Who Took the Last Chocolate Brownie?

With apologies to Fabian Wallmeier

You know the scenario. You are in a living room, with a group of friends. You are chatting pleasantly. The tea and cakes have been served and now comes the moment you are dreading. There is only one cake left.

Everyone pretends not to notice. No one says anything. It would be a brave and foolhardy soul, who reaches over and takes the last cake. “Would anyone like the last cake?” someone modestly enquires. “Oh no, please go ahead”, comes the reply, instantaneously and probably unanimously. The last cake is taken and everyone can breathe again.

The reply “Yes – please, I haven’t eaten for 5 days” is not a socially acceptable response on these occasions.

But what happens if someone takes the last cake without saying anything? How could anyone live with themselves, after just leaning casually across and removing the solitary item and placing it unceremoniously into their mouth. What if having digested the cake in question, they then lick their fingers, and announce “That was good, wasn’t it”, or better still, after being stared at by so many disbelieving looks, adds “Oh sorry; did anyone else want this?” What still, if the person in question has to walk across the room to get to the plate?

Social exclusion follows. The frosty stares accuse the perpetrator of this ghastly crime.

Admire, then, the person who takes the last cake. Consider the service that they are providing to their friends, by removing the object of temptation from them. Consider further, the moral courage shown.

I could! Fabian Wallmeier did!! (although, in his case, Fabian's case, it was a chocolate brownie). Please remember the complement that Fabian and I are paying to the cook (because at all such occasions, we are talking “Home Made!!” with a Capital H.). Oh, yes, us gannets perform an important environmental functions, flattering out hosts and relieving the embarrassment of our friends.

Well done, Fabian.

Onions and Fractels

I remember reading or hearing somewhere about fractals. Perhaps it was in a film, with a learned but slightly mad professor explaining the theory for the benefit of the audience. My memory of this is hazy. It involves some objects in nature, being divisible, and on being divided look similar to the whole. The Scandinavian coast and corral are given as examples – but I am not on very good ground here.

School homework fits this definition, but never gets a mention. No matter how much is cut away or divided, you are left with what you started.

Amazingly, I found an undocumented fractal in the kitchen yesterday, when I was cooking the Saturday evening meal. (This was necessary as Hazel had just come out of hospital, having had a number of four inch nails, as well as other parts from a large Meccano set, removed from her leg).

If there is sufficient demand, I will publish yesterday’s recipe for Grumpy’s curried chicken, made from leftover Christmas turkey and curry sauce from Tesco and old bananas. Somehow, I think that this demand will not be forthcoming, so I will return to the plot.

I had peeled an onion. Not so hard, you think. The skin had been removed, the onion diced and was sizzling gently on the frying pan. All that remained is too clear up the remains. Also not so hard, you think. You would be wrong. Onion skins are fractals, according to Grumpy’s newly invented theory of fractals.

Try picking up the onion skin and putting it in the kitchen bin. The onion ring splits into four bits, all images of each other and all now lying on the kitchen floor. Bending down to pick up these fractal images of the previous onion skin, and ignoring the complaints of pain coming from my back, I picked up the remains. One of these remains now also proceeds to replicate itself and spread itself over a distance of four feet. Two more rounds of this, and I am a defeated man. There are still parts of this Scandinavian coastline somewhere in the kitchen.

Perhaps I could include this as part of the apartment particulars when we come to sell the apartment. “A deceptively spacious family dwelling, complete with its own fractals”.

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(By the way, why do people always refer to Tescos – “I went to Tescos”; Is this the supermarket equivalent of a pub crawl?).