Wasp Flavoured Toast

Maybe he was depressed? Maybe he was just tired of life?

I'm not sure if wasps have any natural predators (aside from humans protecting their jam sandwiches) but it's possible his family had been wiped out in some random act of waspicide. Maybe the exterminator left him alive to spread the warning to other wasps? A cruel act of mercy.

I've run any number of scenarios through my mind this morning, trying to answer the simple question: why? It was such a horrible way to go. So senseless. So needlessly painful.

It's not like I make toast every day. In all honesty I'm not a toasty person. But once in a while the whimper of charred bread calls to my taste buds. Sometimes only beans on toast can fill that hole in my soul.

So there I am. Like a scene from a sitcom or a kitchen appliance advert. The epitome of domestic bliss. The bread is in the toaster. The toaster is on. The filaments are heating up; they're glowing red hot. Already the mouth-watering aroma of slightly burning bread is filling the air.

Enter suicide wasp stage right, through the open back door.

There's no preamble. He heads straight for the toaster like he already has an agenda. I make an attempt to wave him back outside again; it's instinctive even though I know wasps spurn any kind of direction or air traffic control.

And then before my eyes he immediately dive-bombs into the toaster. I mean he does a genuine kamikaze straight down the side between the filaments and the bread like the Millennium Falcon entering the Death Star.

I'm gobsmacked. I feel a little bit sick. I'm so shocked I can't even turn the toaster off for a few seconds. When I do I peer in gingerly.

I'm not sure what to expect. A blackened bubble of antimatter glued to one of the filaments maybe. Or half a wasp scorched into the toast like the remains of a victim of spontaneous combustion: just his wellington boots and the pipe he used to smoke left weirdly intact.

But there is nothing. Nothing at all. Even when I take out the slices of bread the bottom of the toaster is as it always is. Full of toasted bread crumbs. No sign of a blackened thorax or a smoking mandible.

I examine the toast. That too is as it should be. No unwanted sticky matter like superheated bubble-gum adhering to the surface.

Where the hell did the wasp disappear to? Did he incinerate completely? One clean flash of light and then gone forever? His every atom seared out of existence? There wasn't even any smoke or the pop and sizzle you usually get with shop insectocuters.

I confess I didn't enjoy my beans on toast after that.

I chewed every mouthful a little bit too carefully. Just in case something crawled out of the bread and made one of the beans start to buzz...

Women On The Telly Who You’re Not Meant To Fancy But I Do, Sort Of (Part 2)

After the very successful Part 1 of this impromptu series I thought it was time to broaden the playing field somewhat with a well timed Part 2... So here we go...

1) Anna Maxwell Martin

It was Anna’s Little Dorrit that first caught my eye. A little mousy in the early stages, constrained by Dickensian reserve, but then the wallflower became a sunflower and Anna blazed across the screen with a wonderfully plummy red-haired glow. From there on she has staked a major claim in period TV drama and looks as divine in tweed as she does in whale-bone. I think what I like about Anna is her slight, almost imperceptible lisp. It should distract a little from her actorly enunciations but actually it doesn’t. She sounds as polished and as vocally rounded as the head girl from Mallory Towers and as up for a midnight feast as the best of them (with lashings of cream). I don’t know what it is about Anna – she has an “auntie” feel about her even though she’s not particularly old. I feel like she should be an auntie to somebody. Anybody. Preferably me. The kind that waits until you turn 18 and then seduces you in black lingerie and turns you into a man.

We’ve all had that fantasy, right?

No? Just me?

Was that too weird? Oh well, never mind.

Onto number 2) Sarah Millican

I think it’s the accent. Geordie or Mackem, I’m not sure but the way she says “pet” makes me wants to sit up and beg. And I like her glasses. Big, bold, glasses that say proudly, “I am wearing big glasses and I’m proud of it – none of this John Lennon steel-rimmed nonsense that disappear into your face; I’m wearing chunky framed glasses ‘cos I’m as blind as a bat without ‘em. Deal with it. Pet.” And I like her smile (which for some reason I find reminiscent of Morrissey – yes, bit of an oxymoron there: Morrissey and smiling but run with me on this one please). And I like the fact that she’s big. She’s a big girl. A big real girl with an anti-size-zero metabolism. And she’s funny. But never in a nasty way. There’s something unassuming about her and yet she does stand-up comedy. There’s a possible conflict there but it kind of works. And she strikes me as honest and homely. A proper girl next door. The kind that, if you asked her to lend you a cup of sugar (a) it would actually be sugar and none of this Canderel bollocks and (b) she’d throw in a couple of teabags as well and possibly a couple of well sized baps from Greggs. Dinner and a show. Who could ask for more?

And baps lead me nicely onto number 3) Mel Giedroyc

Oh Mel. Mel Mel Mel. In my twenties I worshipped at your student-chic shrine. I loved Light Lunch. I was working part-time and used to be home in time to watch it religiously. Mel & Sue (Perkins) were my ultimate two-girl fantasy. But much as I adore Sue (and I do adore Sue) it was Mel I could see myself setting up home with and having babies with. Now, of course, after disappearing off our screens to set up home and have kids with someone else (Mel – how could you? I was here for you, woman!) she’s back on the telly once again in The Great British Bake Off (were my baking trays sub-standard, Mel? Did I not knead my sour-dough hard enough for you?) accompanied by the gloriously quirky Sue Perky. Look at Mel’s eyes. They are perfect. They are eyes that the phrase “limpid pools” was invented for. So soft and kind and yet sparked through with a naughty sense of humour. And she likes cakes. She loves cakes. What is there not to love? Mel can batten down on my Battenberg any day of the week. Mel, it might be a good decade since I was in my twenties but still I dream of being baked off by you. And I bet you have a gorgeous little AGA to boot...

So there we have it. Three more unlikely but not so unlikely (when you think about it) sirens who I think are some kind of wonderful. This post was brought to you not in a spirit of gratuitous sexual gratification but in the spirit of celebrating real women and real womanhood. I haven’t done it for me. I’ve done it for you. I’ve done it for feminism and women’s lib and equal opportunities.

I’ve done it for...

Oh sod it.

I’ve done it for sexual gratification and equal opportunities.

So Sue me. Sue me good and proper.

(And yes, that means you, Perkins.)

Let Them Eat Mouldy Bread

Sainsbury’s, I am disgusted with you. Absolutely disgusted.

No. No. Don’t even attempt to apologize. It’s too late now and this has happened too many times in the past for me to be able to stomach another one of your grovelling, boot sole licking attempts at contrition.

What do you care, anyway? As long as you get my money each week you’re laughing all the way to the bank.

Never mind that yet again the bread we bought “fresh” from you on Sunday is already mouldy!

I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened. What amazes me most is that (due to lack of a bread bin and lack of space) we store our bread in the fridge. So how can it be going mouldy in three days?

Either your workers are fingering my thick cut slices before I purchase them or your bakers are doing unsavoury things with my dough.

Well thank you, Mr Sainsbury, for yet another mid-week noon break saddled with an empty lunchbox.

You can stick Jamie Oliver right up between your yeasty buns.