Our fridge is broken. I rang my sister for sympathy.
Me (dolefully): Guess what?
Her: What?
Me: Our fridge has broken down.
Her: Thank God, I thought that you were going to say that you were pregnant.
I rang the Baroness’s agent (yes our landlady is a Baroness, welcome to Belgium, land of minor aristocracy) but
Charles-Emmanuel was unmoved by our plight. “But,” I pleaded “we have twin babies, we really NEED a fridge.” “Madam,” he said unmoved, “everybody needs a fridge.”
In fairness, however, the Baroness and her ex-husband (all the tenants wish that they’d get back together, he’s very handy and efficient) turned up to inspect the offending fridge, pronounced it dead and have since arranged for a new one to be purchased. Delivery is, alas, still pending. This is a matter of particular regret to me since I bought a lot of post-Christmas discount foie gras (in Belgium, foie gras is for Christmas not for life) and now it all has to be chucked.
Comments
Bobble
on 18 January 2006 at 15:49
We’ll come round and help you out with the eating.
Friar Tuck
on 18 January 2006 at 16:11
Maybe you could send the foie gras to the baroness in order to stress the importance of receiving a new fridge ASAP.
on 18 January 2006 at 16:37
Why *minor* aristocracy ? Aristocracy is measured by its origins in time, rather than a scale of titles … Your baroness could very well be from a family dating from the 12th century, and a Count might as well be from a family belonging to aristocracy since the early 1900’s …
jackdalton
on 18 January 2006 at 20:48
Just as well, knowing what foie gras is supposed to do to the libido…
Friar Tuck
on 19 January 2006 at 02:26
Baroness makes a good point. Take my family, for instance. We can trace our origins back to Adam and Eve.
kristin
on 19 January 2006 at 04:39
just recovering from my posting faux pas of a few days ago to say … ‘toast points for everyone!’ i am quite jealous that you have good foie gras available to you, nevermind its incipient demise.
belgianwaffle
on 19 January 2006 at 12:08
It is very gratifying to discover that you all like foie gras.
Baroness, with all due respect, no matter how old a baronetcy is, I think that it’s pretty low down the pecking order.
poggle
on 19 January 2006 at 12:45
That’s awful – just awful – throwing away foie gras is a tragedy
belgianwaffle
on 20 January 2006 at 12:15
Pog, I am delighted to add you to the long list of my readers who are foie gras fans. Perhaps we could set up a club.
poggle
on 20 January 2006 at 12:53
Yes – we could have secret handshakes and codes (eg the grey geese fly at dawn). Ahem.
jackdalton
on 20 January 2006 at 13:18
Hmmm, grey geese that fly at dawn etc. Another unexpected depth to the Pog(gle).
But what I really wanted to say was that I have vague memories of being emotionally savaged by a policy wonk / veggie type I loved deeply but too well because of what they do to geese to make foie gras. All about locking them in barns, force-feeding them, clipping wings and oversized livers that made their legs break. And so on.
Kind of put me off for a while. But I’m allright now…
Ain’t time a wonderful thing?!
poggle
on 20 January 2006 at 13:20
Your policy wonk/veggie type was telling the truth. I am a bad person. Sometimes my appetite outweighs my conscience. But you already knew that, right?
jackdalton
on 20 January 2006 at 13:51
We are all bad people in some small ways; unthinkingly dragging (one of our two) new blankets through the gutters of life. Except ‘waf. Who is amazingly stoic and clear-sighted or something.
(Can anything truly outweigh conscience? Just wondering…. )
poggle
on 20 January 2006 at 13:53
You’re right, of course. My conscience doesn’t generally get outweighed. Sometimes it gets pushed to the back because of an excess of vin rouge (or similar), but not for long.
belgianwaffle
on 23 January 2006 at 09:08
Conscience? What’s that? The grey geese fly at dawn, my friends.
jackdalton
on 23 January 2006 at 20:41
So that would be geese and conscience flying with the wind….. 0
belgianwaffle
on 25 January 2006 at 08:51
Eh, yes Jack. 0