2

“First we’ll make the bread.”

“Yeah, then the cakes.”

Pissed up cunt ain’t made a cake you’d want to touch with your foot for 10 years.

Put lard in the Victoria sponge shitfaced yesterday then screamed fucking murder when some woman fetched her slice back. Because she’d fetched it back.

She won’t be fucking back.

“And jam tarts.”

What can go wrong with a jam tart? Sweet pastry and jam, that’s all. Nothing used to go wrong with our jam tarts. People travelled miles for them. People bought them by the dozen and were stuffing them down out the bag before they were out the fucking shop.

Get the pastry right you’re laughing. Butter. Sugar. Flour. Eggs. Pinch of salt. Simple. Sift the flour. Nib the butter. Crumb it. Sugar. Egg. Mix ‘til stiff. Splash of water. Knead it. Fridge for ten minutes. Roll, cut, bake, jam.

Simple. But simple to fuck up. For this cunt anyhow.

The gaffer’s sweet pastry was the best you ever tasted, and like all the tricks and craft his dad and grandad passed to him, he passed it on to us. When and how you add the eggs, that’s the fucking difference.

But this cunt’s hands were always too hot, so he’s fucked before he’s even cracked an egg. Fucked from square one. Butter melts minute he shoves his hands in to get rubbing. Fucked on scones too, same reason. Fucked. Got away with it when we had the machine. But that’s gone fucked an’ all. And then he lost the fucking claw.

So he’s double fucked. And even though my hands are so cold you’d think I was dead we’re fucked. Because I ain’t making all the pastry. Not now we’ve no machine or claw. But I’ll make some jam tarts today. I like a jam tart. I can keep a jam tart down.

“I’ll do the cakes and tarts, you get on with the bread.”

“You get on with the fuckin’ bread. What do you reckon of this brandy? I don’t think it’s the worst. For the price.”

I’d forgot it was brandy is so fucking raw. Took me half a minute to open my right eye after first swig. Slapped the back of my throat and bounced out. I had to swirl and swallow hard.

“It’ll do, I ain’t complaining.”

“Good, got a case. A dozen bottles fifty quid off that fat bastard with the van behind the bus garage. He reckons they was meant for export but the warehouse burned down.”

He tops us off and takes a big yank,
on the bottle on the vertical,
eyes pissing water,
as his apple ups and downs.

A sip’ll do me, but it turns into a glag, and by the time I’m staring at the ceiling through the bottom of the glass it ain’t so bad at all. I’ve had worse. Less than five quid a bottle, what do you want? I wouldn’t go near it at home.

“We should make a batch of them little buns we used to do with the buttercream in ‘em, and the lid chopped in half and stuck in the buttercream in ‘em.”

He means butterfly cakes. Used to be big with the old dears but a pain in the arse and no fucker wants them anymore.

“Butterfly cakes.”

“Buttercream, y’deaf cunt.”

“The butterfly is the bits in the buttercream, they look like wings.”

‘Fuck me they do an’ all! I always wondered what the fuck people was on about…”

Top up and leave the babbling cunt to it. Soon as this glass is gone I’m after a can or something. Gone five and all we’ve done is drink brandy and talk shit. Which isn’t bad, once you get the taste. And four quid-odd…

Am making four cakes. Four different cakes. Half will go in the bin. More. 

A Dundee cake.

A dozen slice, quid a slice, a good big slice, nobody’s complained, it’s a solid cake.

Old people like Dundee cake and old people is about the only people comes in here.

The housewives go to ADLD, the pie-eaters go to Greggs, only the old people come in.

No kids. Ever. Last time we had a kid in threw a banger at that cunt and it got stuck in his hair. Blew him a big bald patch just over his ear and knocked him deaf for a week. Kids don’t want cakes these days, not like we did, not from a craftsman baker.

Times change. I was a kid when I started here, washing tins on a Saturday morning for a few bob, and all I was thinking about was what cakes’d be going spare when Alice turned the sign over, 1pm sharp.

Everyone working got a bit of anything left, but she had a soft spot for me and I’d always get the pick. I had lovely brown hair then and she said I was a Beatle. I should have gone seen her once the gaffer had gone, but this place…

Victoria sponge. Piece of piss, any leftover gets chopped up in the individual trifle bases next day.

Scones are safe, good for two days, cheap and cheerful and mine are nice.

Cold hands. I’m lucky. Melt that butter and you pull waxy scones out the oven. My crumbs are beautiful to see, to run your hand through. Gold and soft. A score of cherry, two score sultana.

And a dozen individual trifles. They ain’t cakes, really, but fuck it. We’ve Victoria sponge from yesterday.

This brandy is okay. At the price. I’ll take one home.

Illustrations by Lee Healey.