During the years I played soccer for the Ringwood United Reserves, Marg worked at Fletcher Jones in Ringwood. She always finished work at about 12.15pm and every second week, when our home game was at Wonga Park Reserve, Mark, Craig, Brett and myself would leave home about 12pm and pick her up on the way to the ground.
This procedure should have run like clockwork, but the boys, who were about twelve, ten and seven years of age at the time, always seemed to be disorganised and consequently we always seemed to be in a rush.
On this particular Saturday it was already ten to twelve and still the boys were no near ready to go, and then Mark suggested: ” Let’s take some donuts to eat for afternoon tea .”
I said, ” Don’t be ridiculous they’re in the freezer and won’t thaw out by the time you’ll want to eat them. They’ll be rock hard.”
But the boys pestered and then an idea struck me. I took a packet of donuts out of the freezer, put them into the oven, wrapping and all, and turned the oven to 500 ° F, thinking that this would make them ready in 10 minutes time.
We picked Marg up as usual, drove to the ground and I prepared myself for the contest ahead. The game had been in progress for about 40 minutes, 5 minutes before half time, when it suddenly hit me, “The bloody donuts. The oven at 500 ° F . JESUS CHRIST.”
To the utter surprise and amazement of the other players and the people watching the game, I sprinted off the field, through the spectators and into the carpark where Marg was sitting in the car watching the game.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked, somewhat mystified, ” The ref hasn’t blown for half time yet.”
” I put some donuts in the oven and left it on 500 ° F.”
“WHAT?”
“Well, the bloody kids pestered and pestered me for these bloody donuts and we were running late so I put them in the oven at 500 ° F but I forgot to……………”
The rest of the sentence was lost in the sound of the roaring engine, the tyres screeching as the car reversed then took off in a cloud of gravel and dust. It took the first corner out of the car park on two wheels and the sight of grim rage coming from Marg’s face was enough to strike terror into the mind of anyone present, especially me.
I was sick with worrry and almost certain that the house would be burnt to the ground by the time she got home and I was absolutely useless for the rest of the game and was in fact substituted off in the second half.
When Marg arrived back home in record time , she opened the front door and was met by thick smoke and almost choked as she made her way to the kitchen. She managed to turn the oven off, take out the donuts, which by now were reduced to charcoal and the size of marbles and threw them out the back door.
The plaster wall around the oven was scorched black and was bent and disorted, the walls were badly discolored from the smoke and the whole house and everything in it stank to high heaven and did so for days after.
I was well and truly in the dog house for about a week as you can imagine and she still reminds me of my little ‘faux pas’ to this very day …………………………….. and I had the audacity to call Branco a dickhead in one of my earlier stories.