We are what we eat

Today, in a bid to inject some interest into my working day, I decided to instigate some intellectual debate. And yes, I know there’s an awful lot of ‘I’ words in that sentence, but ironically (there’s another) the thesaurus only suggests OTHER words that begin with ‘I’. Hmph.

“Cous Cous really annoys me!” I proclaimed.

Proof, if needed, that the brain is a muscle (it’s not) and goes weak if underused (it do).

This remark was met with laughter, my colleagues seemingly amazed at the very idea that food could provoke such a reaction.

I find this surprising. It wasn’t long into my adulthood before I realised that almost anything can be annoying (and most of the time is), so why would food be excluded?

For the record, a few of my top food annoyances are...

Cous Cous: The texture! What is it? Not quite rice (or even a Bulgur Wheat, which I can tolerate), not quite sand. It’s like someone has shaved a babycorn. It only tastes acceptable because of the flavours you add to it. Why not add them to something else instead? Like rice. Or bulgur wheat. Or Sand.

Cress: Seriously, what in God’s name is cress for? It must have virtually no nutritional value. It is added to plates and sandwiches as nothing more than a garnish, tastes of nothing when diluted to the quantities you’re likely to consume, and again has a horrible texture. Like eating grass. And frankly, I don’t have the stomachs for it (Do you see? Cows? Eating grass? With the four stomachs to digest it? It’s funny… Oh, shut up).
Although I should point out that while looking up cress, I found this picture, which has amused me no end, and therefore slightly reduced my annoyance.
But then, what sort of worthwhile foodstuff can be cultured in a keyboard?!

Oranges: If ever a food was designed not to be eaten “on the go” (or, arguably, even in public) it’s the orange. I have never seen someone eat one without covering both themselves and whoever/whatever happened to be around them at the time in a citrusy effluent. I wouldn’t mind if the awkward outer casing concealed some delicious inner treat, but no. Oranges, I say, should stick to what they’re good at – juice. Someone has taken the time to pack all the goodness of an orange into a convenient drinkable delivery mechanism. Why persist with the fruit itself? People don’t lead cows around with them for when they fancy the odd bit of milk.
It’s worth noting that I am refusing to end this section with a joke along the lines of “it really does take the pith”. Because I’m better than that. We all are.

So there you have it. Irrefutable evidence that food can be (and in at least three cases is) annoying.

And with that, it seems I can strike Food Critic from the list of potential future careers. One step closer to my goal.

Conspiracy Theory?

A thought struck me today. What if no one knows what they want to do with their lives? And that those that claim to are merely kidding themselves or worse, just plain lying to us. Maybe, as a society we are all pre-conditioned to hate work.

Look at how we’re raised…

I think of myself as having led a fairly typical childhood, for my generation. Boundary-less football matches that lasted for hours, yet only involved six of us on a good day (rush goalies, of course). Several mile long bike rides, the sole purpose of which was not to get us from home to the office (avoiding public transport or parking fees), but simply to ride our bikes, and perhaps, on adventurous days, see a field or woods we’d not seen before. Spending whole afternoons building entire Lego cities, not for one second looking ahead to the inevitable temper-tantrum inducing moment when mum decides to inform me that I need to clear it all away. But muuuum…

Not once did my mother sit me down in front of a computer and say “Son, can you build me a report to these specifications which are, if I’m honest, so vague as to almost guarantee failure?”, or “You seem to know your way around a computer - how do I archive my emails?”, or “Is there a formula for getting the highest number from a range of numbers?”. Neither did she ever force me to engage in trivial quasi-conversations about her evening, or weekend, or children (which would’ve been odd, admittedly, given that I was one of them).
Perhaps if she had introduced me to these things as a child, in a fun way, those associations would have remained, and I would not find them as intolerably loathsome as an adult. But she didn’t, and I do. So thanks for nothing, mum!

But no, of course I know that’s not realistic. Even the 8 year old me would have been able to see that the aforementioned activities cannot be even remotely fun, and I would have rapidly tossed them aside in favour of something more entertaining. Perhaps a Rubik’s Cube.