Dies Horribilis

Some days we feel the pressure (of our years) more than others.

Yesterday was a bad day. It was one of those days that go down in blues songs, days that people are born on and spend the rest of their life in torment, or Clacton - it’s the same thing.

I should have stayed in bed where it was still warm from my wife’s body. The morning had held such great promise. A promise that the afternoon forbade. It all began when I was taking my ablutions. I rested on the white plastic seat and, while my body ejaculated the food it no longer needed, I started to write a quite promising cyberpunk story, based in Kuala Lumpur and London. I was into about 600 words, and gaining an oval indentation on my nether regions, when the tablet ap. crashed, taking my story with it. Of course, I had been quite intent on my writing, too intent to save as I went, not wanting to spoil that special flow of the very rare muse. And the story was flowing nicely, I thought. I felt crushed. The psychological wind had most definitely gone out of my metaphorical sails. I finished my ablutions and exited the bathroom feeling more than a little washed out.

Good, and bad things, come in threes, or so my superstitious old mother used to tell me. She was so right most of the time that my father often referred to her as an old witch. She objected to the word - old.

I was all excited. I had wanted to surprise the family by cooking lunch. I felt that it was about time that I did. I hadn't cooked for some weeks and, truthfully,  missed my own cooking too. In my wisdom, I had defrosted sleek, succulent chicken breasts. I carefully cut them into pairs, and made delicate inserts into each breast. Into each cut, I placed a dollop of chive flavoured soft cheese, and closed the gashes. The breasts were placed in a glass dish, which had been lightly brushed with a cheap virgin olive oil.

Wanting to give the preparation an Italian feel - the family like Western cooking, I made a tomato sauce with tomatoes, garlic, herbs, tomato paste, bacon, black and white pepper and the requisite amount of fluid. All was going well until the small bottle of olive oil I was using,  slipped from my oily fingers. It fell onto the waiting, hard-tiled surface. Of course it broke. I stopped what I was doing and had to clear precious virgin olive oil, and small amount of broken glass, from the work surface, and then get on with the cooking.

That was evidently not enough for Loki, prankster of the gods.

I finished the sauce and covered the waiting breasts. The uncooked meal, in a glass dish, finally found its way into our far from large oven. I set the timer, adjusted the heat, placed the glass lid on, and closed the oven door. A while later, anxious that the chicken breasts should not stick to the glass, I opened the oven door to stir the dish. That was my mistake.

Loki smiled a big mischievous smile. The largeness of the dish, and the smallness of the oven, combined to thwart my plans. The oven-hot dish stuck in the oven. I tugged. The dish's lid freed itself. It tumbled out of that steamy, punishingly hot oven and threatened to dash to the floor. At the same time, the glass dish lurched. I braced the hot dish with one oven glove and my shorts' top. Not a good idea.

The hot dish lid fell. Aha! I miraculously caught that burning hot object in my ungloved hand. Then rapidly dropped it too. Anything that comes out of an oven, cooking at 260 degrees, or thereabouts, will necessarily be, to coin a phrase - bloody hot. And it was.

I sorely burnt two fingers and my thumb, on my right hand. It had to be my right hand, because that is the hand I reserve for writing, cooking and catching extremely hot glass dish lids. The kitchen, the whole house and, quite possibly, the whole damn street resounded to a screamed Anglo Saxon word indicating base human copulation.

It was not my finest moment. I was surrounded with smashed glass and particles of hot tomato sauce. I just wanted to cry, but as there was no one around to witness my depths of upset, I resolved to just get on with it. What made it seem much worse was that I got glass in my foot. I left bloody footprints as I tried to cool burnt flesh, firstly with cold water, then with ice. Number one stepson came down the stairs. He saw my chaos and bloody foot prints, and went pale. He offered his help, but I felt too guilty and refused his kindly offer. I covered my hand in sensitive gum toothpaste - at the telephone recommendation of my absent wife, and set about clearing the kitchen, one-handed and in pain. It was a novel experience.

Saturday afternoon Writing Class was cancelled. My wife came home to a spouse sedated with painkillers, and whose right hand was thrust up like some hand double for The Mummy. I, being a man, on the arrival of my wife, immediately made the most of my injury and elicited as much sympathy as I possibly could all that evening. Copious amounts of toothpaste, then later antiseptic cream, seemed to do the job and minimalised the damage, so that I could write this today. But I have to be careful. Blisters have appeared as warning ‘hot spots’. I’ll probably not cook for a while. Cooking can be dangerous if in the wrong hands.

My dies horribilis is at an end. I was lucky not to have been born under bad sign.