Oh Calamity! Oh Catastrophe!

My father phoned me. Again.

Alarmed?

I was.

Especially when he announced that 'everything was in ruins' and his day 'destroyed' and it was all my mother's fault.

Yikes.

I had visions of her burning the house down or crashing his car through the living room window or being caught eyeing up the window cleaner in an inappropriate manner (only their window cleaner is an old lady not disimilar to Big Mo off Eastenders. Mind you, stranger things have happened to friends of mine.....).

But no.

Apparently he has a glut of tomatoes and he wanted to make soup.

Errr, right.

And one of the ingredients was tomato puree AND (brace yourself - it's a biggy.....) IT WAS OUT OF STOCK.

Now when he says 'out of stock' he means there wasn't any in the kitchen cupboard. My mother does not actually run some kind of mini-supermarket complete with regularly deliveries and stock checking rota. She has merely used it all up and forgotten to pick up a new tube in Asda.

Apparently tomato puree is a 'basic F***ING staple' and it is 'UNBELIEVABLE' that 'she' had allowed it's absence to go un-noticed. It was a failure - and a total catastrophe which had 'ruined everything'.

Now as far as cataclysmic global events go, running out of tomato puree hardly ranks up there with Pompeii or the fall of Rome but according to my father it actually does.

Hmmm.

My response?

I told him to use Ketchup.

He told me I was a 'f***ing idiot'.

I told him many of the top chefs do.

He told me they were all 'f***ing idiots'.

I told him I really didn't think the puree was that important to the final taste and a pinch of sugar, slug of balsamic vinegar and sprinkle of salt and he'd be away......

He told me it was 'too late for that - I've gone off the idea now'.

Sigh.

I sometimes wonder exactly how many 2 year olds I have in my life?

Tweet