So I get back from Asda after a successful shopping trip. I tell Mrs O that I have got everything but the thing. What thing, she asks. The thing, says the Ostrich. It’s what you wrote down on the list. "A small cleaning thing". There are many things in Asda, including small things and cleaning things, but I don’t know what a small cleaning thing is. I am only a man, after all. I need a picture ….
Don’t worry about that, she says. Master O, (who is off work sick), wants a chicken soup for lunch. Have we got one? Of course, I beam, and head for the garage, wherein resides the Mother of all piles of canned soups, stockpiled against the coming of the Apocalypse. Campbell’s, Heinz, Crosse & Blackwell, Baxters, take your pick. French onion, vegetable, beef broth, pea & 'am, potato and leek, you name it. I wade in and start dismantling the mountain. I finally get to the bottom. No chicken. And by now, there are rows and rows of cans of soup on every conceivable shelf and surface in the garage.
I go back into the house. Unfortunately there isn’t one, I says. If he’d made his mind up earlier, I could have got one when I went out. Don’t worry, she says, I haven’t looked in the kitchen cupboard yet. I look. And there - is one solitary can of blinkin' chicken soup!
You realise I now have to go back to the garage and rebuild the Pyramid of Gaza, don’t you, says I. Don’t worry, says she, serenely, there will be no cans of soup in Heaven .....
Oh yes there will, says I. That’s where I keep the overflow from the garage …..