A Foodie's Living Nightmare

I am a foodie. That's pretty obvious, given the time I dedicate to other two blogs Tashcakes! and Where I Like to Eat. I love looking at food, smelling food and tasting food. Well, almost all food. Show me a raw tomato or an aubergine in any shape or form and I'll run in the opposite direction, I have a very mild phobia of mushrooms and avocado makes me so sick I hallucinate; but in general, food is fun.

For the last couple of weeks I've been ill. So ill, in fact, I didn't notice what was gradually happening to me until a couple of days ago, when I began to feel more like a human being again. There were a few clues, although I didn't realise at the time.

The first clue was a most obscure one: my mood was flat. Not bad, just flat: walking to different places or putting something delicious in the oven or hanging out the washing triggered no emotional response from me. I put it down to just being run down from being ill.

The second clue was when I snapped off a square of dark chocolate to celebrate being able to breathe through my nose again, but somehow still feeling flat. Again, it did nothing.

The second clue was at work again when I decided to treat myself to a carrot muffin for breakfast at work. My colleague noticed me poking at it forlornly with a fork and smiled.

"Well? How is it?"

"It's got the perfect texture: light, moist and with just enough bite. But it tastes of nothing."

My colleague looked surprised, saying that our other colleague had eaten one too and had thought it was perfect, but then again I did make cakes every week so I'd be the most qualified to comment. We all shrugged it off- I can usually pick out obscure notes and flavours in things no-one else can when it comes to food, so we all assumed I was just being a tad critical. I finished my carrot muffin dejectedly, bemoaning the waste of calories that I could have spent on something tastier.

The final clue- the clue that made the awful penny drop- was yesterday evening when I was cooking beef rendang (a highly aromatic Malay curry) and baking vanilla cupcakes at the same time. My mum came home, and commented on what a wonderful smell it was.

"Which one?" I asked, beaming, and then I froze.

It hit me at once: I couldn't tell which smell was which.

In fact, I couldn't smell anything at all.

I panicked, and went to my cooking chocolate stash to snap off another square of dark chocolate. I popped it in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. My worst fears were confirmed: I had also completely lost my sense of taste. Even worse: the loss of my senses of smell and taste had also bizarrely robbed me of the memory of smell and taste. Everything was just... nothing. Nothing at all.

Have you ever been in a silent room, minding your own business, when suddenly everything just goes *silent* silent? You realise that the room was never silent to begin with, you just didn't notice the noise of the boiler, or the fan, or whatever droning noise there was in the background until it stopped? Well, losing your sense of smell is exactly like this.

What was I going to do? I knew of people who had, like me, gotten a severe cold, lost their sense of smell and taste, and then had literally never gotten those senses back again, even years after. I'm a baker, for pity's sake! How the hell am I going to experiment with new flavours when I can't taste what the frig those flavours are?

After dinner yesterday evening, my family trouped down to vote for the elections. Like always, the voting was held at my old primary school down the road. How I missed being able to smell the rubber smell of plimsolls and the sweetly acrid smell of wood polish in the gym, and all the old smells of when I was five years old. I've always been aware of the power of smell and how evocative it can be: certain smells can give me very strong flashbacks. However with my sense of smell gone, I was even more acutely aware of what I had lost.

The worst thing about it though is how disconnected to the world you become. No familiar smell of home when you walk through the door after a long day of work. No smell of damp leaves when it stops raining and the sun comes out. No smell of freshly cut grass, of people, of fresh baking or cooking, or more seriously gas leaks or burning.

My experience has so far been met with mixed reactions, mainly of those who can't imagine what it's like and understand how terrible it actually is- and those who can't imagine what it's like and think it's really no big deal.

IT'S A BIG DEAL.

Of the things I've eaten so far, the only way I know what I'm eating is through texture. I have the vague sense of if something is sweet or non-sweet (not even savoury), but it's more like an echo of sweetness rather than actually tasting sweetness. The lovely fragrant curry I made may as well have been textured cardboard. The chocolate I ate may as well have been pleasantly melting plastic.

