cooking with uncle james

Evening at the Chateau De Healy.

I am preparing chops for my dinner.

Two chops.

A porker and a lamb.

We gout sufferers have to be careful what we eat.

I'm nearly sure chops and fry-ups are okay.

Chops and fry-ups washed down with lashings of Ginger Beer.

Or was that an Enid Blyton book?

That woman haunts me.

Why wasn't I born British?

Think of all the mysteries I'd have solved by now.

So I'm a cooking.

I reach for the pepper.

There is none.

"Maaaa," I call urgently. "Where's the pepper?"

The Lady known as Lil is ensconced in an armchair in the adjoining room watching Eggheads.

"It's in the press," she shouts back. "Where else would it be!"

I go to the press and retrieve a jar of pepper.

It has never been opened.

I look at it keenly.

The price tag is still on it.

The price tag proclaims that it was bought in Doyles shop.

There ain't been no shop called Doyles in Kilcullen for nigh on fifty years.

Okay five.

Nigh on five years.

I look at the base of the tin.

The expiry date reads: Best before 2001.

Bloody hell.

These people are trying to kill me.

It's gotta be a Cleaning Lady plot.

A plot to do away with the young squire.

What am I going to do?

Eat chops without pepper?

Unthinkable.

Oh the humanity.

I reach into the press and fumble around a bit.

Presently I latch on to another jar of pepper.

Expiry date: August 2007.

Once more into the press.

And yet once more.

I find a last sad pepper cannister.

Expiry date: December 2009.

That one was right at the back of the press.

Explain the logic of that.

I throw the lot of them in the bin.

With a visage mildly thunderous, I enter the television room and inform the mother what has just transpired.

"Oh go on," sez she. "You can use the 2009 one. It won't kill you."

"I've already thrown it in the bin," I tell her.

"Take it out again," adviseth she.

I give a faint toss of my handsome preraphaelite head.

"No mother," I say with some disdain. "I prefer to eat my chops without pepper this evening. Thank you very much."