Coffee and Walnut Cake

Today I had the pleasure of eating a couple of slices of coffee and walnut cake, one small one with a cup of coffee just before lunchtime and a second this evening. Whenever I encounter this kind of cake I am reminded of an incident that happened back in 1994 when I was staying at Stirling University for the Challenger Society of Marine Science biennial conference. My wife had come along for the trip with me and, on a quiet day, we took the opportunity to catch a train into Edinburgh and spend a day wandering around the gardens, Princes Street and the area outside the castle. Towards the end of the afternoon we dropped into a small cafe and ordered something to drink (probably tea because at that time I wasn’t really much of a coffee drinker – in fact no-one in the UK was much of a coffee drinker back in those days). While we were in the cafe another, older, German couple came in, sat down at their table and made their order. After a little wait, the waitress took them their order – two slices of cake and went away. They looked a bit puzzled and after a short conflab called the waitress back over. Was there a problem? Listening in, not because we were being particularly nosey, it was just a small cafe, we picked up that they were quite happy with the cake they had in front of them but wanted to know where their drinks were. The waitress politely informed them that they hadn’t ordered any drinks. ‘Yes they had’ they replied. So she checked her pad, or they discussed it some more (I can’t actually remember the detail) and, no, they hadn’t ordered anything to drink. But they were still confused – ‘we ordered coffee and walnut cake’… and then it dawned on everyone what had happened.