My wife is away in America for a wedding this week (I think someone else's, I would be quite sad if she'd decided to get married to another man already) and I have already descended back into the tragic bachelor existence that I had before I met her. There are good things about this - I have been able to turn the central heating off, I can leave Marmite smeared on all surfaces without having to clean it up.... no actually that's it. Still I am making the most of that freedom. It more than makes up the loneliness and loss and the reaching over to the other side of the bed in the middle of the night to find only cold emptiness. And some Marmite.
Why won't someone clean up the Marmite? When she returns she's going to open the door and a river of Marmite will hit her in the face. And I will be covered in Marmite, looking like a seagull caught up in an oil spill and she'll have to delicately wipe it all off me with a toothbrush, saying, "This is why it's important to wipe up any spilled Marmite!"
It's almost like I do all this on purpose just to be cleaned up like I am the feathery victims of an environmental disaster.
Anyway, I went for Nandos for lunch, because that's the kind of thing that you do when you have become a temporary, bewildered bachelor again and when all your food is contaminated with Marmite. I asked for a half chicken with fries - extra hot of course, because as you all know, "If it's not extra hot, then you're a twot!"
But the man who took the order for me decided to make a twot of me. He brought me half a chicken with hot sauce and rice instead of fries. I think he may have made a value judgement about my life and was trying to help me. No chips for you fatty. I couldn't be bothered to complain about the rice and only noticed the offensive emasculation of he hot sauce once he'd gone. In fact I didn't even notice until I had eaten quite a bit of hot chicken. It tasted pretty extra hot to me, but then I saw that the little flag said "Hot". Had they picked the wrong flag? No the receipt said "Hot" too. I had been swindled. But then the receipt also said "Sheppards Bush" so I don't know how much I can trust it. If the restaurant doesn't even know where it is then how can we trust its staff to get our order right. I have lived here and eaten Nandos here for ten years now (frightening to think that this relatively new restaurant chain is that old) and it's always had Shepherd's Bush spelled wrong on the receipt. You'd think someone would have complained about it and they'd have corrected it by now. But I have never complained. I didn't even complain about my order being 75% wrong (I had asked for chicken so well done on getting that bit right Nandos - that's the most complicated bit, what with your huge variety of food on offer).
But the reason I am telling you about this (apart from nothing having happened to me today) is that what surprised me is how hot the Hot sauce was. It was hot enough for me not to realise that it wasn't extra hot sauce - in fact it was so hot that I actually thought they might have accidentally put extra extra hot sauce on initially. Either my palate is getting less masculine (impossible) or I have uncovered the greatest secret of modern life. Nandos' Hot Sauce is actually hotter than their Extra Hot sauce. It's a secret known only to an elite few of super-masculine men (and women). They trick the hoi-polloi into thinking they are the most impressive, non-twotty people in the world, where in fact the truly brave and orally strong customers know that if you really want to ramp it up a gear you go for Hot. Of course people like me who pride ourselves on our ability to eat the chilliest (not chilliest - the opposite) of meals would never even deign to try the Hot sauce for fear of our testicles shrivelling up to nothing with embarrassment so the secret is safe and guarded only by a few Knights of Extremely Hot Food. No one who wants Hot food would choose the Hot sauce, they'd go for Extra Hot obviously. So it's like a secret locked door that can only be opened by the key of knowledge.
I wondered for a second if in fact the Nandos heat system is deliberately in reverse and actually the people who order Lemon and Herb sauce (which surely nobody would ever do willingly - If it's Lemon and Herb then you're a nwerb (a mixture of a nerd and a dweeb)) are the ones with the asbestos throats. It makes sense. I could have uncovered the greatest conspiracy since they faked Margaret Thatcher's death (so the greatest conspiracy of the last eight days then).
This must be the explanation. It can't be that I found the hot sauce a bit too fiery for my middle-aged tastes. And if you ever see me eating Lemon and Herb Nandos you will know why it's happening, because I have unlocked the Nandos Code and am actually the most manly person in the restaurant.
When will Nandos bring out their Marmite chicken? That's what people really want. Everyone loves Marmite - that's my advertising slogan for the yeast extract manufacturers. Think it will put Marmite on the map. There's already quite a lot of Marmite on my map. When's my wife coming home?