However, there is hope: despite realising I've been like this for the past week without noticing and fearing I might be like this for a while, if not indefinitely, I noticed a faint scent of flowers a couple of hours ago when I put some hand cream on. It was there and gone again in a few seconds, but at least it gives me hope that my sense of smell and taste have only temporarily gone on holiday!

Covered in Blood and Onions

I stared at the massive bowl of chopped onions and chillies; the onions and chillies stared back at me. I donned my onion goggles, held my puny hand blender aloft like a weapon, and jammed it into the bowl.

What followed was an complete vegetable carnage.

The hand blender made a terrible strained scream, and a geiser jet of vapourised onion forced its way into the air like water from a whale's blowhole, followed by a horror movie-like spray of chilli-reddened onion gore in every conceivable direction. It was too late to stop. I had to continue.

Sanguine vegetable matter continued to fly at me as I gritted my teeth and carried on blending, the cut on my thumb from an earlier mishap with a broken food processor burning from the chilli juice, despite the plaster covering it.

And then suddenly, it was all over. In front of me was a bowl of wonderfully fragrant curry paste; on me was about a third of it. I calmly wiped myself off, sprayed on a bit of perfume to mask the smell of debauchery, and stepped out of the house with bits of onion still on my T-shirt.

How did I get here?

Last week I was bought a food processor as an early birthday gift. I've never owned one before but always wanted one, knowing the amount of amazing things I could do in the kitchen with one. Finally, I could now create almost anything from scratch!

Alas, it wasn't meant to be. A week on- today, this is- I unboxed it, cleaned all the parts up, and plugged it in to give it a test run. I was very disappointed when absolutely nothing happened.

After checking that I hadn't done something silly like forget to turn an extra button on or something, I traipsed down to the supermarket along with my mum who still had the receipt (thank God she's so organised) to get it replaced.

There was only one of the same model left, and it looked like it had already been opened. I insisted on checking the contents of it before taking it home- and as my mum and I were going through it, we both cut ourselves on the processor blade, which had been shoved haphazardly back into box my whoever the last person to handle it was. The blade was also embedded in the processor itself, making it, again, totally useless.

We settled for a refund, I promised to write a disgruntled letter to the supermarket's CS department about the dodgy way returned stock is handled, and we headed home empty-handed. A slightly annoying shame, since I was halfway through making a fancy curry, and needed a food processor to make the curry paste. I had already prepared my ingredients, and there was no way I was making anything less than what I'd planned all week to make.

So now you can see how my train of thoughts went, and how I ended up creating chaos in the kitchen with my too-small hand blender. In any case, I doggedly kept on, eventually got the meat happily marinading, and set off to my favourite shopping centre to invest in a more expensive but infinitely more reliable brand of food processor. A little absent-mindedly though: hence the bits of onion still stuck to me.

So. Now that I finally have my amazing machine, next time I hope to create magic in the kitchen instead of mayhem.

Oh, and the curry turned out absolutely amazing. I should bloody well think so too, after all of that.

~Fin~

In Case of Emergency, Don't Break Bones

I took the afternoon off work today to get a head start on tidying the house for a friend who's coming to stay for a couple of days from tomorrow. Being home alone for a bit, I figured I'd need a little extra time to be able to tidy everything.

Operation: Cleanup wasn't going so well. I'd already completely obliterated a very old saucer that didn't so much shatter as explode in all directions like a shrapnel bomb, and I hadn't even started yet: I'd only just gotten home and started to unload the dishwasher.

Next, after wasting valuable time sweeping my previously nice clean floor, I attempted to water the garden as it had been dry and sunny for the last couple of days, with no sign of rain to come for a while. That went wrong, too: the garage door jammed, leaving me unable to access the hose pipe- resulting in me doggedly watering the entire garden with a medium-sized watering can.

