A True-ish Story

They say truth is stranger than fiction; sometimes, it’s on par.

I laughed when I saw this cartoon, for something similar once happened to my mother.

Forty years ago, we had just moved to Runcorn and Mum had met our new next door neighbours but no one else.  She answered the door one morning and there stood a strange woman, holding a plate containing an egg and two bacon rashers.

Stranger: Can you please help me?  I’m a bit short for my breakfast; have you got a sausage to lend me?

[Bemused] Mum: Um, erm, sure, yes, hold on a sec.

Later that day, Mum saw our next door neighbour and told her all about the strange breakfast-begging woman.

[Laughing] Neighbour: Oh, that was Irene*.  Don’t worry about it: she came to me for the beans!

Irene and her family eventually moved to a better part of town, into a large, posh house.  I wonder how many neighbours’ sausages helped to pay for it?

*Names changed to preserve privacy: ‘Irene’ is still alive; no doubt living on the neighbours’ Overnight Blueberry French Toast (breakfast has changed a lot in forty years).

You Don’t Have To Cook To Live Here; But It Helps

All that talk of food this morning made me hungry for my breakfast, so I decamped to the kitchen once I’d finished blogging.  Like the Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe, my cupboard was bare.  And before you pull me up on my mixed nursery rhymes – how much do you think it cost that poor woman to feed all of those children?  She should have spent some of it on contraception years ago and she might have been able to afford at least a boot.

It being Bill Day, the cupboard needs re-stocking so there was no cereal for me and I’m not mad on toast unless it’s accompanied by the hand of the person who made it.  I found two eggs cowering in the fridge, and cower they were right to do: I have invented a new recipe.  Well, not so much ‘invented a new recipe’ as ‘cocked-up an old one.’  Being too eager for food and too lazy to correct my mistakes, I had put away the flour before I should have done and the mixture was way too thin.   I cooked it anyway and the bits that weren’t burnt were really nice, I think.  I had a little trouble flipping the pancakes so I beg you, if you will, to imagine a sort of plaited scrambled egg and you will be as revolted by my breakfast as I was.

Bon appetit!