Wednesday, May 19, 2004

“Here you go,” I offer generously, as she was packing her sandwich box. “This could do with using up.”

I immediately regret the end bit of that sentence.

“What do you mean: ‘using up’? What’s the date on it?”

“Er... the fourteenth.”

“That’s four bloody days ago! Throw it away.”

“It’ll be OK!” I plead.

“It’s yoghurt! It will not be OK.”

Her eyes narrow. “What flavour is that?”

I pretend to examine the carton closely, raising my eyebrows in surprise at the information gleaned.

“Er... apricot.”

“I knew it! I am not taking fucking out of date fucking apricot yoghurt for my lunch!”

“You like apricot yoghurt!!!”

“I know I like apricot yoghurt!!! But I like the other flavours as well and I’m sick of being given the fucking apricot just because you only eat the fucking berry ones!!!”

“But otherwise it’s a waste!”

She snatches it from me and stuffs it into the bin.

“You are the fucking tightest man I have ever met in my life,” she explains, unreasonably. “I am fed up of being given manky stuff from the fridge. Just throw the fucking things away if you don’t want them.”

I nod, humbly. She doesn’t realise that buying yoghurts as individual pots is bad economics, although it seems like the wrong time to point that out.

“Is there another one in there that I could take?”

I re-open the fridge, then step in front of it, guiltily. To say that it was stuffed top to bottom with apricot yoghurts would be an exaggeration. But it’s fair to say that if someone had hammered on the door suffering from some form of emergency apricot-dependent diabetic attack, then I would have been in a reasonable position to help.

She sighs.

“Just give me one of those, then.”