I'd just finished watering the tomatoes in their plant pots when I remembered the hanging baskets out at front. Already exhausted, overheated from the sun, hair sticking out at odd angles from my ponytail and having not even started truly cleaning the house itself, I retrieved the smaller watering can. I filled it, trouped through the house, opened the front door and got to work.

The wind blew. *SLAM*.

I turned around to find the front door in my face.

And realised that, for the first time in my existence, I'd gone out without my keys.

It was one of those moments where your brain takes a few seconds to process the situation. I stood, dumbly, staring at the door in front of me with the watering can still tilted into one of the hanging baskets. A drop of water landed on my sandal-ed foot, and I snapped to attention. I was locked out! Stupid, stupid! Alright, focus! What were my options?

Remembering that I'd left the kitchen door unlocked from watering (but knowing I'd somehow have to get past the locked garden gate), I made my way to the side and back of the house. I set the watering can down, kicked my flimsy sandals off and attempted to scale the gate- with no luck. It was too high and devoid of footholds, and the angle at which I was coming at it was putting too much force on the thin top of the gate. Not feeling like breaking my neck today, I turned the recycling bin by the gate upside-down and tried to use it as a boost. Still too short!

I had an idea: if I could reach over far enough, I might be able to knock the bolt back with the watering can and let myself in. As I was thinking of asking any neighbours that were at home (it only being 4pm and most still at work), I remembered something: my aunt and uncle! Years and years ago I remember my mum mentioning them having spare keys. It was a long shot: this was way back when I was a child- but it was better than nothing- and at very least they'd have a step ladder and were likely to be in, since it's the school holidays at the moment and they have two girls at school.

So I shuffled back into my sandals and off I went, walking to their house. It's only a five-minute walk, but  it felt longer thanks to my footwear: these sandals were of the cheap, poorly-made sort that I only use to nip out into the garden with. The straps had already begun to cheese-wire into the tops of my feet, but I was able to ignore the pain and instead focus on how horribly hot the sun was overhead.

Luckily my aunt was in. As I feared, they no longer had the spare keys to my house- but they did have a stepladder. Assuring my aunt that I had everything under control, I hoisted the thing over my shoulder and set off back to my house, passing a few puzzled local pedestrians on the way.

Hoping in vain there weren't any police people about or suspicious passers-by, I set the ladder by the back gate, kicked the stupid sandals off again and climbed. I was still too short to get a leg up! But at least I could lean over a bit and see the bolt, now. I scooted back down, grabbed the watering can and scooted back. Holding the spout, I attempted to hook the bolt with the opening of the watering can to slide it back.

Unfortunately the watering can was that little big too short to reach, and I ended up knocking the catch of the bold upside-down and flat against the door. Now what?

I climbed down, and Macgyver-style started looking through the recycling bin, hoping to find something I could make some sort of rudimentary lasso with in order to hook the bolt back up. Alas, there was nothing but newspapers and a small empty tissue box.

Then I thought: a coat hanger! If I can find someone who has one of those wire coat hangers, I could bend that into shape quite well, and it'd be long enough too. Putting my sandals back on (by now my feet were pretty cut up), I started pushing doorbell buttons- but to no avail. No-one was back from work yet. How far was I going to have to walk to find someone?

Just as I resigned myself to more foot torture, I saw a white van pull up down the road: Mick and Paul! Two family friends, also a builder and plumber who'd sorted our kitchen extension out for us. They were looking at me curiously (I realised I was walking about with the watering can still in my hand), and with an almost absurd calm I strolled up to them.

"Hey, Tash! Paul said. "You alright?"

"Not really," I replied, grinning sheepishly. "I've gone and locked myself out of my house. I don't suppose either of you have a wire coat hanger lying around, do you?"

 "Coat hanger?"

I explained what had happened, and how I intended to infiltrate my own garden. Paul asked me if the kitchen door was unlocked, and grinned when I confirmed that it was.

"Let's see what I can do."

We walked back to the garden gate, where Paul climbed the ladder and vaulted the fence like it was nothing. *CLICK*, and I was in! Thanking Paul profusely for saving my skin (or at least a fair bit of money from having to call a locksmith), I darted in, put the watering can back in its rightful place, changed into less painful shoes, grabbed my keys and took the ladder back to my aunt in my car.

