Well it was quite the day yesterday. I took the afternoon off, got annoyed with some finger food and ate a flowerpot, then sat in the EE store, upgrading my phone.
Where to start? Well. Sammy and I took some of her family out to lunch, and I mistakenly ordered the chicken skewers. They were okay; quite tasty, but, much to my horror, the kind of food you just can't eat without making a mess.
I've probably mentioned it before, but I just get so stressed with messy food. I'm not being a snob, I just find it super-socially-awkward getting covered in a sticky, gooey, mess - and this in an age where actual cutlery has been invented to deal with that exact problem. Do I cut into massive burgers with a knife and fork? Yes I do. Would I chop up a pizza? Yes I would. Am I one of those people? Yes I am.
"What about ribs?" you might ask as I push my quinoa and watercress round my plate with a fork. Ribs are a nightmare. And the worst of it is that they're so tasty! Of course you want to gnaw on them like you're Tarzan, of course you want to rip that sweet, sticky meat off the bone with your teeth. It's delicious. But I need a knife and a fork, please. This is not Medieval England.
The chicken skewers came with a garden of salad, two pita wraps and a ramekin of tzatziki. What was I thinking? As soon as it arrived, all neatly arranged on the oval plate, I knew I'd made a very stressful mistake. Much to my companions' amusement, I gripped the skewers with a knife, then slid the chicken off the skewer with the prongs of my fork. Then I spooned tzatziki onto the wrap, poked the chicken on top with some greenery, folded it up as best as I could, and tried to eat it. It wasn't long before I had tzatziki and watercress smeared across my cheeks. It's so impolite.
After navigating that situation as politely as I could, I thought I'd play it safe for dessert and I ordered a cheesecake.
I love a cheesecake; it's so simple. You just gently slide a dessert fork into the soft fruit and cream cheese until it meets the gentle resistance of the biscuit base. Down you go until the fork hits the plate, then you slide up with a perfectly manageable bite size chunk of delicious dessert. Swallow and repeat until you feel happy: clean edges, and the plate is adorned with barely a pile of crumbs. Perfect.
"What is that?" chortled my friends. The masked-waiter (smirk obscured) slid the plate towards me. On it, and I wish I were joking, was what looked like a miniature flowerpot with two sprigs of mint growing in it. A circular wafer biscuit gave a little clue that it might actually be edible. Then, around the flowerpot: brown, crumbly soil, with quartered strawberries poking out of it. I had ordered a cheesecake; what had come out was a garden.
I think I sighed. Had I been in a different mood at this point, I might have been impressed by the arrangement. But when you've just had to nibble your way through sticky finger food and you're not sure you haven't still got tzatziki on your nose, when you're trying to be in polite company and come across as confident and fun, when all you want is a simple dessert to make everything sort of alright... the last thing on your list I expect, would be some sort of fancy challenge from the chef.
The flowerpot was made of chocolate. Inside, beneath the topsoil, was a delicious cream filling, and the crumble of strawberries that had looked so much like compost from the garden centre - turned out to be absolutely delicious.
Sometimes you know, I'd rather not be the talking point of the table. Sometimes I'd much rather be the listener, the quiet voice in the corner, the unnoticed, unflappable, unhindered person who's just there to add a quip or tell a story when called upon, but otherwise is modestly left to get on with enjoying the food and the company and the ambience.
I ate a flowerpot.
And then, as if all of that wasn't excruciating enough, halfway through the delicious window dressing, I then found two long blonde hairs in the cheesecake pot and had to complain to the waiter. So there it was - half-eaten, weirdly creative, ostentatious, delicious, and now, inedible.
"What do you need?" asked Sammy later, very kindly (though still slightly amused), on the way to the EE store. I told her I needed a cup of tea and a sit down, and so we did that. I was remembering the last time I upgraded my phone, when I thought I'd lost it in London. That had been a lot more stressful, and had resulted in me sitting in the Marble Arch branch of the EE store, getting periodically blasted with hot air from the shop and cold air from the doors. This at least should be more straightforward.
So there I sat, while Grant, the raconteur of all things EE talked me through numbers and plans and decisions, with a tut and a bite of his biro. But I still had chocolate soil rumbling in my tummy.
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