The surreality started to kick in again the other night as I gave our local chinese take-away one last chance. The food has been a little disappointing since it changed hands, but I didn't want to write them off completely because they are so handy. I told them that I wanted a hot chicken curry in thick sauce. Now, I am a realist, and I knew, deep down, that my curry would not be hot and spicy. I even knew, or at least suspected, that it would have a disappointingly thin sauce. Fair enough.
When I entered the building at the alloted time to pick up my order, it transpired that they had not only not got my order ready, but they were quite adamant that I had not made an order at all. I suppose I should have accepted this when I reflected upon the difficulty with which the elderly lady had taken my order - questioning everything and inviting me to agree with her Chinese versions of my English words.
So, I explained - this time with the aid of precise hand signals and, at one point, a small annotated diagram - my desire for a hotter than normal chicken curry in a nice thick sauce. No matter how eloquent my chicken-wading-through-thick-sauce mime was, I couldn't escape the feeling that I might as well have been asking Mother Theresa to perform some sort of unspeakable and border-line illegal sex act on me. Still, I said “OK” and she nodded enthusiastically and smiled, before shouting something into the kitchen which sounded very angry indeed.
After a short wait of some 35 minutes, I left with my meal. It's gentle heat went some way towards warming a tiny part of me as I limped home in the winter chill. It was as I was walking home - eager to to eat my curry - that I was accosted by a small woman dressed almost entiely in cerise. “Flipping heck, Paul.” she said. (at least that was the sense of what she said) “Flipping heck, Paul, you've gained a significant amount of weight.” (again, these were not her precise words).
I felt it only fair to enlighten the lady: “I'm not called Paul.”
My reply hung in he ether for a short while, before the lady exclaimed - and again, I must paraphrase slightly - “Flip me, I am a silly flipper”.
I started walking again, just in case the ground actually did open up and swalllow her, as I secretly hoped she wished. There is a kind of frantic-ness reserved for the unwrapping of a much hungered for take-away. I drew upon this to the full as I unwrapped my prawns in OK sauce.
There was something in my memory associated with the way the take-away lady had seized upon my saying of the word 'OK' which convinced me that this was the sauce I now had. I can only assume that the presence of prawns was in the way of some kind of apology for the lateness of my meal. It seemed logical to me that prawns would be seen as a superior protein source to chicken.
I hate prawns.
I guess it just goes to show that all the wrong things can happen for all the right reasons.
I also doubted that the lady in the chinese take-away could ever come close to being as embarassed about it as the lady who mistook me for Paul. Especially as I did not have not the energy to return the faulty take-away and alert them to the problems surrounding it.
Ah well, such is life. For the record, OK sauce is nice with chips. Just pick out the prawns.
PS You want pictures? Hey, that's what the words are for.
More than ever, I believe that the real meaning of Christmas is weeks of preparation, a desperate bid by shops to make up their retail shortfall, sending cards out to enough people so they don't feel snubbed and the need to give good presents to our nearest and dearest.
Recent Comments