - as always - had its highs and lows. Absolute hilarity mingled with extreme angst - often running concurrently.

Sometimes when I have visited remote and far-flung parts of its suburbs, I have actually given up trying to find my destination and just turned around and gone home. I really have.

I have just bought a Sat-Nav, and realised that I should have bought one years ago. Four satellites patiently guided me through unspeakably horrid parts of South London until I arrived at my destination of East Dulwich. If it weren't for the fact that I hit the outskirts at the Friday rush-hour, it would have taken me a mere two hours, not four. Even when I took a wrong turn, the voice in the box (an English woman's) simply said she was re-calculating, rather than screaming at me for ignoring her advice, as H.I. would have done.

What was supposed to be an empty house turned out to contain six female students, so rotas had to be worked out for the showers and breakfasts. Girls - I have discovered - are much less tidy than boys. This fact astounded me.

The following day we went to a very fancy restaurant indeed, somewhere near Bond Street. It had a glass box at the entrance which contained three enormous black truffles, just to make everyone jealous.

The year before, it had one white truffle which was about 10 inches in diameter, and the owner somewhat tastelessly told us how much it was worth. Any guesses? £30,000.

We sat at a table for eight, with me sitting next to Step-Daughter. All went well, and when we had finished the main course we waited for the surprise birthday cake which had been pre-ordered about two weeks before, at huge cost. It was - I am told - an enormous thing piled high with various fruits on an exotic sponge base. Then we waited a bit more. Then we waited a bit more.

After about 20 minutes of waiting, a black-tied Italian waiter beckoned to Step-Daughter to come round the corner for a quiet word, which she did.

She got back, sat next to me and - with tears of hysteria in her eyes - whispered in my ear, "They've dropped the cake!"

I asked her to repeat what she had just said and when she did, we both screamed with uncontrollable laughter. H.I. became very confused, and it was not until the waiter brought an inferior substitute (rustled up in 20 minutes) that we were able to explain.

Everyone jokes about this sort of event with large cakes, but it is extremely rare for it to actually happen I think. There is that excruciating video of a waiter cutting a wedding cake in front of 200 guests, and the whole thing collapses in slow motion, landing on the distraught man.

I only wish we had photos of them actually dropping our cake, rather than all the selfies the kids took over the weekend.


18 comments:

  1. Glad you could laugh about it all. Is that the cake they sent out instead? Surely not - that one would have taken hours to make - even The Great British Bake Off doesn't do things as complicated as that.

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    1. No, that's a serving-suggestion only. Rather like what I told Cro to do with all his quinces.

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    2. The cake pictured is almost entirely made of plastic parts - it is a set made by Wilton. WE hire it out to people.;-)
      Love the story, I wish they'd scraped it together and brought out the sad ruin, would have been even funnier!

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    3. I thought that what what they were going to do with it. Shame they didn't, but maybe they were scared of a bad Trip Advisor review.

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  2. Fancy hiring Del and Rodney to do the catering. What fun.

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    1. It was. I only wish they had thrown the cake into H.I.'s face while they were in the mood.

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  3. Drop one, knit one, drop one, knit one...Displaying one's truffles in a glass box sounds like the height of vulgarity.

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    1. I agree. Even more vulgar when they tell you how much they paid for it. Bloody Italians...

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  4. That's priceless. I can imagine the horror in the kitchen.

    I was providing a cake for a ladies dinner at a home of someone (and a group of ladies) I didn;t much care for. I had it on the seat and when I turned a corner it slid along with the plate to the floor. I had to pull over and slide it back on the plate and I repaired the smushed icing with a credit card. It looked quite presentable and I really didn;t care if they ate dirt from the floor of my car.

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    1. I used to prepare smushed icing with a credit card too, but those days are behind me now.

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  5. A classic story for a classic birthday.
    Have you named your nice British lady? Is she prim, or is she kind?

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    1. She already comes with a name - Emily. The Sat Nav was bought from my U.S. friend who has now gone back to the U.S. He called her 'The snooty English bitch'. I don't know why he didn't opt for the American voice.

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  6. I think you gave H.I. had a wonderful birthday weekend - lucky to be celebrating with her family around her. I'm sorry but I found the dropped cake incident hilarious. I think that H.I. was probably also amused once she was told about it.

    Because our family is so far-flung I shall be alone with Mr EM on my big birthday next week. On a boat bobbing up and down whilst moored in Antibes harbour, wary of seasickness. As my BFF who lives there is a chef who caters for gin palaces I'm hopeful of a nice cake. Or some gin. Better still, both.

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    1. I'm still reeling about your dream, but I love the idea of you on a floating gin-palace with matching waiter, ready to throw a cake at you.

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  7. Darling Tom,

    The streets of London can be dangerous indeed, but what adventure and all in the cause of a birthday weekend that surely H.I. will remember for some time to come.

    What with tales of tearing round dodgy London backstreets, glass cased truffles and houses filled with nubile girls. This is surely the stuff of adventure the likes of which would be hard to come by in Austen's Bath with a block of marble for company.

    No, you have certainly pulled out all the stops here and it is such a pity that the cake did not make it.....intact, that is. We are left wondering whether the problem was really a case of slipped sponge or was it that the scantily clad youth who was organised to burst forth from a mountainous confection singing Happy Birthday to darling H.I. chickened out at the last minute? If we had known, then one of our floppy boys could have easily stepped in ( or out, as the case may be)!

    Whatever, it all sounds to have been huge fun.

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    1. Well, I had already thought of a large, young, muscular lad with dark skin bursting out of a cake (I know her tastes) but this was vetoed by Daughter.

      I would have done it myself, but I had to be seated, and - like I already said - I know her tastes.

      Mind you, the vision of a load of Italian waiters dropping a huge cake concealing a floppy boy who spills out of it when it hits the floor is very appealing. I wish I had thought of that myself, especially as we have a few floppy boys of our own, the best one being 'Harry'.

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    2. Darling Tom,

      More posts please about 'Harry' or, better still, can you arrange an introduction?

      Can one ever have too many floppy boys we wonder?!

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    3. You would LOVE Harry. He is a gay, tousled-haired, dyed blonde, 19 year-old, 8 stone lad working in fashion retail. and makes everyone laugh, just by being his charming self.

      He came round here once on his birthday, and read out a personal message from his mother on her card to him.

      He said something like, "Be yourself and have your load. Lots of love, Mum".

      She actually said, '...love you loads', but she has bad handwriting and he is dyslexic. How we laughed!

      I will show you a picture, but only with his permission.

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