Terrible Friday

It has been an exceptionally difficult day today and even as I write this, the recollection of the day’s events brings me close to tears.

It all began quite well with a slow luxuriant start over a couple of cups of tea and good conversation. The children were on good form, the day was playing out nicely and we waited in anticipation of a nice buffet lunch with my sister.

Then she arrived and that’s when things started to go awry. The early signs were good: lovingly created bakewell sponge cake thing was brought in along with a baguette, corn chips, pork pies and my niece. Happy days!

And then I saw them. 

Lurking like a floater which hides behind the u-bend only to pop back up the minute your back is turned. The tea drip stain on a freshly ironed white shirt you’ve just donned. The Craig Revel Horwood of an otherwise friendly judging panel. Yeah, you’ve got it: I’m talking ‘bout Quorn Cocktail Sausages.

What the hell kind of sick b*st*rd brings these things to a civilised lunch for actual people?! However, I am pleased to say that I kept my cool and on realising that the perpetrator - who shall remain nameless (Ruth) for fear of involving her in a backlash (it was my sister; Ruth) – wasn’t going to be ejected for this heresy on this sacred day, and that it was too far to go to safely remove the children from the situation, I did the honourable thing and remained silent. 

I manned up and even ate one of the things, I would describe it, but there’s nothing to describe – Quorn is the purgatory of food - and until such time as someone can, WITHOUT GOOGLING IT, actually tell me what Quorn is, I’ll have no part of it.

I didn’t dwell on it and with the family being together, elected to move past it and play my part of the polite dinner guest who chows down without speaking. That said, I knew the afternoon had been marred because we all sat there in silence, avoiding eye contact and failing to address the Quorn-based elephant in the room.

Time seemed to slow until such time as the children grabbed their baskets and headed out to forage in a garden lined with chocolatey goodness, even the sun returned, hinting at an ethereal forgiveness for the culinary slight. Redemption was within our grasp.

And then my mother began to dish out our eggs. An Aldi “Wendy the Worm” for me (I’d bought her some incredibly expensive Ferrero Rocher from Poundland – I forget how much I paid). “Leo the Lion” for my Brother in Law, a non-blood relation. That’s fine, passive-aggressive displays are easy to handle with a cool, calm and collected mind like mine, but my poker face clearly isn’t what it once was and I had betrayed myself. 

“It’s OK, D. Yours has fizzy jelly worms.”

I LOVE fizzy jelly worms and refusing to stand on ceremony, I tore into the cardboard surround with my teeth – pausing for a moment as I realised the packaging was a marked improvement on Quorn cocktail sausages – until I hit paydirt: fizzy jelly worms.

And then I saw it.

VEGAN fizzy jelly worms.

The camel’s back hadn’t just been broken, it had been brutally severed. I picked the chair up which I had just been sitting in and smashed it against the wall. Running from the room, I snatched up my father’s car keys, which were no good for my car, so I went back in and asked around before I was able to locate my own and then I tore off down the road at speed whilst adhering to the 20mph limit. Out on the main road I stepped it up to 44mph, but lost control and careered into a meandering pig.

I did the only decent thing a desperate, meatless man could do in that situation and ate the beast where it lay, and in so doing, instantly rebalanced the universe and saved Easter for carnivores everywhere, just like Jesus would have wanted.

Covered in blood, I returned home to the loving metaphorical embrace of my family who refused to literally embrace me because of all the blood, regardless I assured them that I expected no apology from them and I am pleased to say that none was forthcoming.

We carried on as if most of the above never happened and had a really nice day.

Happy Easter everyone!