PP has no guts

where PP is, of course, Personnel Person at the office.

They decided that today they'd do the cake thing to celebrate my citizenship. Originally they'd planned to do it Friday after I returned to the office following the ceremony. I don't know what they were thinking! As though I was going to spoil the day by returning to the salt mines! I have much to teach these Americans! :-)

Once I'd made it clear that I wasn't going to be there late Friday arvo they tried for Monday, but that was Yom Kippur and PP, being Jewish, wasn't going to be there. So it got moved to today (Tuesday).

Thus a rather large rectangular cake was produced, tastefully decked out as a US flag and with 'Congratulations Rob' replacing the bottom two or three stripes.

They gave me the choice; either I sang 'The Star Spangled Banner' or I recited the pledge of allegiance. I'm sure even the Americans would agree that their national anthem is almost impossible to sing well. Many try, most fail.

But you know something? I *still* haven't fully memorised the pledge. It's easy for those folk; it was burned into their neurons over a decade or so of daily flag ceremonies at school. Somewhat harder for the rest of us. So one of our resident Republicans led the way. She seemed somewhat confused when, having got to the end of 'one Nation' I went silent. I won't say 'under God'. PP jumped in and affirmed that I was, indeed, unwilling to say 'under God' and we continued to the end.

Then they demanded a speech! Uh huh. So I said; 'My fellow Americans '. Laughter and Dave chimed in 'usually that's followed by something more'. I had to agree whilst admitting that I had nothing to follow it with.

Well nothing would do but that I cut the cake and have the first slice. I reckon it was about 90% sugar; had I finished the piece I'd have been bouncing around the ceiling for an hour or more!

Fortunately PP took over the rest of the cake cutting, accumulating a large pile of icing as she scraped the residue off the spatula before cutting the next slice. I reckon we had half a pound of excess icing at the end. It'd take too long to relate just how it happened that I stuck my face out, glasses off, to allow PP to rub that pile of icing into my face but I surely did. PP seemed unsure whether I meant it or not so she backed down! Bugger! There I was, a million dollar lawsuit within my grasp and she backs down! Just kidding! It really wouldn't have bothered me in the least; icing washes off really easily and it would have been quite a laugh.

So there we have it. PP has no guts! :-)