Sweet

I wait impatiently until I've cooled and set firm, then I climb back out of the oven.  The bloody kids are miles off, of course, and they've taken half my house with them, by the looks of things.  They've got no respect.  Some of those candy canes were load-bearing, for fudge's sake, and as for the state of the roof, well, I shouldn't like to be around next time it rains, that's all, I think.  Of course, it starts to pelt it down then, doesn't it?  Sod's law; soggy gingerbread crumbs all over the show.

I call the builder and explain the problem.  He tells me his call-out fee.  I remind him I'm a witch.  He reminds me it's a Saturday, and after four pm.  "I could curse you," I say, "how would you like to spend the rest of your life as a Bavarian Chocolate Cream Doughnut?" (My wand's stuck on confectionery, by the way – it's the reason I'm in this sorry mess in the first place.  Bits of wayward spells have played havoc with my hovel, so now I'm the witch in the gingerbread house.)

"You could curse me," he says like a man winning an argument, "but then who'd be able to source your liquorice guttering?"  He's right.  Normal guttering is too heavy for fruitcake walls.  "Besides," he continues, his voice as sugary as my stupid windows, "I'm an honest tradesman what would never cheat a lady living alone.  I wouldn't like to speak ill of my colleagues, but, well, they're crooks the lot of 'em.  Couldn't mix a chocolate mortar if their lives depended on it, neither."

Give him his due, he arrives within the hour.  By then I'm up to my ankles in mushy gingerbread and bits of Battenberg (carpet, don't ask).  "Just sort it," I tell him.  He takes two hours to fix the roof, and charges me for three.  He tries to tell me I need a surveyor out for the candy cane pillars, but I slip him a bit extra just to shore them up for now.

When he can't think of anything else to do that will add another bloody zero onto his invoice, he heads for the door.  "Oh, by the way," he says.  Here we go, I think.  "You haven't got any of those jellied babes going begging, have you?"

"Sorry," I say shutting the door in his face, "I'm having problems with the ingredients."