Some time back I was searching in the fridge belonging to my spiritual mentor. Naturally this fridge did not actually belong to him, it was hers, and he just paid for the thing. She was the one who stuffed it to overflowing with a wide variety of trappings. Only a woman would find a reason to hide bottles of milk at the back until they turned sour, why? "They were needed for cooking." No-one in the house could work out what she cooked with sour milk, but when they discovered the remnants of vegetables and meat products being put into what she called a 'Fool' for pudding, then that was banned and a closer watch on her work entailed. I still do not know why dead milk was, and probably still is, turning green high up on the back shelf.
At that time I was looking for something to put on the bread. I noticed a jar of peanut butter as that was the 'in thing' at the time. Naturally I pounced on this, having moved cabbages, yogurt pots and 'Blue cheese (I think it may have started as cheddar) out of the way first. I stuck the knife in greedily and found great difficulty is getting the stuff to move. It appeared a little 'stodgy' and I found it very unwilling to leave the jar. A glance at the lid indicated it was two years out of date! TWO YEARS! I pointed this out to the host (from Aberdeen, a place famed for its Scrooge like attitudes). "It will be all right!" she exclaimed unashamed, "It'll be all right."
That next meal was eaten with much hesitation as the family grumbled as to the contents of the 'pie' we shared. Her explanation of the contents did not receive much belief, but we had second helpings having decided to die together and leave a mystery for the local police to work out. The headline 'Six suicides at dinner' was the headline we half expected to see the next day, although thinking about that we would not actually have seen it would we?
I remembered this last night as I went through the contents of the 'Medicine Chest.' This ex-ice cream tub gathers dust in a corner and sorting through it I discovered everything but a strange silver, sharp, metal object was well out of date. 'Halls' cough sweets died last November, 'Vicks' vapour rub had been past it sine Sep 2006 and the 'Vaseline' tub had passed away in June 2005! What a shame I had no use for it! I had a swig of the cough mixture the other day and am wondering if I ought to have checked it first. It did seem a little sluggish in leaving the bottle. Maybe I will leave that till another day.
1 comment:
Methinks that your spiritual mentor's wife may be related to my mother-in-law (or maybe the other way around?). For she will not throw out anything PERIOD!!! I mean, we're talkin' about needin' a full forensics field-test to determine former identities.
My wife is not a whole lot better, but that has more to do with her just being too busy with other "stuff" to do due diligence. Not that I'm complaining. For she should have thrown me out a long time ago.
Post a Comment