Like I said before, I've never, ever set foot out of the house without my keys before, even for watering the hanging baskets. I think I was just so flustered by the way the day was going I just got carried away. Anyway, I felt satisfied knowing that I'd made the plants happy, even though I had a tough time doing it.

But do you know what the real kicker was? About an hour later it started to rain.

~Fin~

I Crashed My Car- Part 2

Remember when I crashed my car about six weeks ago? A few unbelievable things have happened since then.

Firstly, the insurance's garage assured me that my old car was going to be written off, in the end (this was why I went ahead and bought a new one). They suddenly called me a couple of weeks ago to tell me that my car was in the process of being repaired.

What.

The day before yesterday saw the return of my old car 弟弟. I can't say I wasn't glad to see him again, but now I'm stuck with two cars. I re-transferred the insurance to my old car, since it has a personalised numberplate and air conditioning, and I'll have to try and sell on poor 妹妹, the new car. Again: what a faff. At least insurance waived the transfer cost because of all the trouble they and the garage caused me.

The second unbelievable thing happened today was I got a call from insurance saying that the lady I crashed into had decided to take out an injury claim.

WHAT.

I described her in my last post as 'absolutely lovely'. I might have to take that back. She and her son were fine! I talked to her for about half an hour In fact, when I took the cupcakes round the day after the crash, whilst I was already (genuinely) suffering from whiplash and concussion, they were both still fine when I was chatting to them- chipper, even. Now after over a month has passed she's claiming injury. My dad mentioned that the last time he was involved in a car crash that wasn't his fault, he got hounded by claim companies left right and centre, encouraging him to make a claim when he was fine. Dad stoutly refused. Apparently this lady got caught up by them.

A small, mean part of me kind of wishes that I hadn't made those cupcakes, now.

I Crashed My Car

In short.

This happened last Thursday- ten days ago- but I was waiting until I had the final outcome regarding my car before I wrote about it. Because I'm a bit of a completionist, apparently. However, since insurance is dragging its ridiculously bureaucratic heels about the whole process, I reckon I'd better get a head start.

Right at the end of my street is a cross junction that my family not so affectionately affectionately call 'The Gauntlet.' I almost always avoid it despite it being the quickest route home, knowing my little budget car to have the acceleration of a slug. For some reason- fate, God, sod's law, whatever you want to call it- on that Thursday, I decided to cross it.

Obviously, I failed.

It's a pretty nasty crossing that comes just before a sharp bend in the road, and consists of a main road running through two residential roads. There are several crashes per year on the crossroad, and they're almost all caused by the same thing: by somebody whizzing around the corner (which they are entitled to do since it's their right of way at this point), and colliding into somebody pulling out one of the residential roads too slowly. This is pretty much exactly what happened: I pulled out as fast as I could (like a slug), thinking it safe, and got very suddenly T-boned by a car coming around the corner.

It was such a loud, concussive BANG that I took a good few seconds for my brain to kick back into action: are the people in the other car alright? Am *I* alright? Are our cars alright? I turned to peer at the other lady driving and couldn't stop apologising, and we moved out cars out of the way. The lady who I crashed into- or rather, who I made crash into me- was absolutely lovely, and both herself and her son were unharmed. I was horrified that she had a child with her- he looked around ten or eleven years old. I could have never forgive myself if I'd gotten them both hurt. Thankfully though, they both were fine. Their car wasn't too bad off, either- one headlight a bit cracked, the bumper scraped and one of the screws of the number plate knocked out.

My car, however, had been turned into a very expensive boomerang on wheels. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

Long story short, we exchanged details, I contacted insurance and baked some apology cupcakes for the lady and her family (who only live a block away), and got poor 弟弟 ('didi'- I named my car 'little brother') taken away to car hospital/ car heaven.

