‘On your way home, will you stop off at the supermarket for
some salad stuff?’ asked Mrs Jones.
My car was in for its annual service so I took the call on
my mobile while sitting in the garage waiting area. ‘Yes, sure. What items do
we need?’
‘Oh, the usual: lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and red onions.’
Two hours later I returned home and deposited the contents
of my supermarket bag onto the kitchen worktop. Mrs Jones exhaled – audibly –
and I detected a roll of the eyes followed by an implosion of her cheeks which,
after 36 years together, I knew could mean only one thing: I’d cocked up, big
time.
Failure to live up to a wife’s expectation typically means
that a man is subjected to a circuitous form of interrogation that is intended
to shame and humiliate.
‘Where’s the cucumber?’ she asked, while her foot tapped on
the tiled floor, as if delivering a countdown to the moment of my execution.
‘There,’ I said, pointing to the large, cylindrical item in
front of us.
‘What makes you think that’s a cucumber?’
‘Well, it looks like a cucumber; it’s dark green, shiny and …
… phallic.’
‘It’s much bigger than any phallus I recognise,’ she said,
now relishing the role of the strident prosecutor. ‘That is not a cucumber.’
‘What is it then?’
‘It’s a courgette.’
‘A what?’
‘A courgette. A marrow-like vegetable, sometimes referred to
as a zucchini.’
‘It looks like a cucumber, so how was I supposed to know?’
‘Maybe the sign over the box in the supermarket that read,
COURGETTES, might have given you a clue.’
Mrs Jones, savouring the taste of blood, broadened her
onslaught. The tomatoes were insufficiently ripe, the onions partly rotten, and
the lettuce much too big and shabby. (I must admit the lettuce resembled the
severed, semi-decomposed head of an obese gladiator. Although it could have
been worse; I almost brought home a cabbage).
And to add to my pain, I now recall that I don’t like the
taste of courgettes. Something tells me they will be served up with every meal
for a week.
