Whisk(e)y cake

Whisky cake, O Whisky cake!
O alcoholic, frisky cake!
Oh, had I known what lay in store,
I might have spurned you, risky cake.

In Sainsbury’s store lay requisites:
Spices, flour and fruity bits,
A pretty tin to carry you,
With flowers and hearts and such-like glitz.

A Sunday afternoon of baking,
Rubbing, stirring, sieving, shaking,
Oven heated, cake tins greased,
Oh the joys of fruit-cake making.

Savouring the rich aroma,
Amateur – that’s a misnomer –
(What is it comes before a fall?)
Give myself a chef’s diploma!

Sifted sugar, butter, zest,
Orange juice, freshly pressed,
Lastly whisky – that’s the icing,
Made with nothing but the best.

Actually, some might disagree,
About the whisky, for you see,
Tullamore Dew is not a Scotch,
But Irish whiskey, with an ‘e’.

Now the cake is good to go:
Icing like a field of snow,
Smooth and pristine. O vain cook –
Foolish braggadacio!

So the overweaning fool
Tenderly drives the cake to school,
Treads the darkened corridors,
Trips and drops it: fate so cruel!

The horror! The horror! Dark heart so sore:
Thus the world ends, with no more
Than a bang from the tin, a whimper from me:
Out of the cake tin, onto the floor.

All is not lost! The fates relent;
Though the icing's ruined, and the lid is bent,
The cake survives, the tin’s upright —
Put on hold the last lament.

A lesson in humilty,
And the advisability
Of caution in dark corridors
To guarantee tranquility.