More Cakes of Joy

Perhaps you think I don't like fruit cake. You are wrong. Another cake I loved when I was young was Boiled Fruit Cake.

This was a cake my grandma used to make, and she gave the recipe to my mother. The recipe was handwritten on yellow paper. And that was why they both made Boiled Fruit Cake in the same way.

It was a funny way to make a cake. My grandma had copied the recipe from a magazine. The thing about my mother and my grandma was that neither of them liked cooking very much, and this recipe was easy, for a fruitcake.

What you had to do was melt an entire brick of butter in a pan, bring it to the boil, then tip a whole packet of sultanas into it, and a massive load of sugar. You boiled it for a bit. Then you let it cool.

This took ages. Sometimes we took the pan of hot sultanas out into the garden. As it cooled it got a greasy film on top. The sultanas puffed up tight inside their skins and flies buzzed round the rim of the pan.

When it was cool you added several cups of flour and two beaten eggs. To me this always seemed the way to wreck it. It never tasted nicer than it did before the flour was added. Plump warm sultanas in a melted toffee liquid.

But you couldn't pretend it was a cake. So the flour and eggs were added and the cake put in the oven. It took an hour to cook, because it was a rich and heavy cake.

In those days ovens were difficult to work, especially electric ones. At least my mother thought ours was. After twenty minutes on HIGH you had to switch to TOP OFF BOTTOM LOW. I don't know whether you had to say it aloud when you did it, but she always did and that's why I remember. Perhaps she thought it was funny. When you think about it, it is.

It didn't seem to help much though. Our boiled fruit cake was always burnt a little on the bottom. You knew you had a good one when the black layer was thin.

Velosophy

Welcome to the first edition of Velosophy. I am David Hume, Le Bon David, as the French are pleased to call me. In this magazine my friend Voltaire and I intend to explore some of the fascinating philosophical issues that arise when a man rides a bicycle. I shall go first.

Here is a man, riding his bicycle along a beach. Or let us say, there is such a man. For now all there is to prove that there is a man riding his bicycle along a beach are the tracks that his tyres make in the sand.

And here is the sun. But he may not look at the sun. All that the man has to prove there is a sun in the sky is a shining path upon the sea, all aglitter, and the miniscule shadows of the tracks of his tyres in the sand.

And now the man is thinking of a pretty puzzle. What are the colours of the sea? He may only describe the colours in terms of the impressions that they make upon his senses. And what if he has never seen anything the colour of the colours that he sees make up the colours of the sea? He must do his best. Let us listen to his thoughts:

(But we cannot listen to his thoughts. All we have are the tracks of his bicycle tyres in the sand, and a shining path of glittering light leading from our eyes across the water to a point on the horizon that is directly below the position where we imagine that the sun he may not look at is in the sky.)

We must imagine his thoughts. We must also imagine that he is riding south, with the sun on his shoulder, if we wish him to come up with better colour images than shiny, and grey. No, he must be riding south, and look! he must be crunching these tiny white fingernail shells as he goes, crunch crackle crunch. He looks at the sea, the thick sensuous roll of foam like boiling sugar. It spreads and forms a lacy bridal train that dissolves into flecks of disappointed bubbles.

The wet sand is blue, the shallows like the juice of lemons. The water deepens fast, becoming plum. Farther out, it looks a virulent pondweed green. White fingernails of foam rise and run. Beyond the green, it's inky blacky blue.

But with what degree of certainty can he claim this to be true?

*

Next week my good friend Voltaire will venture to amuse you in his new persona as The VeloDrone. Until then, happy cycling!