Cake

The accounts department ate my birthday cake. Well, it wasn't my cake as such, but I was due a piece. I'd baked it for an immediate colleague, a colleague from my department, who lives in a neighbouring cubicle - although they're not quite cubicles as such, more dodecahedral, with three sides granted to us each. I'm lucky enough to have two; one for working on, one for putting things on that I don't feel like working on. It's fairly and increasingly cluttered that one, but I digress.

There's very little interdepartmental cakebaking as far as I'm aware, and I wasn't about to blaze that trail. Well not that I'd realised.

It was Jeanette's birthday. Not just any birthday, but birthday number 30. I baked a cake. Middle Eastern Orange Cake, Claudia Roden inspired. Two hours of boiling the oranges. Six eggs. A cup of almond meal. Some sugar.

Baked to perfection if I do say so myself - a light tan/orange, ice-rink smooth, sprung from its pan without a blemish. Transferred to a plate. Plate in a box. Box safely carried down 63 stairs, through five doors (six if you count the car). No major disasters at lights or going around corners. Safely extracted from car, carried through the office, placed in the tea room. Placed just past the fire extinguisher, but before the microwave. Candles placed atop it for ready lighting at the appropriate juncture - birthday o'clock.

Never have a birthday on deadline day. Well every day is deadline day when there's daily publishing, but some days are deadlinier than others. This was such a day.

As birthday o'clock drew nearer, it became clearer that coordinating an appropriate number of wellwishers and cake nibblers was going to prove difficult. Editorial staff were coming and going, on the phone then out the door - we were struggling for a critical mass to get the Happy Birthday choir going.

The long and the short of it is the deadline crunch crunched the birthday out the window, for that afternoon anyway. There was always Wednesday morning though, and the Claudia Roden inspired Middle Eastern (CRiME) cake would keep well.

Mid-Wednesday morning was moving very slowly towards 11, the designated Cake Take Two time. Yet soon after 10, an intrepid photographer returning to the office remarked that it was disappointing that we had not saved her a slice of said cake.

We remarked in return that not only had we saved a slice, we were still yet to produce the cake and the cutting and the singing and the general birthdayly hoopla, to which she remarked that there was perhaps then a certain oddness in there being a solitary slice of said cake on a desk in the Accounts department, through whence she had only a moment but passed.

We too remarked upon the oddness of such an occurrence, and an expedition party was assembled. As cakebaker I was elected expedition leader, and selected for my party the no-longer-quite-birthday girl and the intrepid photographer.

We formulated our plan of attack and made our move. The Accounts department was deserted. "Hark" I did utter, for a clattering and a cluttering could be heard from the tearoom. The sound of a running tap and the unmistakable chink of the cleaning of crockery could only mean one thing - they were hiding the evidence. A dilemma: To rescue the solitary slice of cake from the desk, where we spied that it still remained, or to confront the cake-absconders while they were still cake-handed.

I decided we were best splitting up and I sent no-longer-quite-birthday girl and intrepid photographer off to the tearoom. I approached the cake, wary that it may be somehow booby-trapped. It was by no means a generous sized slice, but perhaps still large enough for a candle to be placed atop.

I stared at the cake. It stared back at me. I took a step forward...

"We found out who the culprit was!" said no-longer-quite-birthday girl triumphantly, bounding into the Accounts department, holding aloft the severed head of the payroll lady.

"Hey, what's that on your lip?"

"Hmmm? Mnunfinnn. Mnunfinn aw awl."