Today I have been mostly braining myself senseless.
I carelessly opened a cupboard above the work-surface to do a quick dried pasta inventory, as you do, and a tin of chestnut pureé landed square on my head. Yes thank you, it did hurt, a not inconsiderable amount and it will be some time before I can apply the daily Alice band without cursing appallingly and re-working the velvet so as to look appealing on top of the egg-shaped mound now crowning my magnificent hair.
But I am digressing. Or possibly concussing.
Having thrown the dented tin back into the cupboard with a venomous howl, it did what any self-respecting tin would do under the circumstances and dislodged several others of its ilk. I all but disappeared under the moraine of tumbling aluminium.
"But you're supposed to be a cook!" I hear you cry. "You shouldn't have tinned food in your house!"
Well, this may be true, but I am also a wife and a mother and there are things one can get away with in this life and things one cannot and cans of Baked Beans with Tiny Suspicious Sausages That Don't Taste Remotely Like Any Food Group From This Star System fall very firmly in the 'cannot get away without having' camp.
Likewise sweetcorn, which zipped past my left ear at about the same time some lychees bounced gracefully off the bridge of my nose.
Having had this vexatious Frank Spencer moment, I had then to pick all the tins up and put them back, naturally enough. But first I decided to empty the entire cupboard, wash everything with a damp cloth and try and put it back in the same place. It was this action that led me to suspect I might be concussed – the first sunny afternoon of the year, an empty house and me up a ladder with a cloth in one hand and a rusting can of something with the label long gone but the legend 4/11d still faintly visible on the underside in the other. It's jolly well going back where it came from, too, because I haven't got the nerve to open it and find out what's inside and if I don't put it back it won't shore up the condensed milk no respecting uncooked coconut ice fan can be without.
I find it pays to do a little stores checking every now and then. Years ago, when I was a complete idiot and not the sophisticated half-wit I became with much practice, I bought some dried chestnuts. (Why is it always bloody chestnuts???) I put them in a tin, tucked them neatly away at the back of the cupboard in a space that could have been designed especially for them and promptly forgot I'd ever bought them. Some time later, presumably when the sun was shining and the house was empty - I've suddenly realised I'm not concussed, I'm some sort of diurnal were-cleaner- I came across the tin, thought "What the hell's in here?" and opened it. I soon found out. About 40 well-ventilated chestnuts and eight million tiny chestnut beetles. Letting out a shriek that could be heard from North London to Nebraska I dropped the tin, covered myself in a light coating of tiny beetles and fell off the ladder. I'm amazed anyone ever lets me near a knife, really, given what damage I can cause myself with a J-cloth.
After that, I decided that I would check all foodstuffs on a regular basis, so that it should never, ever, happen again.
Which is how I came to be idly leafing through individual lasagne sheets, holding them up to the light for minute inspection just seconds before being attacked by the Revenge of the Chestnut Beetle, uttering wolf-like noises and reaching for the nearest Spontex, prior to sliding gracefully onto the lino as usual.
Lupine and supine – you don't often get to bung them in the same sentence.
