Wednesday, 20 April 2016

The Forgotten Prohibition

'Your face looks slimmer today,' said d.
It will surprise no-one who's acquainted with my ego that I brightened at her words. I won't say I actually preened, but there was a definite flutter of optimistic self-delusion in my brain.
'Well, I was a pound down this morning as it happens,' I told her. 'Maybe it fell straight off my chin.'
She grinned at me, the way people grin at a pet rat who's just done an extraordinarily cute trick for the zillionth time.
'D'you wanna go out for breakfast?' she asked, and I agreed - there's a local cafe where they have extraordinarily good bread for toast from the bakery next door, and where, after we've been living here four years, nine times out of ten, they can get d's order right.

Be under no illusions - this is no kind of veiled criticism. Watching my girl order food is an astonishing way to spend your time. I frequently call her 'Sally' when we're out eating together, and this is why. Sally Albright and my girl - Sisters from another mother. Clearly, they're by no means unique in knowing what they want and how they want it - if they were, it would have been merely vanity putting it in a movie. And I absolutely don't say this to get her to stop - it's astonishing and wonderful and I want her to have what she wants. What's more, being in some respects so British it mkaes my bones squeak, I've been known on many an occasion to cash in on her ability to precisely describe what she wants, and how, and even for the most part where, so that I too can now occasionally actually get what I want in restaurants and cafes, rather than doing that thing where I eat whatever's put in front of me, even if it was intended for the lady with the impetigo in the corner, and meekly nodding when asked that obligatory, awful question, 'Is everything all right for you?'

I think it's a simple cultural thing - the land of freedom and choice vs the land of social inhibition, taking what you're given and lumping it. Twelve years on, watching my girl order food is still a wonder and a pleasure, and long may it continue.

This morning, as it happens, our cafe was off its game - there was a soggy toast issue - but I didn't say any of this to highlight soggy toast. I said it because we've been there quite regularly, and d's example has boosted my confidence. So now, I don't have to use a menu. I'm confident in my delivery. In a loud, clear voice, I ask for 'the lunchbox small, no back pudding, extra sausage instead and a mug o' decaff.'

It came, it was fab, d and I arranged a toast exchange like spies in the Cold War, and all was good. She had stuff to do in town, I had stuff to do back in the office so we went our separate ways.
It was only as I rounded the final bend before the flat that something hit me in the face like a ball peen hammer.

The Forgotten Prohibition!
I'd not only forgotten a prohibition that wa a central part of the original Disappearing act, without remembering it was there I'd pretty much stomped up to it, flicked it a merry set of V's, waggled my groin at it, turned around, farted in its face and swaggered off content in the knowledge of a prohibition told most royally where to go.

No Fried Foods.
In the list I made a night or two ago of all the rules of Disappearing, I'd somehow neglected to add one of the most fundamental - no fried foods.

The thing is, fried foods are sneaky little bastards. If you're not constantly vigilant, they can sneak up on you, looking like part of the culinary furniture and then - wallop! - before you know it, they're down your gullet, being digested and spreading their lovely comforting fried fabulousness to all the cells of your body. And sure enough, I'd scoffed bacon and sausage for breakfast. Fried sausage and bacon. I nokw you can do them other ways. our cafe doesn't. So witout even remembering it was there, I'd broken a Disappearing rule. Good start, no?

I thought about flagellating myself senselessly for about six hours, but to be honest, I had a magazine to put out so I didn't really have the time. It is what it is, and was what it was, and by all the listening gods, I'm gonna miss those sausage and bacon. But there it is - now I know the prohibition's there, it would be an act of dishonesty to break it again.

Arse.

Anything else of interest to tell you today? Well, Victoria Wood died, and I feel like that's punched me in the face, but that's a topic for a different blog, tomorrow.

And I went walking again tonight, and took longer about it. Managed 9.12 km in just over two hours. Which sounds massively more impressive than 'five and a bit miles,' but equates to the same thing as far as my screaming feet are concerned. Walked the length of two villages, essentially, from Merthyr through Pentrebach to the centre of Troedyrhiw (non-Welsh folk, don't worry about trying to pronounce the names, Welsh is a thorougly perverse language), and back.

One thing I learned on the way is that my whole 'sluggish transit, sweetcorn experiment' thing might in fact be just a symptom of what I like to think of as Slug Life. I was about a quarter of the way nto the return journey (with, say, two miles left to go), when my system announced a pressing, urgent need to find a bathroom.

So, that will explain why my 'per kilometre' speed actually went up on the return trip, despite being the uphill portion of the walk. Motivation is clearly of great importance when it comes to getting the miles covered.

There have to be easier ways.

Oh - damn. Something just struck me. I'll have to go back to using a menu at the cafe now that fried food's quite literally off my table.

Bugger.

No comments:

Post a Comment