The day after the crash I took the train to work. Come midday I was sent home because I could no longer move my head around from whiplash. I should have known: I was buffeted around quite a lot in the collision, and whenever I suddenly do a lot of exercise I only feel it halfway through the next day. So I spent the rest of Friday like a very sore robot. Saturday and Sunday I went to Birmingham to visit some friends from my uni days, making sure I was careful not to exert myself too much. By Sunday my neck was a lot better, but this also made me notice the constant headache I'd had since the crash, which I thought was just referred pain from whiplash and gritting my teeth too hard during the collision.

So on Monday I saw my doctor, and it turns out I had something called 'post traumatic concussion', which is basically a bruised brain from being bashed about in the skull, not necessarily after a physical impact to the head. Crazy stuff, huh? Anyway, I'd been trying to function like a human being for four days with whiplash and a battered brain without really realising.

I'm still awaiting to hear whether 弟弟 is in hospital or heaven. The car's actual internal structure was damaged, the central door pillar being knocked inwards. However, insurance is having me jump through quite a few hoops before even declaring it a write-off. So jump through hoops I shall. In the meantime I have had to empty my account to buy a new car (I should have gotten a courtesy car being fully comp, but there was a small series of c*ckups on insurance's end), and wait until I either get paid out for a written-off car, or get my old car back all fixed up and then try to sell it. What a faff.

I was more annoyed at myself more than anything, once the relief that no-one was hurt had passed. I never thought that my first car incident would be my fault. I've been on the road for eight years and always worried about the arsehat driving too close behind me, or the idiot trying to overtake me on the left, or the parked driver suddenly flinging their door open just as I'm driving past. I never thought I'd make such a stupid mistake. Serves me right for getting cocky; from now on I'll remember to worry about myself, too. On the bright side, my new car may be the same model as the old one, but it has shinier paintwork, is a newer reg number and for some reason drives a lot better in general than 弟弟. I have named her  妹妹 ('meimei'- little sister).

Be Careful What You Wish For

Once, when I was at university or at school (or some point in my life where responsibility was someone else's, well, responsibility), I had a conversation with a bunch of friends about where the most fun place to be stranded would be. I chose a Alton Towers, or Thorpe Park.

Yesterday a couple of friends/ colleagues and I went to Thorpe Park.

We'd already gotten off to a shaky start in the morning: Elles had accidentally slept in after a busy few days (to be woken up by Kat who was meeting her at her house). The fourth person who was originally going with us cancelled last minute, which threw our budgeting plans off a little (no-one ever goes to Thorpe Park or Alton Towers without a 2 for 1 deal handy). The parking metre in the car park I was using would only start working at a certain time of day, so even though I was organised and got there early I had to sit in my car and wait until the coin slot in the machine opened before I could go anywhere. Once we all got into Elles' car though, it seemed that it was plane sailing from then on.

As we got out of the car and made out way through the entrance of Thorpe Park, we joked about how we felt like kids again. "Make sure you stay with the group and hold someone's hand," teased Kat as I bounced around excitedly. We all made sure we knew where our valuables were, we had waterproof jackets for the water rides, and we felt pretty much sorted.

We put a couple of things in the lockers, and off we went. The first ride we went on was Colossus. The second one was X. As we got to the cloakroom area of X, Elles took her jacket off since it was getting a bit warm, and gave it in. At the end of the ride, we collected all our stuff and emerged to decide which rollercoaster to go on next.

Suddenly Elles stopped dead.

"Guys, where's all my change gone?"

There were five pound coins in her jacket when we entered the park- now they were all gone. Elles patted herself down to try and find the change, worrying that she'd been pick-pocketed... and she suddenly realised her car key had gone, too.

None of us live anywhere near Thorpe Park. Worst of all was that all of poor Elles' stuff- the rest of her money, her house keys, her bag- was all locked up in her car.

