A Lucky Egg-scape*
A cautionary tale about a caramel egg and my trouser pocket
14 February 2019
Yesterday I gave a talk in Brighton to an audience of 15 year olds. I took with me some chocolate prizes for games, including two caramel eggs. What followed was a game of fortunately-unfortunately.
Fortunately – I ended up with a spare ‘prize’ caramel egg after the Brighton talk. “I’ll eat that later” I thought, as I put it in my pocket.
Unfortunately – having put it in my pocket, I then forgot it was there.
Fortunately – I did find it just before I went to bed in Oxford last night.
Unfortunately – for the first time in ages, I hadn’t bothered to bring a spare pair of trousers with me for the following morning, when I was due to give a keynote talk to a teacher conference.
Fortunately – although the egg had gone very soft, it still had its foil wrapper around it and hadn’t leaked.
Unfortunately – I now decided to unwrap it as I fancied treating myself to a late night sweet.
Fortunately – As I unwrapped it I found that the outside chocolate was still intact, if soft. So I decided to take a bite out of it.
Unfortunately – Unknown to me, the inside had turned into a pool of liquid caramel, .
Fortunately – I almost instantly realised what had happened.
Unfortunately – I was too slow to come up with a strategy to save the situation, and watched helplessly as the caramel gushed out.
Fortunately – as the liquid caramel spilled, by some miracle it missed my trousers.
Unfortunately – it did spill on to the nice carpet in my room.
* * * *
And that, Jesus College Oxford, with my sincere apologies, is why there’s now a bit of a brown stain on the carpet in the guest room. I think it should wash out ok. I hope you’ll see that the story behind the mysterious brown stain could have been worse for you….and had things turned out a little differently, it could have been far, far worse for me. I would not have enjoyed trying to explain it to my audience this morning.
* My thanks to Zoe Griffiths for the title of the blog.