The sandwich tray of Fate

I’ve never been one to turn up my nose at the accidental largesse that Dame Fortune strews in the haphazard pathway of my life. Indeed, I’d go as far as to say it is my honour-bound duty to make the most of Fate’s fickle bounty when I stumble upon it. For what else is a weed but a wildflower in the wrong place?

And so it was that the ethereal warps and wefts from which the tapestry of life is woven did conspire, at just the very moment when I was feeling late afternoon hungry, to procure for me a tray of abandoned sandwiches. Like the streamers and ten-penny blow horns littering the pavement in the bow wave of the carnival parade, the guests had sated their lunch time appetites and departed leaving behind piles of untouched food and dull-looking documents in their wake.

There is in my experience a strange primeval cloud that descends upon the modern brain in moments such as this, an urge so strong and so instinctive that it blots out in a micro-second ten thousand years of civilisation. And in that flicker of intuitive logic does the Stone Age cave man, skin deep within us all, cast off his modern cares and clothing and stride forward in his primitive glory. Would that ancient straggle-haired ancestor have paused for more than a heartbeat before consuming the food he found by chance in front of him? No. And nor did I.

A couple of dainty triangles of chicken and pesto on tomato bread and a mug of tea later and I could feel the rumbles dying away like yesterday’s echoes. But there were still piles of sandwiches left and it seemed criminal, to my inner cave woman self, to leave them there to be trodden by flies and thrown away in the bin. And so, with deft application of kitchen towels and a pristine plastic bag, I secreted the rest of the tray away to bring home for later.

The dog and I dined well tonight, sharing our supper of chicken and tuna and egg standing in the kitchen. I’ll throw the crusts that I removed (and the water cress he delicately rejected) out for the birds in the morning. The dog’s fast asleep at my feet now, just as his own ancestors would once have been in a Stone Age dwelling not so far removed in essence from the house we share. Neither of us will need to go hunting with Fate again, for a few more hours at least.

***

I’m off to visit Roo at Lancaster for a long weekend, setting off tomorrow morning and returning late on Sunday night. Can’t wait to see her, and my mother’s coming with me as well on her first trip to Roo’s university. We’re staying in some guest accommodation on campus – the first time I’ve done that in, oh gosh, a long time.

***

Luckily, Kaos is quite a lean dog so his scoffing of the sandwiches this evening doesn’t really qualify as a dieting disaster - unlike some of the animals in this little gallery from today’s newspaper. George the hedgehog (that’s his picture up there, next to a regular-size friend) was "placed on a crash diet after he weighed in at 2.2kg - four times the weight of a normal hedgehog. Staff at the Wildlife Aid animal sanctuary placed him on a strictly-controlled cat food diet."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/may/13/overweight-pets-animals