The Chocolate Cake
[Photo by Ayesha Firdaus]
“Can I get you anything? A piece of cake?” asked the kind-hearted lady.
I was on my Fire This Love tour across eastern Australia. Over this particular tour, I had launched into a new genre of music, which I was performing at various jazz clubs, halls, farms, the occasional pool cabana and a number of other venues. I was also continuing to share my gospel music every Sunday in church gatherings.
So even though I was singing my mainstream love songs in various venues, on this occasion, I was sharing some gospel songs as part of a Sunday morning church gathering in NSW, Australia.
At the end of any event or appearance, I’m usually swept up in various activities and find myself meeting many people all at once. Many times, I’m hearing someone’s life-story shortened into a couple of sentences. I’ve made many a life-long friend during these moments, but my head is usually abuzz with information overload.
As well as the highly condensed level of social interaction, my brain is also evaluating the logistics of packing up gear; thinking about the other commitments of the day; trying to remember to get my USB stick drive back from the multimedia team; assessing personal physical threats and also threats to my personal space (both actual and perceived); and a myriad of other thoughts.
Into this maelstrom of brain activity, I heard myself being asked, “Can I get you anything? A piece of cake?”
A lady has kindly brought a plate with a large piece of chocolate cake on it. It looked both moist and decadent.
Generally speaking, I’d have knocked her over to get to this wonderful culinary creation. On this occasion, though, I’d been feeling a little nauseated from a less than perfect coffee I’d had earlier in the day.
When choosing to have a coffee at an establishment whilst out on tour, I’m usually assessing the vibe of the coffee house; the sense of job satisfaction of the barista; the type of espresso machine being used; the cleanliness of the espresso machine (has it a years worth of uncleaned old coffee grounds being slowly burnt to ash inside it, being incorporated into every single coffee made?); then at the number of people ordering coffees; then I check out whether they grind the coffee for each drink order, as opposed to pre-grinding coffee for the morning (causing the whole batch to be immediately oxidised and stale). Before any of this has taken place, I’ve already looked online at reviews and have also tried to cross-index those reviews against any stats I can find of people hospitalised with food poisoning in the area.
On this particular morning, however, I’d just gone with the flow, ignoring my complex system of consideration and finding myself ordering a piccolo latte at a cafe where they’d never heard of a piccolo latte before. As the steam rose from their machine, I wasn’t sure if I was smelling old cigarette smoke, or if it was my coffee being made. In any case, I drank the coffee, not realising that it would be ruling my digestive system for the next three days like some kind of evil demented monarch.
So, when offered a beautiful piece of chocolate cake, I heard myself declining, even as I felt a slight gurgling from my small intestine.
I thought no more about it, as soon I was rolling leads, packing merch, recovering my USB stick drive, slapping high fives and bidding a fond adieu to this marvellous group of people.
I was sharing at a number of venues over the next few days of the tour. It was a busy yet rewarding time. This tour was the first one in which I was joined by Mark D, who features in a number of other tour tales. It helped me immensely that Mark was a psychologist, as he was more than able to keep me slightly insane enough to survive my poor tour choices.
We’d found a caravan park to park the motorhome for a couple of days R&R and to do a little stocktake and cash-count before heading to the next run of concerts. I knew that I had a calculator in my backpack, and so I reached in to grab it.
Squelch! My hand had grabbed hold of something soft and unexpected. I quickly pulled my hand out of my bag. It was covered in what looked like the contents of a dirty nappy. And yet it smelt strangely chocolatey.
Unbeknownst to me, three days earlier, the kindhearted lady who had offered me refreshments, had somehow found my backpack and had put a large piece of chocolate cake inside in some manner of determined not-to-be-put-off very-stubborn hospitality. I was unaware of the said cake, and so had been throwing items into my bag at the end of each concert like some sort of olympic shot putter, not realising that with each hefty lob I was dispersing the cake through my bag like a child splashing in a mudpit.
I was absolutely stunned, as nowhere in my anticipation of events, could I connect the chocolate cake that I’d been previously offered days earlier, with the mess that I was now seeing emerge from my backpack. It was like a well-meaning reverse kind of bag snatching. Instead of having things stolen, I had been chocolate caked!
After some cleaning of my calculator, papers, a few CDs and sundry, I found myself laughing at the situation. And I’ve decided since to accept all food gifts as they are given. And to keep my backpack locked carefully away.
“Can I get you anything? A piece of cake?” asked the kind-hearted lady.
“YES PLEASE!”
