Don't get me wrong but...

Where Am I?

I don’t mean Where Am I? I mean Where Am I?
The difference is between the Wheres...

Where Am I suggests that I am lost in the vastness of the Universe. Or perhaps more likely in the not so great vastness of my house.

Where Am I, however, has a whole different connotation. It suggests that I know where I am physically, but not mentally. (Be quiet, you in the back there, no giggling! See me after class.)
Now, before I was so rudely interrupted, I will explain.

I made the grave mistake recently of attempting some previously unheard of culinary delight. It was some sort of a cross between cake and bread, and according to the Web it was very easy and only required 3 ingredients. Buoyed up by a totally misplaced confidence I embarked on my cooking adventure. I got out all the things I thought I would need and arrayed them on the kitchen surfaces. Then I got out all the wherewithal in the matter of ingredients; or so I thought!

For a start the recipe called for more than the stipulated 3 ingredients. Then I was supposed to do complicated things with them, like whisking most of the mix into stiff peaks. But before all this stiff peak malarkey I had to mix certain of the ingredients but not others. And not only mix, but measure quantities.

I began to feel a certain confusion coming on. However, I battled on, and the further I battled, the more confused I became. It was a classic case of the Wheres. I knew where I was – I was in my kitchen. But I didn’t know where I was.

Had I mixed the right amounts of the right ingredients in the right order? I referred back to the recipe. Had I done Step 1? I think so –or maybe I had got bored with Step 1 and had skipped it in favour of Step 2? Possibly!

Maybe I should go back and check Step 1 again – or should I trust to the Great God of Kitchen Confusion and go straight on to Step 3. I don’t know; I had no idea Where I was in the grand scheme of things!

However, having got almost every known piece of kitchen equipment out, including some pieces I didn’t know I possessed, and assembled and mixed various edibles I felt I should persist. Maybe it would all become clear as I pressed on?

I pushed Where to the back of my mind and soldiered on. Eventually I got my misbegotten mixture to the oven stage, bunged it in and set about restoring order to the kitchen. But Where still lurked – how long did it say to leave the mixture in the oven? Check the recipe again – 25 minutes, got lots of time to get cleared up. At this point the Great God of Kitchen Confusion tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Have you any idea what the time was when you put it in?’ He/She asked.