Friday, May 29, 2009

Hats off to Tom and Barbara

Like many other organically-infused thirtysomethings of the modern age, we’ve got a veg patch (in the sense that we’ve allocated a rectangular strip of garden for growing veg rather than we have a rectangular strip of garden with veg actually growing in it).

It’s a bloody slow business horticulture, and I’m an impatient man. What started off as a bank of mud was, for over a month, a resplendent, err… bank of mud, visually indistinguishable to how it looked when we popped a few optimistic seeds ‘neath its granular surface a few weeks earlier. For ages though – not a bloody sausage (not that sausages grow on trees. I may not be that green-fingered but an afternoon spent trailing round the gardening section of B&Q confirmed my suspicions that meat products can’t be grown from seed). This absence of sausages was matched by a notable absence of actual veg. I’d done my homework and was under no illusions about how long things would take; I didn’t expect a climbable beanstalk shooting up overnight, but it took an age before the tiniest bit of greenery restored some hope.

I’m happy to report though that now there are lettuces, tomato plants and straggly bit of greenery I’m desperately trying to convince people are spring onions. I’m hopeful that some of these may even survive being munched by ravenous slugs, trampled by the kids or shat on by the neighbour’s cat who seems to find our garden an excellent place to crimp one off. If so, I’ll likely be tucking into crisp, home-grown produce for only a singular evening meal (which all the waiting and watering is likely to produce), before the whole process starts again.

I don’t even like veg.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Cheeses Christ

Periodically, stories about deities appearing in foodstuffs pop up in the news. These items are usually identified by the owner (and would-be consumer) and taken as some kind of sign that whatever god it happens to resemble is with us and has chosen, for some unfathomable reason, to manifest himself in common comestibles.

The latest of these is a small figurine of Jesus appearing in a bag of cheesy crisps which the owner (who has since housed the statuette in a small plastic box surrounded by toilet roll, lest he be crushed or munched by the cat) maintains is the image of the Son of God. Call me a heathen, but the resemblance could only be accurate if Jesus himself went about his daily miracles and wine-making if he was systematically enclosed in bubbling cheese and painted orange, but anyway…

To me, the tenuous resemblance owes more to the brand of crisps he was discovered lurking amongst. Everyone knows that no two Nik-Naks look the same (a quality that was also their USP in an 80s ad campaign). Surely it was only a matter of time before one resembled Jesus? In my packet of Nik-Naks today I was able to successfully identify an exhaust from an Austin Allegro, an antique telephone receiver and Chunk from The Goonies. And even some crisps. Frankly, I’m amazed that sightings of deities aren’t more commonplace. I’m sure there are similar effigies of Ganesh, Shiva and Bealzebub lurking in packets of Nice ‘n’ Spicy, awaiting some gullible nut to spot them.

The difference between these gullible nuts and everyone else is that most normal people would say, “Hey, look everyone. My crisp looks a bit like Jesus!” before popping it into our mouths and appreciating it as the good people at Golden Wonder intended, rather than taking it as undisputable evidence that the second coming is upon us.

If however, three days after consumption, the lookalikey crisp in question was able to rise from its intestinal tomb and emerge unscathed from the mouth of the person who consumed it, rolling the tongue aside and ascending to crisp heaven, I might just be impressed.