Kitchen Garden Forum

My boss stupidly told his cook that he liked watermelon. Thus he got watermelon in every conceivable way at every meal thereafter. My favourite was his "gorilla watermelon" story. (Presumably grilled.)

I had the best cook in town (no surprise there) and my boss's cook was a cousin or some kind of relative of my cook. Every morning my boss would make the usual pleasantries and then ask me what I'd had for dinner the previous evening. Eventually I asked him why he was so interested to know what I'd eaten the night before. The answer was quite obvious when you think about it. His cook had asked mine what did you make for her last night and then boss got the same thing the night after. Boss just wanted to know what he might be getting for his tea.

My cook was good at cooking but didn't exactly excell at English, espcially the writing. It was the norm for cooks to have a bit of petty cash which they'd account for on a weekly basis or whenever they needed another few bob. Just jot down what they'd spent on a bit of paper.

Sometimes the list of purchases was unfathomable, other times it was just daft. Apparently one week I bought ten tons of tuna. (I feel sure I'd have noticed that in the kitchen and more certainly if I'd eaten that amount). And then there was the huge amount of pepper. Yeah, I like pepper but I don't eat that much of it - that turned out to be toilet pepper.

The jewel in the crown though was when I got charged 12 dinars for a w@nker.

I asked Boss how much he paid for one of these. Unsurprisingly, he had no idea what I was on about, so I showed him the household bill. He snatched it away and asked just about everyone in the office what it was supposed to be. He was really curious to know. No one knew.

It turned out that my cook had got his son to do the petty cash thing (because he was proud of the son's ability with English).

And the item in question? It was vinegar.

You can understand why the late Queen.never made public what her favourite meal was. Imagine being served the same boring meal for every official function she attended for 70 years !

Oh, goodness me. What a dreadful thought.