Like many food-obsessed people, I collect things. In my case, I collect mostly useless things. For example, I have a drawer full of plastic chopsticks from my local Vietnamese takeaway that I am convinced will come in handy should I decide to make noodles for 40 surprise dinner guests or if I plan to fashion a representation of The Gherkin on a rainy Sunday afternoon when Bolton Wanderers v West Bromwich is the only football on the box.
I have a library of takeaway menus stretching back at least 18 years and most of which, I am sure, refer to places that have rightly long since closed. I also have a dusty pile of well over 2,000 business cards from restaurants all over the world, which I pick up as a matter of habit and almost never look at again.
However, my favourite collection of all is a rapidly growing list of overheard middle-class foodie lamentations - railings against the general unfairness of life and how it can come between a person and the eating happiness they deserve.
The catalogue was already quite a lengthy one and is growing all the time and the current incumbent at the top of the pile is my brother-in-law, Matt. He is a good northern lad and a long time supporter of Sheffield Wednesday who would definitely mark himself down as being credible on a street level, even if said street was a leafy avenue with nice detached houses. However, during a family holiday in Devon, while scouring the aisles of a sparsely stocked budget supermarket with my nephew and niece in tow he was heard to wail to my sister:
The children are getting upset. Quick, where are the grissini?
There is something particularly cheering about the middle class food tribulations of others and I recently snorted tea through both nostrils in a London coffee shop when a friend apologised for his late arrival with the words:
I'm sorry, I'm in a really bad mood; I just had such a row with my butcher
Better still, a female friend sent me a text to tell me that she "had never been so excited in all her life". When pressed for details the reply came:
My Somerfield has become a Waitrose AND (her capitals) it has a fine wine section
This is the same female friend who once spent a whole afternoon with a sulk driven lower lip tremble because "Costa put too much milk in my macchiato"
I am not an innocent party in all of this either and am reminded of the time I admonished an assistant for their choice of a business hotel in New York because, and I shamefully quote,
they only have a middling Chardonnay in the mini-bar
It is little wonder that I was beaten up so regularly as a child.
Without turning this into a class war and please, God, let's not turn it into a class war, I am desperate for more for my collection. So, what are the best words of middle-class food woe you have ever heard, even if they were coming out of your own mouth?
