[Stairs]

A elderly man lay dying on his bed.

When he starts to smell the beautiful aroma of baking wafting up from the ground floor of his house. The smells are intoxocating and they take him back to his youth and when his mother used to bake all manner of wonderful pastries and tarts for his family to eat.

So taken by the smells, for the first time in what seemed weeks he felt it was possible to move. So he started to edge himself to the side of his bed and eventually through extreme effort he rolled with a thud onto the woooden floor.

Then slowly he managed to turn himself around and in considerable pain pulled himself along the floor onto the landing so he could look through the bannisters to see where the smell were coming from, maybe there had been a delivery.

He could see nothing but an empty hallway, so still in excruiating pain and with lots of effort he dragged himself along the landing to the top of the stairs before gently pulling himself over the first, very top, step of the staircase.
Suddenly his weight switched the tipping point and he ungraciously fell, arms and legs akimbo, all the way to the bottom of the stairs and was dumped like a rag pile onto the hall carpet.

Once the pain had receeded he looked around and sniffed the air.

The smells were originating from the kitchen. The door was ajar and so yet again he started dragged his aging and fragile body through the doorway and closer to teh source of all of the delicious smells.

Once in the kitchen, which was large, he came to the kitchen table. A large farmhouse table with thick legs like the trunks of Oak trees at each corner. The smell of baking was intense by this time and it was clear that the produce responsible for the smell was laid out on the table in fornt of him.

He gathered all of his strength for one final push and started pulling his frail body up a table leg. Gradually, bit by bit, he climbed until he was able to start to see plate after plate spread out across the table as far as he could see; Sponge cakes, scones, jam tarts, fruit cakes plus savouries such as suasage rolls and pies a plenty.

Taking a firm grip of the table top edge with one hand he stretched his other arm out as far as he could and took hold of a Jam tart.

Suddenly, there was a crack a wooden spoon across his knuckles and his wife appeared screaming

"Leave them alone, they're for the funeral!!!"