Sweet Disappointment

Although there are no longer any Hungarians selling cakes on Acland Street, St Kilda, there were once - or at least I've long cherished that belief. But, like Hungarians everywhere, the original Acland Street Hungarian cake shop owners, (if they ever actually existed), worked hard, and as a result they have long since become rich and successful and moved on to bigger and better things. Their cake shops remain though, as good as ever, despite being under new management.

Which is why, when I woke up this morning and decided that what I wanted for breakfast was a vanilla slice, I headed for St Kilda. After examining the offerings of several establishments, I settled down in this one:

I have to admit I don't eat a vanilla slice terribly often - not often enough to be able to say whether the shop's claim that theirs is the best vanilla slice in the state is fact. However, I can say that it was definitely the best vanilla slice I've had in years.

An odd thing happened though, while I was eating it. Two old birds (actually they were probably only my age, but they both wore expressions of such sourness that they looked much older [or at least older than I imagine I look]), came into the shop, having spent several minutes examining the contents of the window from the street outside. The girl behind the counter greeted them when they entered, asking how she could help them. They looked about the shop, their faces expressing increasing dissatisfaction. 'We're after something savoury', they replied.

Just take a close look at that window display again and tell me that wasn't a bit unreasonable, (and I should point out that Acland Street does also have a lot of cafes and restaurants where things other than cakes can easily be bought). It made me wonder whether, while many people lead genuinely unhappy lives, there aren't one or two of my fellow humans who seek out misery and disappointment for peculiar reasons of their own.