856. The way it can be
© Bruce Goodman 13 February 2016






Quite frankly Trevor was tired of cooking for one. Since his wife had passed on, about six months earlier, he had cooked for himself. It was always rather ordinary; maybe chops or sausages, with boiled or mashed potato, and a salad.

Today it was raining. He thought it was time to make an effort. Using one of his late wife’s recipe books, he selected something delectable, and made a list of ingredients. Some of the things were already in the house, such as beef stock, and onions. But he didn’t have any caraway seeds, for example.

Off he drove to the supermarket. He needed some bacon rashes. There were so many to choose from; there was middle bacon, and shoulder bacon, and streaky bacon, and bacon pieces. The middle bacon seemed to be the cheapest, and came in packets with fewer slices. He didn’t needed twenty slices of bacon. What would he do with them? So he settled on the middle bacon packet of six.

Then he needed one small turnip, but he couldn’t find turnips anywhere. He asked one of the shop workers if there were any turnips, and they said they would check out the back. They returned and said they were out of turnips, but one small rutabaga would do the trick. So he put a small swede in his trolley (because in his country swedes are what rutabagas are called!)

Trevor had quite a bother finding the caraway seeds, but eventually he realized that the spices were alphabetical, but according to brand. And the brand he was looking at didn’t have caraway seeds, but he found them under a different brand name on a different shelf.

He needed some pork sausages, which were simple enough to find, but the shop had got all creative and had packets of pork sausages with all sorts of flavours and spices and herbs. Trevor wanted simple pork sausages. He found them hidden down the bottom of the creative pork sausage stack.

All was complete for his recipe, but he got some apples as well. Trevor went through the checkout without having to wait in line for too long. Thank heavens for small mercies, he thought. Now to remember where he’d park his car!

In the car park he was hit by a car and killed.





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