Swearotron

We need one of these in our office.... More fun from the folks at the Lair of the Crab of Ineffable Wisdom. If easily offended by bad language, do not visit.

Home baking

"Have you ever eaten one of my sponge cakes?" Herself asks me, the other evening, as we are watching television.
"Nope," I say, swigging my beer.
"Didn't you know me when I used to bake sponge cakes and butterfly buns and flans and maringues?"
"Er... no."
"I shall make us a sponge cake at the weekend."

Come the weekend there was a crisis of ounces verses grams. I was entertaining my father in the other room and so I couldn't help much.

"Look it up on the Internet," I said.

An hour later I was eating.... something.... sponge-like....

"Do you like it?"
"Er... yes...."

I chewed at the lump of fruit-topped, cream-filled yellowish stuff. Having to chew or gnaw at a sponge cake is probably an indication that it hasn't come out right.

"I think I didn't get the measurements right," she said. "And I think there was something about folding the mixture rather than beating it."

I seprated my upper teeth from my lower ones with an effort, long enough to say:

"No, babe. It's fine, really."

There was a definite clunk when a piece of leftover spong hit the bottom of the kitchen bin. I could feel strange protestations starting up in my gut.

Herself Googled for sponge cake recipes.

"I know what went wrong!" she shouted in to the other room. "I'll make you a proper one tomorrow!"

So, today, I'm eating a wafer-thin sponge-cake that hasn't turned out either. But it is lighter than yesterday's.

"I know where I went wrong. I'll make another one tomorrow that will be right this time. I promise."

My gut is thanking Heaven that we're back at work on Tuesday. It might not have survived an extra day of sponge making.

"You can write about it," Herself said. "On condition you write a sequel when it turns out...."

Watch this space.

Hail fellow...

"Is that an MP4 player?"

"Yeah."

"What's the memory?"

"Dunno. 2,000 CDs, or something."

"How much was it?"

"I don't know. It's my sister's. €180 or something."

"You paid €180 for 2,000 CDs worth? That's good."

"I don't know. My sister got it. It might have cost more."

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

"You might have seen me around Jobstown."

A pause.

"Cloverhill?"

"D-wing?"

"Yeah!"

"Have you got a smoke?"

"Yeah. Here. Something better."

"You have some."

"No. I don't want any. You have it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

The conversation turned to who knew who and who had prayer meetings every Wednesday because they were Born Again Christians. And getting out of jail.

"I spent three days in a bed and breakfast. And two days on someone's sofa. And two days in a hotel. And I went to them and said 'I need a place because I've spent three days in a B&B and two days sleeping rough and two days in a hotel.'"

"Yeah."

"What's your phone number?"

I just wanted the traffic to move so the bus could take me home.

I only have an ordinary music player. I've only been in a B&B on holiday. I've slept rough twice, because I chose to. To me, Cloverhill is on the way to Liffey Valley Shopping Centre on the back roads. Lucky.

Culture shock

The bus pulled in at the terminus at The Square and in keeping with tradition the passengers disembarked and the engine was switched off and somebody started to complain as the driver tried to go on his break.

"You're late!" the middle aged Dublin woman said to the African in the Dublin Bus uniform who was trying to wave her off the step so he could shut the door.

She stepped back down onto the pavement.

"I've been waiting here for hours and then you just go on a break!"

The driver calmly closed the door. He said:

"How many hours?"

There was a definite look of surprise on the woman's face. Not only was she, a native Irishwoman, being addressed by a black person, but also by a black person in a position of authority. It was evidently a shock to her system.

"How many hours have you been waiting?" he asked. "One hour? Two hours...?"

She looked at him in bewilderment.

"Half an hour!" he said. The bus arrives every thirty minutes or so.

She retreated to the relative safety of the bus shelter. No-one else joined in the argument on her side.

"That's right," she rallied. "You go on your break now and get your cup of coffee or whatever it is you're getting."

The driver spoke quietly to her and I couldn't make out what he said. But her reply must have included something along the lines of

"And what are you going to do about it?" because he then said, loud enough for all to hear:

"I can refuse to take you on this bus. All of these people can travel. You cannot."

He turned and walked off in into the Square.

Ten minutes later we boarded the bus. The complaining passenger politely proffered her fare and was given a ticket. A few stops on, a friend joined her. They spoke cheerfully abut the weather and about hospital appointments and stuff like that. Then after a quarter hour their voices lowered and they whispered together. I wonder what the subject was.

Nice one, driver. I think.