Angel Stew

Angel Stew

The kitchens in the halls of Celestial Paradise were a hive of industrious activity.

Gabriel was prancing around, sticking his chest out and profaning in colourful language at the top of his lungs. His normally gentle, melodic voice was rasping with a nasty edge. His behavior wasn't because he had become that way inclined, but because he was the Chef and drawing on his observations of chefs on earth, that's
the way he thought he ought to behave.

The idea seemed to be to have your underlings cowering in corners and reduced to either tears or suicide--it makes no difference which--in the shortest possible time.

Gabriel found that the use of the term Dog Breath worked particularly well on Temerity, who dissolved into floods of tears every time he used it.

He felt very grand in his blue and white checked pants and tall white hat. But he found the white tunic and apron were tight and restrictive around the wings.

Aurora, mother of all angels and Gabriel's wife, was busy peeling the wisdom at the sink. It had been a good year for wisdom crops, making it reasonably priced at the market so she'd bought plenty of it.

Temerity was in charge of chopping the compassion and empathy. For this recipe, the mixture had to be just right, one part empathy to three parts
compassion. Of course, everybody knows how chopping compassion and empathy, makes you cry, and being called dog breath at regular intervals only compounded the problem.

She tried the old Angel's method of drinking fifteen pints of bitter while swinging a Harley
Davidson round your head, until it was pointed out to her that that's the Hell's Angel's method. So she tried dipping her wings in vinegar while singing, Oh Hale and Hallowed Portals of Goodness, at the top of her voice, but the only difference it made was to bring forth a fresh barrage of abuse from Gabriel who was enjoying himself immensely.

She sniffled her way through her work. One part empathy to three parts compassion with three tears and a glob of nasal mucus--lovely.

Felicity, who was a naughty angel, went directly against Gabriel's orders and added a cup and a half of sex appeal to the pot when nobody was looking.

Gabriel had strictly forbidden the use of it in the stew after the mess left behind on earth from the sexual revolution of the sixties. Somebody had mixed up the labels on the stocks of diligence and sex appeal. He'd had to work three earth decades to clear up after that one, he was still sexually repressed, poor man, and Aurora had given up smiling about that time too.

Three cups of pleasant disposition went in, one of tenderness, and four of humour. Jinty was stirring it all together. It was time to add the herbs. A pinch of irresistible to humans. She was extra careful with this, like the sex appeal, you had to take precautions. Jinty shook her head sadly as she remembered the fate of Bosun the Boxer dog, after he'd fallen into a vat of irresistible to humans. Mr Cummings the high court earth judge was still in prison after that sorry episode, and as for Bosun well, since then, all of his offspring are born bow-legged.

This was a crucial part of the recipe, the amount had to be just right, knowing the character of earthlings, add too much irresistible to humans, and they would be murdering each other in their beds to steal the angel stew.

A pinch of honesty, sixteen cloves of kindness, a pint and a half of love, again you have to go easy on that one, infidelity was rife last year when
Celestine mistook gallons for pints.

Finally it was time for the last ingredient to go into the pot, a pinch of do unto others.

But just as Destiny was about to add it, one of the cherubic sons of Cupid came hurtling through the kitchen and knocked Destiny's arm, the whole drum of do unto others fell into the pot.

There was a shocked silence, they waited with
baited breath for an explosion from the normally mild and easygoing Gabriel, but he just
laughed.

'No harm done,' he said. So they just added a little more honesty and compassion to compensate.

Jinty shook her wings over the cooking pot and a fine shower of angel dust drifted over the top of the gravy. 'This is to make wishes come true,' she said.

That night a ramekin of Angel Stew was placed at the bedside of every human on earth.

The affect was remarkable. Soldiers laid down their arms, hugging the enemy and calling him, Brother. Strangers met in the street, smiled and remembered what it was like in the old days when people took the time and trouble to be neighbourly. The bullies helped the weak and the rich aided the poor.

The angels looked down from the Celestial halls of Paradise and wondered what to make for dessert.