I am supposed to be meeting my friend Paul for lunch tomorrow, just because I mentioned sausages and he told me there was this place that did amazing sausages and that I’d love it.
“We should go,” he’d said. “I’ll buy you a big plate of sausages. It’ll be like we’re in The Beano!”
And there had been something wonderful in the air – a sense that anything was possible this day – that why shouldn’t two men hang out on a Saturday afternoon ordering sausages for one another?
Deal with it, Chairman Mao – it’s just what guys do in 2012. So I’d agreed and we’d settled on the date and now I’d realised it was tomorrow.
I’ll be honest: at this stage, some of the magic of travelling to an inconvenient area of the city just to eat some sausages with a man has worn off. It doesn’t seem quite so obvious a thing to do any more. I have work to do, and an infant son to play with, and I’ve got a sore back from falling asleep on the sofa watching a bad Nicolas Cage film, and my goodness, it’s been raining a lot lately, though now it seems like I’m grasping at straws. I want to text him to cancel, but something’s stopping me, because here’s the thing: neither one of us has mentioned Sausage Saturday since the day we arranged it.
This is very much a case of two people not mentioning a longstanding arrangement. It is very odd when two people do not mention a longstanding arrangement.
It means one of three things:
1. He’s forgotten all about Sausage Saturday, despite me coining the phrase Sausage Saturday, which instantly puts it at the forefront of any adult human’s mind, but that’s just basic marketing for you.
2. He’s assuming Sausage Saturday is a given and either feels no need to remind me (because why would anyone miss Sausage Saturday?), or will remind me at the very last minute that the glory of Sausage Saturday is upon us, and that we should bring bibs.
3. The magic of eating a sausage near another man on Sausage Saturday has worn off on him too, and he is hoping I do not remind him, just as I am hoping he does not remind me.
All the above instils in me a constant state of nervous tension. I want to know either way whether I’m going to have to traipse across town to eat a sausage tomorrow, while at the same time really not wanting to know whether I’m going to have to traipse across town to eat a sausage tomorrow. I don’t like the mystique, but I like its protection.
I check my emails and my texts once more. Nope. There have definitely been no reminders. No just-checkings, no how-you-fixeds, no are-we-still-ons. But what if one arrives at the last minute? That means I can’t leave it too late. The biggest risk here is doing nothing. I need to take control. But I can’t just cancel, because everyone hates the guy who cancels. And I don’t want to send a are-we-still-on, because then he’ll feel duty-bound to say yes, just to placate me.
I am required to create a guilt-free situation in which neither man need watch the other eat pork. And despite all this, I am troubled by the idea that actually, he doesn’t want to do Sausage Saturday either. That is the perfect situation, of course, but why doesn’t he want to? Is it me? Do I eat sausages particularly inelegantly? I feel like texting him just to show him that I am a better friend, that I would never avoid mentioning a longstanding engagement, unlike him.
But that would involve reminding him of the longstanding engagement, and I’m not mental. And then, outside the window, the heavens open once more and the rain begins to patter the window. And I realise – the heavens themselves are giving me the perfect opportunity. The weather is saying, “Use me! Use me, Daniel!” I compose a text. One that will have nothing to do with Sausage Saturday, giving us the perfect out! I check the forecast and then text Paul.
“This weather!” I write. “They say it’s going to be absolutely torrential tomorrow!”
It’s wonderful! It’s backed up by fact, it dances around the subject, it allows us the space implicitly to quietly cancel Sausage Saturday, and neither of us is to blame; for it is the weather!
A genius move. A masterstroke. A reply is just moments away.
“Dan!” it says. “Thought you’d forgotten! Was gonna leave it! How’s 1pm for Sausage Saturday?” I text back saying 1pm is perfect. Then I grumpily check the restaurant’s website so I can choose what sausage to eat.
A not-quite-so aptly named company
My thanks to ShortList reader Jane Ostler who sent me this photo she took in Clapham (below, left), south London the other day, which truly is a thing of beauty. The greatest single advertisement for a removals company called Wise Moves anyone could ever wish for. The next wise move would be changing the company name.
THE TRUE TASTE OF ENGLAND
When ShortList reader Jason Moon hit Corfu recently, he knew he had to have one thing. An English Breakfast (above, right). Three points: It had to be daily. It had to be at a very specific time. And it had to taste absolutely foul.
