A packet of Jaffa Cakes does not constitute 12 of your 5 a day. Mr V was most emphatic about this after what will forever be known in our house as Jaffacakegate.
It all began when Mr V got home from work and fancied a Jaffa Cake. Being a cunning man who knows his family well, Mr V had secretly stashed some Jaffa Cakes at the back of the cupboard. However, he had failed to take into account that he has a highly trained sniffer wife, able to detect the merest hint of orangey chocolatiness within a 100 metre range. And he has a daughter to whom Mrs V has passed on all of life’s important lessons (chocolate should be eaten not owned, be a strong independent woman, cocktails are bloody lovely, never snog a boy with a cold sore, always iron t-shirts with transfers inside out and whatever happens in life there is always cake). So it is perhaps unsurprising (seemingly to everyone except Mr V) that when Mr V went to his secret stash, he found the cupboard bare. Who could have done such a thing?! Who had violated the Sacred Space of the Jaffa Cake?! This was a mystery which could only be solved by Detective Chief Inspector Mr V.
Unfortunately, DCI Mr V’s trusty sidekick, Constable Cherub 2, was on a foreign mission to Amsterdam, where he was undertaking extensive research into plantlife and pancakes. This meant that DCI Mr V had to investigate alone. Mrs V quite likes it when Mr V turns into DCI Mr V, although she secretly wishes he was uniformed rather than plain clothes. One day Mrs V saw an advert for a dating website for people in uniform and instantly formed a back up plan for if Mr V ever divorces her for borrowing his car and forgetting where she parked it or she batters him to death with a giant toblerone, whichever comes first. But let us not digress.
DCI Mr V gathered all the suspects in the living room. There was Mrs V (a rubinesque lady of middling years), cherub 1 (a slim beauty who had clearly ignored her mother’s advice about cake but was known to have taken the bit about cocktails to heart) and the two wee hairy boys (practically perfect in every way).
“Three months ago I placed a packet of Jaffa Cakes in the cupboard. Today I find that they are missing. If the guilty party comes forward now then they will be let off with a stern warning,” declared DCI Mr V.
“Woof woof,” said the wee hairy boys.
“Okay, I agree that dogs can’t eat chocolate so you are free to go,“ DCI Mr V told them.
“I am a lactose intolerant person who doesn’t eat chocolate (except when it’s in ice cream or brownies, which I appear to be able to tolerate quite well) and demands special milk and moans about the cheese whenever my mother makes pizza (even though there are 3 empty Domino’s pizza takeaway boxes under my bed),” protested cherub 1. Well, she almost said this. The bits in brackets were Mrs V’s motherly additions.
“Okay,” said DCI Mr V, “you may also go. Which leaves us with one suspect…”
“It was the big lady,” stated Mrs V, confidently.
“Would this be the same big lady who put a large bottle of Bailey’s in your shopping bag and ran away?” asked DCI Mr V.
“That’s her!” exclaimed Mrs V, delighted that he understood.
“And would this also be the same big lady who ate my Ben and Jerry’s ice cream but forced you to accidentally put some in your mouth before she once again ran away? It’s strange that I’ve never met The Big Lady Who Did It And Ran Away,” pondered DCI Mr V.
Mrs V was starting to feel the pressure but she was not going to crack.
“There is ample evidence over the years of the big lady doing many bad things and you have never met her because she always runs away. It’s perfectly logical,” explained Mrs V. “And it might have been Constable Cherub 2. He is well known for eating everything and anything due to the fact that he is a boy.”
DCI Mr V was wise to Mrs V’s diversionary tactics and poo pooed all the evidence she put forward to support her claims of innocence and justify the need to eat unattended Jaffa Cakes, including the 12 of your 5 a day, chocolate is for eating not owning and “well what sort of big weirdo stashes chocolate biscuits for months anyway” arguments!
It seemed that Mrs V was guilty. Mrs V wondered glumly if she could persuade Mr V that the Jaffa Cakes accidentally fell into her mouth. Probably not.
However the best form of defence is offence and, if she had mastered nothing else in almost 25 years of marriage, Mrs V was very good at being offensive 😉
And here our story ends. Mainly because the rest is unprintable 😀
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