doing the hurly burly

perhaps its the can of creamed corn i had for lunch today, but as the time for dinner draws nearer, my belly’s beginning to bubble and rumble and i’m overcome with memories. 

there was a morning many years ago, when my loving mother made me a papaya milk shake. ever had one? if you have and managed to keep it down, i salute you. mine parted company with me about two sips down, much to my mother’s disappointment. she told me that i was an ungrateful brat and that my bowels would remain clogged up forever if i didn’t eat more papaya. then she held my hair back while i puked all over her sparkling sofa.

there was also the time i went shopping with the folks at takashimaya in tokyo. my folks were always wary of tasting anything handed to them in the japanese food marts. you really never know when they'll hand you an octopus on a toothpick. that afternoon, however, i’d been having a feast at the chocolate and wine aisles. then i turned a corner and found myself holding a small platter of what looked like chopped fruit. ick, i thought and looked around for the nearest bin. but the little white uniformed lady who’d handed me the platter stood in my way smiling expectantly. cursing myself for getting cornered into eating fruit, i speared a couple of yellow and orange chunks on my toothpick and popped them into my mouth. the next minute i vomited exorcist style all over the pristine little lady. chocolate and wine and erm, all the sushi i've ever eaten.

a few years later, my friend K and i staggered into a bar in berlin. we were traveling on a student traineeship and perpetually poor and hungry as beggars. the strategy we’d evolved then was to eat a bun for breakfast, a slice of ‘happy meal’ pizza for lunch and the biggest and cheapest thing we could find on the bar menu for dinner. this evening, the cheapest and biggest thing happened to be blutwurst, the fattest sausage we’d ever seen. until we were about half way through, it was also the tastiest. then K – while flirting with the bartender – made the cardinal mistake of asking what it was we were eating. blood sausage, the good man beamed back, pig meat and rice cooked in pig blood and wrapped up in a sausage specially for you! that’s when K nipped her german romance in the bud and came to the loo to be sick with me instead.

perhaps the worst of my memories is the time my dear polish friend basia served me a bowl of her grandmother’s chicken soup. it was a secret family recipe that had taken her 90 year old grandmum all day to make. for you, the most special bowl, she beamed toothlessly at me. ooh look, it has the neck and leg in it, basia said and showed me. yup, i blew it all over that sweet old woman’s kitchen floor.

ufff. now if you’ll excuse me, i believe my belly would like to have another word.

image source: www.popartuk.com