The Cake with the Hole.

It was a beautiful cake, one of the best that Gerda had ever made. When she took it out of the oven it was perfect. A celebration cake to mark the recent birth of a long awaited grandson, her birthday and retirement the week before. She had issued invitations to tea to dear friends of hers to meet the family's new arrival.

She would ice it in different colours and designs to denote the family's good news. However, all this would have to wait as the cake was too hot. She would cool it outside taking care that it was carefully protected.

Other things occupied her until time became pressing to ice her cake. Gerda opened the kitchen door to bring her cake in to find the top of her masterpiece full of tiny beak holes made with delight and enthusiasm by the beady- eyed and ever watchful feathered denizens of the trees in her garden.

They had shop cake for tea in a house filled with laughter as she related her story.