Last Friday morning I was making my sandwich for lunch in the customary manner. I’d forgotten that I wouldn’t actually need one as we at work were all going out for lunch, but that’s another matter.
I decided on my favourite recipe (if you can call it that) of ham, cheese and lettuce. Actually "decided" is probably the wrong word. Ham, cheese and lettuce is the default sandwich, the one I always make if I can’t decide what else to make, can’t bother to think of anything more imaginative, or haven’t got the ingredients for anything else. This accounts for about four days out of five most weeks.
For some reason I always get all the ingredients out of the fridge (or appropriate cupboards) before I start. But they go away as they get used, not all in one go afterwards.
On went the butter, the ham, the cheese. Next, the lettuce. I pulled some out of its plastic bag. On the occasions I buy lettuce, I put it in a bag in the fruit section in the supermarket. The check-out chick then feels compelled to place this bag inside another bag, even if it’s the only item I’m buying. No wonder we all generate too much landfill.
It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that I sometimes stop off at the supermarket on the way home from work. For me one of the main benefits of owning a mobile phone is you can check if any groceries are needed on the way home. This causes no end of amusement from my fellow workmates walking with me when I’m heard discussing which of the family’s three kinds of milk need to be bought. L drinks skim, I drink "Rev" and Isaac drinks full cream.
Some of you might remember that recently I was talking about lettuce.
I take some lettuce out of its plastic bag. There’s something on one of the pieces. Eugh. Looks like somebody’s bogie. Some joker in the supermarket has been picking his nose and placing the really gooey ones on the lettuce. Yeuch.
It moves. A worm or slug of some kind.
Ah. This is better. At least, I think it is. I think I’d prefer bonus wildlife on my lettuce to nasal discharge. Though either way I think I’d prefer it not to be on my sandwich.
(Three paragraphs ago I switched to present tense. Apologies to any of my English teachers, should they ever be reading this, for mixing my tenses. I tried to switch it back into past tense like the rest of the piece. But it just didn’t work.)
