[m i a o w] the cat

And still, I successfully avoid the time of dinner at my lodgings, through stubborn stupidity and the knowledge that my female landlord (a culinary domestic goddess) would probably crumple to the ground if she saw me making a curry from a jar labelled ‘Green’, or, depending on my whim, ‘Red’. This is a woman who roasts pork for five hours, makes rice pudding, spanakopita, ice cream (it’s true, she makes it), chesnut pasta with three kinds of mushroom, chutney and her own pasta sauce from scratch. She has copper saucepans. I didn’t even know they actually existed. So for me to flop out my packet of curry flavoured (there are no other flavours, and if that’s not true, it should be) two minute noodles and bung ‘em on to boil in one of her tureens, is more humiliation than I’m willing to voluntarily submit to. Thus, I subsist on toasted sandwiches, extremely cheap takeaway and the occasional [gasp] Dinner Out - while slowly coming to the conclusion that slinging my landlords a bit more cash and asking them for dinner occasionally might not be such a bad idea. When they originally asked me if I wanted food as well as a bed, I was very ‘I don’t think I can commit to a regular mealtime, and I wouldn’t want to disappoint you by not showing up and/or feeling I had to call home every night, and besides, I’m sooooo popular that I’m sure I’m going to be Very Busy’. Countless nights clogging the office with the smell of the cheap takeaway make me begin to question my approach…