VICTORIA SPONGE

Well glory be. I got back from the park, opened a kitchen cupboard, and a Co-Op Victoria Sponge fell out.

Now I’m a great believer in signs and wonders. So when a delicious cake I didn’t remember buying fell from a shelf I didn’t remember storing it upon, at a moment I was not expecting, I was moved to the deepest kind of prayer, grabbed the sacrificial cake knife, and hurriedly opened the box.

There it was. It slid perfectly out in its cellophane wrapper, round and deep like any child would know and draw it - cylindrical, wider than tall, sandwiched together with cream and jam and covered in a light dusting of icing sugar like fallen snow on its slightly domed surface.

The cardboard of the box had preserved it in the fall, and the miracle sponge itself felt still light and bouncy. I ripped off the wrapper and let the sweet aroma fill the room. Cake, Victoria sponge, this most deliciously British of confectionary marvels! The sugar was tastable in the air.

I took the knife and embedded it into the snow-layer. It sank in with a delicate bounce, squeezing through layers of heavenly sponge. Red jam oozed from the centre, lovely buttery cream squelched around the knife blade.

It’s always amused me how at weddings, it’s this bit that people photograph - the cutting of the cake. I’ve never fully understood why married couples have photos of themselves holding a knife. I’d be perfectly okay with a nice normal dessert after a wedding luncheon, but I have no need to see the bride and groom wrestling with a tin opener and a can of peaches.

Anyway, there was no photography tonight, and no applause as I sliced into my miracle cake from the heavenly realms. There was just a great licking of the lips and widening of the eyes. A slice of this would go perfectly with a good old cup of tea, I thought to myself.

One of the consequences of living on your own is that you’ve only really got the walls to bounce ideas from. And the walls make dreadful advisors; this morning I went out with a brown shirt under a purple jumper. They may have ears, but those walls definitely don’t have a mouth to tell you that colours don’t match, that it’s bin day, or that you have to turn the grill off while you’re running the bath.

The walls, the mirror, the bathtub, and indeed all my kitchen appliances, failed today to stop me eating the whole sponge cake.

I put the knife down. The cellophane wrapper was a blanket of crumbs. I had scoffed the lot.

So my question is, is that what you’re supposed to do with miracles? Were there drunkards at the wedding in Cana with ties wrapped around their heads singing along to Grease Megamix? Did anyone at the Feeding of the Five Thousand get indigestion from one too many tuna sandwiches?

So why is it okay for me to devour a whole Victoria sponge in under 90 seconds? I felt like a right glutton standing there in front of no-cake. I washed up the knife and scrunched the wrapper into the bin. Cake from heaven eh. Lovely, sugary, jammy, creamy, delicious, impeccable goodness from the secret place of mystery that all miracles come from. And also the top shelf of my cupboard. Delectable.

It took me an inordinate amount of time to check the box for a use-by-date...