We felt cold: what could have happened? Both of Elles' pockets were zipped shut. Could one of the guys working the cloakrooms have taken it as a prank? One of them was a bit cheeky to Elles when she took her coat off, but it was very unlikely that a member of staff could have taken it- and bizarrely, her phone was still in the pocket. Could the key have fallen out on a ride? But both of the pockets were closed. It seemed most likely to us that the keys had gone missing around the time we were at X, since that was the only time the jacket had been moved.

After retracing our steps as thoroughly as we could (while trying to be grateful that we'd only been on two rides before we discovered the loss), We went to customer services and filled out a form, and handed it to a guy who gave off an air of seeing this sort of stuff happening all the time, and probably thinking what a brainless bunch of girls we were. We were then told that we had to wait until the evening when the park closed before a search could be carried out. If the keys didn't turn up, the car would have to be left overnight and we'd have to find our own ways home. In the meantime, there was nothing we could do- except have as much fun as possible. So, since we were stuck there for the whole day until closing time, this is exactly what we did.

When closing time came, we went back to Customer Services. Nothing had been handed in, and we were advised to ask the attendants at the rides themselves. We went to X first, almost certain that this was the place to find the keys- but despite the lovely staff looking high and low, there was nothing.

The only alternative thing that could have happened, then, was that the car key- along with the now-forgotten change- must have worked its way out of a gap in Elles' zipped-up pocket whilst we zooming around on Colossus. Which meant that it could have been flung absolutely anywhere. We asked the staff there anyway- who were also amazing- and they set out to do a sweep under the ride for us. In the meantime, we looked around the public footpath leading to the ride.

Between the three of us, Kat, Elles and I found all manner of lost items that had fallen afoul of the ride- lip balm, eyeliner, a badge, even glasses- but no keys. Resigned to having to fork out for a cab home, we made our way back to the entrance of the ride, where we were met by some people on the team who had finished their side of the search. No-one had found anything- and we hadn't expected them to, either. Then we heard a voice from behind us.

"You lost BMW keys, right?"

The other half of the team had come back from their sweep. One of the guys held aloft a single car key: Elles' car key.

There was a lot of squealing, jumping and hugging, and Elles even kissed her key. The key had quite literally been found amongst the bushes under the ride: so it had fallen out of the jacket, after all. In the end, we got to go home by car, everybody got their stuff back, and all was well.

You could say that the moral of the story is to be careful with your possessions- but then again we were, and Elles had actually double-checked that her pockets were zipped up. I reckon the real moral of the story here is that zips are fickle buggers and you should never trust them.

Oh, and about Thorpe Park being the most fun place to be stuck at? I was right.

~Fin~

Have You Ever Witnessed Bad Parenting...

... And really wished you could go up to the parent/ carer and slap them around a bit?

Today, after wandering around a shopping centre for a bit, I sat down on a bench for a breather. In front of me was a frozen yoghurt stall (the kind where you can choose all sorts of things for toppings), and to the left of me was a fancy cupcake stall.

I heard the loud, open-mouthed cough of a child who's not yet learned to cover their mouths (or never been told) and looked up warily- the cough belonged to a very large little girl, looking no older than six years old, accompanied by who I think was her grandfather. When I say very large, think about nearly twice as big as Honey Boo Boo. In short, the poor girl was quite obese.

At this point I wasn't really focusing on this, though: I was focusing on how the little girl had her face pressed up against the screen that shielded the yoghurt toppings, every so often producing a single, open mouthed cough in the direction of all the fresh fruit and things. It was an impressively disgusting cough: she opened her mouth wide and stuck her tongue out a little. Not pleasant when so close to food, but Grandad didn't comment.

'Fine whatever,' I thought. 'Just as long as they don't walk past me and the kid doesn't cough her germs near me.'

So of course, as you know the way the universe works around me, out of the many benches and many spaces there were, they walked straight towards me and chose to stop by my bench. The child sat right next to me. I tried not to visibly flinch when the girl coughed in my general direction.

I noticed that Grandad had ordered the girl a medium sized yoghurt with three toppings. Now, this frozen yoghurt place is always very generous with their portions and me, a grown woman, can only just about finish a small sized one with two toppings. The portion size of this pot was gargantuan- how was this little girl- a big little girl even so- finish all of that? Sure enough, the child had only eaten a few scoops before announcing that she had had enough.

