Beans, beans, the musical fruit
6th February, 2007
Seven o'clock on a Sunday night and the cab we caught from the airport has dropped us at our apartment. A week's holiday is over, I'm hungry and I'm not looking forward to Monday.
We lurch through the door, drop our bags and note that the white fluffy rug in the living room has continued to shed hair like a mangy cat. There's white hair everywhere and the apartment is like a senior's hairdressing salon on pension day. My wife disappears to the bedroom as I empty the contents of the suitcases onto the living room floor and wait to be knocked to my knees by the aroma of a week's worth of dirty laundry. I take a tentative sniff and all I can smell is a pleasant fragrance drifting up from the pile of shirts, socks, denims and boardshorts still damp from that last-minute swim. I take a closer look and realise that I can thank the airport baggage handlers for the pleasing aroma. If they hadn't thrown my bag from one side of the aircraft luggage hold to the other until that $120 bottle of aftershave smashed, my dirty laundry would have had its usual wet dog smell. So I picked out the shards of glass, only one of which stuck in my finger, bled over one of my shirts, tossed the lot in the laundry and then stuck my head in the pantry. There are certain staples necessary to maintain life and they are tins of spaghetti and baked beans, which must be stored at the back of the pantry in case of emergencies. My wife had broached my secret hoard when she moved in and I was now bean-less and spag-less. Convenience stores exist for people whose best friend is the can opener. They carry an array of foods that would bring tears to the eyes of anyone living solo, mainly because the stomach cramps caused by a tin of sawdust sausages in sauce can be guaranteed to make your eyes water. Though it had been a while since I'd bought anything other than the odd newspaper and carton of milk from a convenience store, I was certain that its shelves would still groan under the weight of tins of spag and meatballs, spag and sauce, spag and cheese or, joy of unspeakable joys, spag, meatballs, cheese and sauce all in the one can. As I walked to the store, I remembered the first meal of baked beans I had prepared when I'd left home to go flatting. I'd put the can in a saucepan of water, lit the gas and wandered off to do something terribly important. A loud explosion much later indicated not only that dinner was ready, but also that it had been spontaneously served, beany baubles decorating the light bulb, ceiling and four walls. I entered the store and headed for the shelves, passing the confectionery, piles of potato chip packets, cans of pet food and detergents, row upon row of instant noodles and, having described a circle, found myself back at the Mars bars and Cadbury's Fruit and Nut. Obviously I had missed the baked beans and spaghetti, so I went around again. There was none to be had. There was every brand of tasteless, instant noodle known to the world but not a single can of baked beans or spaghetti. The noodle had supplanted the bean and the spag!
"Any baked beans?" I asked.
I wanted to do what I usually did in situations such as this, which was to have a fit of shop-rage and storm out the door, but hunger prevented me. I refused, however, to succumb to the instant noodle. It might have won the battle of the shelves but I would not submit, a thorough search of the store eventually turning up one small packet of sliced ham among the calorie-crammed chocolates, chips and sugar-laden drinks and all-conquering noodles. "I'll take it," I said. Is the baked bean an endangered species? Please say it ain't so... |
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