Empty fridge

This morning I turned my attention to pressing domestic matters, like the four-foot high stack of laundry in the kitchen and the catering difficulty.

It is so long since we have all been together for any length of time that I have got out of the habit of cooking anything more complex than toast, and thought I would find family catering difficult to fit it in with my daily schedule of going to work at lunchtime and staying there until midnight. Mark and Lucy liked the idea of having meals prepared for them sometimes, so we all agreed that something different needed to be done, but found it difficult to imagine what it might be.

I explained that I wanted to feel as though we have a lovely welcoming sort of home. I wanted to think that when we opened the fridge we would find things inside it that we liked. A brief investigation of the current fridge situation revealed out of date yoghurt and a cucumber left over from when the guinea pig died last week. There was also a nasty smell, which on close investigation turned out to be the remains of a bag of gone-off beansprouts.

In the end we made a shopping list, which started off with ‘Daffodils’ which was the only thing that we could all agree were nice to have, and then we got stuck. Lucy wanted white sliced bread and I wanted sunflower seed bread and Mark wanted crusty olive loaves and none of us were quite sure what we ought to add to it to turn it into a balanced diet. Lucy thought of Pot Noodles and Mark thought of sausages and I couldn’t think of anything at all. Lucy thought that between Greggs and the nice pizzas at the local cafe and the Chinese takeaway all her favourite things are on the doorstep in any case. We added wine and coffee and coke and dog food to the list in a moment of inspiration, and then ran out of ideas.

Mark went off to take my car for an MOT then. I pegged the washing out on the line, refilled the machine with more muddy games kit and oily T-shirts, and took his car and went optimistically off to Asda to buy things to make our fridge feel welcoming again.

The difficulty is that Asda always causes me a nasty outbreak of Asperger’s Syndrome. It is all so unspeakably interesting; there is shelf after shelf stuffed full of surprising things. By the door were distracting things like sandwiches and hot cross buns, a rack of discounted copies of Fifty Shades of Grey and slug pellets, and of course I suddenly wanted to buy all of them. I know that Fifty Shades of Grey is rubbish because I have already read it, and I have got two tubs of slug pellets at home because I have already forgotten once that I had got some, and I like the other sort of fruit buns better than I like hot cross buns, but it still took considerable self control to resist because the displays all look so nice. In the end I bought a sandwich that Lucy likes so that she would know I was thinking about her, but by then the pattern for absently wandering around picking things up was set and I was lost.

By the time I got to the bit of the shop which had got budgie seed and cider and dustbin liners the trolley was overflowing and my eyes were revolving like ping pong balls in a washing machine. There was a man with a Kendal accent on the tannoy explaining the special offers, all of which sounded marvellous but I couldn’t find anywhere, and there were lots of people with badges saying I’m Here To Help, but none of them could explain why they hadn’t got the fruit buns that I like best after all, or what would be a good substitute for them, or what Lucy might like for breakfast, or what would go with olive bread and sausages for a quick snack, and after what had felt like hours of vague speculative looking at things I was milling about in absolute helpless confusion.

I  paid the massive bill with Mark’s credit card, and fled. I phoned Lucy half a dozen times on the way home so that she would be awake to help me unload, but it turned out that she had gone to bed with her earphones in, and I couldn’t make her hear a thing until I got home and banged on her door. Eventually she emerged, sleepily rubbing her eyes and dressed in a zebra suit that I hadn’t seen before but which it appeared that she had bought at school and just added to the bill so as not to bother me when she knew I was busy. She helpfully put the kettle on and made encouraging remarks whilst I flapped about with dozens of carrier bags trying to find places to put things.

Mark came home then, and we sat amongst the piles of stuff and drank coffee until I felt sane again. He helped me put everything away and said that the car only needed a few things doing for its MOT, and the day was all right after that.

The fridge is full of all sorts of nice things: but we went across the road to the Co-op to buy daffodils in the end, because I had forgotten them.