Having your cake and not eating it.

I was struck at work the other day by a bizarre but extremely common phenomenon. In an earlier post I explained how biscuits are frequently on offer in my office, and the same is certainly true of cake. We're blessed with some excellent bakers, and there's often a cake sale for some cause or other which, purely in the spirit of good citizenship you understand, I'm always happy to support.

A couple of weeks back one of the more renowned makers brought in a Victoria sponge, an impressive thing of several inches in height, looking like something out of a fine patisserie. What followed can only be described as an Andy Capp-style melee, with a big cloud of dust, hands and forks swarming round it like it was the only watering hole left at the end of a very long dry season.

As the dust settled and the victors, for that's the only word to describe them, moved away from the plate with their slices, you may well expect there to have been just a few crumbs on a slightly battered plate. Remnants, nothing, only a suggestion that there was ever cake there in the first place. But that's where the First Law of Cake kicks in, the bizarre phenomenon I mentioned. There was, entirely untouched, standing alone as if on guard over the plate itself, a single slice remaining. The scrum had somehow contrived to contain exactly one person fewer than there were slices available (not that it had turned up pre-sliced - how does that happen?).

That slice stood lonely vigil for much of the rest of the day, for the First Law of Cake is immutable - 'Thou shalt not take the final slice'. Some part of the collective subconscious dictates that it would simply be bad manners. Certain form must be observed, a ritual carefully followed if some curse is not to befall us all:

1) After a decent interval, it's OK for somebody to make some comment to the effect that 'nobody seems to want' the last bit.

2) Later still, it should be remarked that it can't be left there overnight because it'd 'go hard' and be wasted.

3) Finally, somebody shall announce, such that the whole office hears, that they're going to have cake, so there, and help themselves, but under no circumstances must they take the whole slice. They shall cut a piece of it off, leaving a stub. The same shall happen with the next person, and the next, cutting the remains into steadily smaller chunks until the last piece is so small that nobody feels bad about leaving it.

4) The last rites. (I only assume this happens, because I've never been the person responsible for this task). One of the last people out of the office, on the pretext of clearing away the plate and cutlery, finishes it off in the kitchen. Either that or the routinely-blamed-for-everything and possibly mythical 'cleaners' finish it. Or that final piece goes in the bin, that it too takes its share.

This has been the case wherever I've worked, however large or small the cake, however many people involved. People are funny, ain't they?