Sunday 22 November 2015

Who's pouring the cream? - the invisible guest at my birthday party


A small party, admittedly, consisting of my wife, our son, one of my wife's sisters, and me. And, of course, the invisible waiter pouring cream over the delicious chocolate cherry cake my wife had created for the occasion. Maybe we should have contacted Derek Acorah, the host of Most Haunted, and ask if he wanted to send a film crew round to capture the spooky phenomenon. 


In case anyone's wondering, the tub is the real thing, but the "cream" is icing.  As for what's holding the pot up - that's my wife's little secret.

I turned 63 on Friday. As has become my somewhat macabre practice in recent years, I sneaked a peak at a list of people I've now officially outlasted - so this year it was people who died aged 62. The list includes the following:

Martin Luther
Ravel
Sonny Bono (skiing accident)
Rubens 
Nostradamus (bet he didn't see that coming)
Serge Gainsbourg (how the hell did he last that long?)
Carl Sagan
August Derleth (one for fantasy and horror fans)
Evelyn Waugh 
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Warner Baxter ("You're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!")
Sidney Bechet
John Maynard Keynes
Dvorak
Sir Robert Peel (due to a clavicular fracture rupturing his subclavian vessels after his horse fell on top of him on Constitution Hill)
Jack Hawkins
Émile Zola (of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by an improperly ventilated chimney)
Christopher Hitchens
Sid James
Anwar Sadat (assassinated by members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad)

7 comments:

  1. Wonderful.Its probably heavier than it looks.
    Aside from giving the cake the required balance and looking very nice indeed do the three candles have any special significance?

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    1. Many Happy Belated Returns.
      On my birthday I always look at the other celebrants in the newspapers, always amusing. Though can't remember now who they were....

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    2. And many happy returns from me too. Three candles = years past the big six 0?

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    3. Correct, ex-KCS - 63 candles doesn't leave much room for anything else, so we've reset the counter to 3 at 63.

      November 20th birthdayers include Duane Alman, Bo Derek, Joe Walsh, Joe Biden (!), Goodluck Jonathan, Edwin Hubble, Robert Kennedy, Alistair Cooks (Letter from America), astronomer Edwin Hubble, Nadine Gordimer, Terence Malick, Maximus (Roman emperor), Thomas Chatterton, and Dick Clark (American Bandstand host). I'm not sure there are any conclusions to be drawn from that list.

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  2. If I was on any list with Joe Walsh I would be happy.

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  3. Ah yes the candles.My initial thoughts aside from the counterweight theory had the candles represent The Holy Trinity redolent of Western Civilization and all it stands for.We will have to monitor Mrs.Gronmark's cakes very closely from now on for any more evidence of microaggression.

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  4. Thomas Chatterton? Isn't he the suicidal teenager in the famous painting (I forget by whom)? Shome mishtake shurely!

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