One Sunday afternoon, we had a dinner party at my student house,
and I'd pulled 'dessert' out of the volunteering hat.

It was kind of an important deal for me, because a) my housemates were a little hacked off at my increasing lack of involvement in any of their events or gatherings, and b) a girl I was rather taken with was going to be attending. So I really wanted to showcase my Sensitive New-Age Guy side with some delicately delectable concoction, knobbing two birds with one johnny - as it were - by simultaneously redeeming myself in the eyes of my despairing ex-buddies and impressing a tart with, um, a tart. Or something.

However, whilst awaiting their arrival and applying liberal splashes of aftershave up in the bathroom, the horrible realisation struck me - at almost exactly the same time as an even more horrible smell - that the panna cotta I'd lovingly simmered up and left to cool on the hob was, alas, perched atop a gas ring I'd failed to properly switch off.

Twenty minutes later, my would-be conquest and friends arrived to eat their painstakingly-prepared courses in a house smelling powerfully of boiled milk (not good, if you've never had the pleasure), finished off with 'buns' made from the only things I could secretly raid at short notice from the very housemates I was vainly trying to placate: a few fistfuls of Kellogg's Bran Flakes, and a liberal squirge of Aquafresh for 'flavour'.

They were fucking disgusting.

(And I know what you're thinking - the answers are 'no', and 'no'. In that order. Sigh.)
( grey kid is breakdancing to save a community centre, Thu 17 May 2007, 15:53, Reply)