Saturday Distancing

In this part of this World, yesterday was, according to the part-time wife, “A complete supermodel of a day.” She is handy for the odd felicitous phrase like that, the part-time wife, which I then try to pass off as my own. Today, on the other hand, is Saturday, with all the saturnine problems that Saturdays bring with them the world over. Weatherwise, for those of you not up yet, it has potential, but started off misty and wet in this part of this World.

But yeah, Saturday has its own, private set of problems as far as days go. In times PC, under the excuse of shopping, and having settled for the day the sex question with part-time wife, I would disappear from the hacienda early in the morning, usually not returning until after lunchtime. My lunchtime, that is, as after a leisurely morning’s strolling around buying the odd thing (sugar, meat, bread, milk, a wireless mouse), I generally felt that I deserved a rest and would take myself (by the hand, usually) to an eating emporium there to survey, and then taste, the latest variation on The Ulster Fry. (The information on that link is not totally correct, by the way. But how could it be? I mean, I did not write it.) John Kelly is of the opinion that Gloria Hunniford invented The Ulster Fry, and that before that it was just called ‘breakfast’, and he might have a point. (80 my arse, by the way!) Not that John Kelly, you eejit, this one. The various local emporia, or ‘eating shops’ as the non-Latin-speaking locals call them, keep adding things to the plate, unnecessary things in most instances such as beans and mushrooms, and it is really hard to keep up with what one is actually eating and what country the café owners think they are in. For instance, while hash browns is actually a welcome addition to the plate, what now is the actual point of visiting the US of A and spending most of the trip in their delightful diners making up new ways to require your eggs (‘not too difficult eggs, cloudy side down’ is my preferred order) if hash browns are readily available in other parts of this World?

But back to the Fry … oh, I forgot, he’s not here today; you will have to supply your own interruption. Rather than spoil your fun by giving the correct answer, please leave your list of essential (and existential, if you must) elements of an Ulster Fry in the comments section below. (If you do not know how to access the comments section, read this urbane, witty and not at all sarcastic guide on how to use a computer.) And I want essential elements only, no fripperies and definitely no aberrations like toasting some elements in order to make the repast more ‘healthy’. For fruck’s sake, like, if you have already decided to fry your breakfast, trying to then make it healthy is an exercise in self-contradictory nonsense. Like caffeine-free coffee. I mean, just have a drink of hot water, you spa! (What I have done there is to use a water-based term of abuse for the purposes of humour, Shirleen, but it is between and not on the lines you are going to find the Cool Kids, so stop looking in the wrong places. How’s your hangover, by the way?) And no vegetarians or vegans; I find them hard to digest along with the egg. Off you go; I’ll wait here for you …

… done? Good man stroke woman. That is not pidgin creole relationship advice; I just did not want to use a / in the middle of a sentence. But you have just done so! cry the assembled hordes. Yeah, but that was in a different sentence, so put that in your clay pipes and bring it to water. (For your benefit, and your benefit only, dear humourly-challenged cousin, the full joke is: you can bring a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead, copyright Laurel and Hardy. But the Cool Kids already know this joke as a reference point, and so understand intuitively, and chuckle to themselves in a self-satisfied manner, when I break up elements of it and combine it with other clichés for devastating comic effect. Get with the programme, child!)

Yeah, so, on a usual Saturday PC, after a usual 07:04-19:33 working week, working as late as possible in the forlorn hope that I would not have to do any of the teenagers’ homework when I arrived back on the estate, I generally spent about 4.27 hours out of the house in a – successful – attempt to avoid my family. When I rocked back home, they had usually been fed and watered, and hosed down the odd time, by their full-time mother, and would gather excitedly by the front door as I opened it. (More proof that I am only a blow-in and will never be a real culchie: I actually use the front door of my house for something other than being carried out of it in a coffin.) Not excitement at Daddy being home, let me add: their excitement was completely Pavlovian. They knew from sweet experience (again, Cool Kids may chuckle at that if they feel like it) that I would be ‘carrying’, that is, some sort of sugar would be in my possession. Usually they would claw in desperation at the bag before I was even over the threshold of the hacienda, leaving it in tatters on the alpaca wool doormat, then store the purloined sugar under their armpits and retreat to their caves for consumption of same. At this point, part-time wife and myself would have some free, uninterrupted time for casual, affectionate chat and general catching up with other. But we never took advantage of it. Instead, I would retreat to the study in the East Wing and she would do whatever it is she does to fill her days before her 15 hour sleep.

But, times have indeed changed. With all these social restrictions because of boreohnovirus, I have to come up with more and more imaginative and intricate ways to avoid my family on a Saturday. I sort of feel that someone should really count how many trees there are in the Second Wood sometime, don’t you? I mean, an undocumented number of trees growing away there on one’s land is an offence to proprietary, n’est-ce pas? (That’s French, Shirleen, or did you take the Mexican Government to court to get an exemption from that school subject as well?)

Clothes? Dressing gown, and full Andytown today.