The Perrin Dessert Fantasy

One thing springs immediately to mind, being back on the Disappearing kick: The lost opportunities.

While I was technically off the wagon, I didn't ever go completely and utterly insane. There were no orgies of colossal and conspicuous consumption...unless you count a seven-course Christmas dinner of course, which I suppose we probably should.

While waiting for d, Louise and Mark last night at the Dragonfly, I had a recurrence of a fantasy that struck me once in a Bognor Regis bog-standard chain restaurant.

"One day," I thought, "I'm going to come here and do a kind of dessert version of a Reggie Perrin Special..."

A Reggie Perrin Special in this context is a little tricky to explain. Reginald Iolanthe Perrin is a comic creation by a writer called David Nobbs. A chronically frustrated and occasionally impotent sales executive for a frozen dessert company, Reggie tries to have an affair with his willing secretary, fails, goes a little bit more mad and eventually leaves all his clothes on the beach and absolutely doesn't commit suicide. He lets everyone think he's dead and goes off to have another life, later returning and making a tremendous success of a business selling people things with absolutely no value whatsoever.

I know, I know - you're wondering what all this has to do with the price of a blackcurrant cheesecake, aren't you?

Before he goes completely off the rails, one of the tell-tale signs that all is not right in the world and the mind of Reggie Perrin is that he goes out, on his own, for a meal at an Italian restaurant. He orders a plate of ravioli to start.

When asked what he'd like for his main, he orders another plate of ravioli.

And when asked about dessert, he agrees wholeheartedly that he'd like to peruse the dessert menu...then orders a third plate of ravioli. Ravioli...cubed, as it were. Perhaps the most demented part of which is that he doesn't actually like ravioli. At all.

I've had the recurring idea, as I say, that one day, I'm going to go into a restaurant, and when they ask me what I want to start with, I'll pick the first thing on the dessert menu. And the second thing...And indeed the third thing.

Then, for main, I'll have the next three or four things on the dessert menu, thank you very much. And to finish, perhaps, one each of...everything else on the dessert menu. That'll do nicely. No poncing around with garlic mushrooms. No space wasted on virtuous protein. Just an afternoon composed entirely of desserts. I'd happily tip the waiter handsomely, as long as the desserts kept coming.

Then of course I'd go into a diabetic coma of intense ferocity, and possibly pass out and die. But damn...if you can't do a Private Benjamin, what a way to go...

Sigh...Ignore me...just a little Disappearing fantasy...Mind you, clearly it's not just me. I mentioned this to Louise when she arrived, and she totally got it. Anyone else have this kind of insane gluttony-lust?

Ahem...don't all rush, will ya?