What happened next horrified me more than a little.

The grandfather- not the little girl- pointed out the cupcake stand, and asked her if she wanted one instead. The girl, quite sensibly, asked him why. Grandad's response?

"They look really pretty, and they're probably healthier too. You can throw that away now, let's go get a cupcake."

And so I watched in stunned outrage for the now enthusiastic little girl as she chucked the largest part of her wasted frozen yoghurt into the bin and they both made their way to the cupcake stand. Of course, the girl plumped straight for one of the larger ones rather than the small ones.

There's not really much else I can say about that...

In Which I Win Christmas in a Box

Message from me to my friend and ex-colleague Celyn, today at 2:33pm:

'I won something in the office Christmas raffle a little while ago. Out of the nearly forty prizes there were to be won between hundreds of employees, it’s just like me, being Jewish, to win the Christmas tree.

I'm totally putting it in my bedroom. =D x'

I never win anything. Ever. The last time I won a raffle I was in primary school, and I won a pencil case- I wasn't even there to experience winning because I was off sick, so my best friend came over later in the afternoon to drop it off having collected it for me. So when I bought a bunch of tickets for the office raffle today, I thought I'd just have some fun whilst donating to Save The Children in the process, not expecting to win anything.

Imagine, to my surprise, one of my numbers being called for the penultimate prize (by which time I'd totally switched off and was now chatting to a couple of colleagues, so I nearly missed going up to get it).

There were two prizes left to choose from: one was a big box of colourful stationary, wrapping paper, ribbons and a load of chocolate (very temping), the other an equally large box- a sealed box- a mystery box. Of course, I chose the mystery box. I hefted it over my shoulder, the box being almost shoulder-height to me, and lugged it back to my desk. A few colleagues gathered eagerly to see what I had won, and I hastily slashed at the cellotape that sealed the secrets contained within the magical box.

Hidden in the box was a big box of Thortons chocolates and a small bottle of sparkling wine with 23 carat gold flakes, but best of all, it contained a small Christmas tree, complete with self-powered fairy lights, a box of baubles and a  double CD collection full of wonderfully naff Christmas music. It was like a portable emergency instant Christmas kit- or as Celyn quite perfectly put it when I emailed her in excitement, '...it’s like a compact Christmas in a box and you won it!'

Now if you know me you'll know that I come from a Jewish family (as well as Christian Chinese one on the other side- which probably explains my colourful outlook on life), and also you'll know how luck tends to laugh at me in various ways. In this case I had the last laugh: my very first Christmas tree, with decorations and everything! I gleefully set it up in my room as soon as I got home, but it's now living on the kitchen table after my (quite bemused) dad said he didn't mind it being downstairs. If only Hanukkah didn't end a few days beforehand- it would have looked awesome right next to the menorah.

Season's greetings, from whichever culture or creed you come from!

Check out my cake blog for the finished tree with gingerbread.

Short Stories: A Potentially Very Unattractive Death

Last night, I found out what happens when you take a laxative about twenty minutes before you realise you have food poisoning.

I'll let that set the scene without going into graphic detail, shall I?

I spent about an hour and a half in the bathroom, with a fierce fever and struggling to keep breathing, trying not to completely pass out, and being vaguely astounded that I still had a sense of humour (I was contemplating how typical it would be for me to go out like Elvis Presley, and how if it were up to me I'd have chosen a more dignified parting). Even after all that time in there and once I started to at very least not feel like I may be about to die, it took every last ounce of strength I had to sort myself out, force some water down to rehydrate myself and get into bed (of course even this couldn't happen normally- as my right leg had gone to sleep I had to stumble-hop the whole way- which is not a nice thing to have to do when you still feel sick to your stomach).

I can only put the whole incident down to very, very bad timing and quite bad luck. Thankfully I'm a lot better today, but my stomach is still making some very forbidding sounds.