Another day, another doomed attempt to turn this site into a popular, award-winning food blog. And what better way than to tell you a tale of real live, actual cooking in which hardly anybody got killed TO DEATH. From The Archives of DOOM, re-written for extra LOLz and WIN:
Classic Mirth and Woe: Cake
"So, Scary," said Ms Orton, our lesbian Home Economics teacher, “Would you rather do cooking in my class, or metalwork with Mr Callaghan?”Mr Callaghan only had one foot, was nicknamed “The Penguin” and was known for his cruel and unusual punishments, mostly involving tools found in the school workshops. Ms Orton was into the Arts of Saphho. And there would be girls. No contest. A knot of us jumped ship from Penguin's class and headed for the easy life in the kitchens.
Pretty soon, the message got about that Scary and Tim were having a great time stuffing their faces with girls and lesbians while Mr Callaghan was crushing their bollocks in a vice, and within weeks there were further defections from the metalwork class.
"Class," said Ms Orton one morning, "Aside from being a lesbian, I am also a tremendous arse-licker."
Eyebrows: raised.
"It being the head's 60th birthday, wouldn’t it be nice if we were to make him a cake?"
Too bloody right it would, that man made our lives hell with petty rules, meaningless punishments and a habit of lecturing us all to sleep in morning assemblies about his good friend God.
At the time, there was a strict one-way system operating in the school corridors, punishable by instant death. This was one of Bull’s big ideas to, and I quote "prepare us for our entry into a structured and ordered society". You had to walk halfway round the school just to get to the class next door, and transgressors were taken away and shot.
We would make that cake. Oh yes.
It was a beautiful cake. We spent a wonderful Tuesday morning doing our bit to give Bull the happiest of birthdays.
Sugar. Margarine. Flour. Eggs. Vim. Icing Sugar. Some mouldy cheese somebody found at the bottom of the fridge. It all went in, and more.
Despite our giggling protests that he was taking it too far, Seany dropped a huge green, pulsating bogey right into the mix. Seany had been on the end of Bull’s wrath far too often, and today it was payback.
The coup de grace was “Happy 60th Birthday Mr Bull” piped out expertly in green icing by Tim, a skill he is undoubtedly putting to use now in his chosen career as a museum curator. We didn’t have any green food colouring. So we used washing-up liquid.
At the end of the lesson, as we all packed up for lunch, the secret door to the forbidden zone opened, and in walked our leader, Mr Bull for a royal visit. Miss Orton grovelled and fawned round him, and it was all we could do to stop her from spreading rose petals on the very ground he walked upon. Eventually, she lead him over to where we stood with The Cake. The Cake of DOOM.
Suddenly, we all felt rather guilty. He was bound to find out, and if he actually survived, we would never hear the last of it. Detention. Expulsion. Pound-me-in-the-ass prison. The whole nine yards.
But the deed was done, we had to live with whatever we had wrought.
There was a brief, sycophantic ceremony. He complimented us on our cooking skills, expressed his deep joy that his students had thought of him on his most special of days. We sung “Happy Birthday”, and he blew out the one oversized candle planted in the middle of our masterpiece.
Seany nudged me in the ribs.
"See that candle?"
I nodded in the affirmative.
"It's been up my arse."
"Won’t you boys join me in a slice?" the head asked.
Not on your bloody life, mate, we know what’s in it.
He tucked in. We held our collective breath, waiting for the eruption. It never came. He demolished the slice in about two mouthfuls, swallowed, and said, “This is actually rather good. You won’t mind if I take the rest home for Mrs Bull?”
Of course we didn’t mind. Fair play to him, he showed up for work the next day showing no ill effects. Hardly surprising, the amount of washing up liquid we used to get the icing the right shade of green probably left him with the cleanest insides in the known universe.
A victory for the kids, for the first time ever. The cycle of crime and punishment is yet to be fulfilled.
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