I take the chicken out of the oven where it's been roasting and set it on the counter.
Mustard, I think, perversely, as I know it's going to be like eating a washcloth despite the herbs and garlic and apricots I've stuffed it with. And so I reach into the cupboard crammed haphazardly with condiments thanks to my heedless kids and - whack - out falls a bottle of Fish Sauce which smashes on the hob, shatters into a million pieces and drenches me, my silk dress, and the floor (that I just cleaned, along with the rest of the kitchen when I came home to find it messed up, despite or rather, because my daughter being on school holidays). I'm awash with the scent of putrefied fish.
Darn and double darn. I peel off the dress. First time I've worn it and now it's gone straight into the washing machine on a cold cycle. My legs and stomach are still distinctly fishy. The floor is a sea of dead fish with shards of glass floating in it. I'm also barefoot. I start swabbing and knock over all the breadboard, which in a domino effect, knocks over the expensive olive oil that I keep mostly for show, which glugs and disgorges £25 a litre Sicilian lemon oil in a huge spreading slick that then drips on to the floor to mingle with the fish sauce.
Vinaigrette.
There's glass in the cloth. Glass in the sink. Glass on the floor. At least one sliver in the sole of my foot. I can't use the dustpan without it stinking of fermenting fish and so I pick little bits out, sticky and unctious, one fragment at a time. And I still reek of fish. The chicken is cooling and turning to string. The salad is wilting. The avocado has gone as brown as my feet.
I get on my knees and soak up cloth after cloth full of the pungent, pongy liquid.
Eventually, however, the place is mopped up, if still stinky, and I wash myself down with a flannel and throw it into the machine, add detergent and turn my attention, finally, to my unappetising supper. I've lost my appetite somewhat. And I still didn't find the mustard. A plate in one hand. A glass of fish tainted water in the other, I go back into the sitting room just as the No 7 bus idles on the street beside the closed bottom shutters, and as I stand in the middle of the floor, making my entrance, I glance up I see the entire top deck glancing back at me.
It's only then, with no free hands, that I realise I am still in my Luke influenced underwear from which various parts sit attentively at 3.15 (yeah I'm old but we're not at twenty past eight yet) like a dalek in exterminate mode. Billingsgate in Lingerie
I just pray nobody has a camera phone.
