Sorry for the late post. I’ve been down in Hastings where I’ve been overloading my gut with waffles. Not that you want to know these things but I’ve set my colon a few dilemmas for the coming hours and I wouldn’t be surprised if it found them a little too difficult to manage.
As patron of the East Sussex Waffle Festival, I always love to patronise the people down there on the South Coast. ‘You’ve all done a wonderful job,’ I told them over a PA system squawking like a bilious parrot. ‘With the limited resources of you rural folk, this is a top notch affair. I probably couldn’t have done much better myself, even if I was born locally and knew my way around a tractor. You must all give yourself pats on the back. I’m sure you’ll do even better next year. And never let it be said that you country folk aren’t civilized. Remember the Aztecs. They began in loincloths but they still managed to get into space.’
My patronising done, I set myself to the long and difficult task of picking the Best in Show. Judy normally does the waffle tasting and I’m just there to add handsome support and to keep the bluebottles away. Only, this year, Judy had gone overboard with some Rum Waffles earlier in the day and has to excuse herself from the judging in order to sleep them off in the back of the Range Rover. I was left alone to pick a winner from the Militant Waffle Brigade of the Women’s Institute.
‘Tasty,’ I said after trying my first waffle of the day. The woman, all pearls and tartan, looked at me as though I’d emptied the contents on my right nostril over her twinset.
‘Tasty? Is that all you can say?’
‘It was really tasty,’ I repeated. A second nostril couldn’t have upset her any more. She snatched the plate away from me and withdrew her waffles from the competition. I shrugged and moved onto the next entrant.
‘Mmm,’ I began. The woman’s eyes narrowed, anticipating insult. ‘Very...’ I began searching for the right word. ‘Waffly?’ She seemed to deflate a fraction but the smile on her mouth suggested I had found the winning formula.
‘I’ve never eaten a more wafflesome waffle,’ I said boldly to the third contestant after downing the whole of her Polish Cheese Waffle.
‘It’s the cheese,’ she said.
‘I’m sure it is,’ I replied as I wiped my mouth down and moved on to the next table.
‘It’s my own invention,’ said a hearty woman with big biceps and slight cheek hair standing behind a pyramid of waffles covered in honey.
‘And what’s in it?’ I asked.
‘My secret ingredient,’ she said.
I prised a waffle from the pyramid. The structure didn’t fall. Built better than anything by the Ancient Egyptians, I promise you. Those waffles will be around in a thousand years. Which is more than you can say about my teeth. My incisors sank half an inch into the waffle before they cracked against her secret ingredient.
‘Interesting choice,’ I said, after I’d managed to slide the waffle around my mouth, avoiding further contact with my taste buds and dropping it down my pipe. ‘Very meaty.’
‘It’s loin,’ whispered the woman. ‘I lightly fried it in lard.’
I smiled an appreciative smile and carried on with the inspection. But if I’m honest, after an hour, I was getting pretty sick of waffles.
‘And now Richard is going to choose the winner,’ said another tweedy twinset with a megaphone. She was inches from my ear and had the thing set to stun. And stunned I most certainly was when I grabbed the instrument from her.
‘You’ve all done exceedingly well,’ I told the gathering through the bullhorn. ‘Judy and I always looking forward to the East Sussex Waffle Festival, this unique event in the world of waffles. We’d be disappointed if we ever missed it.’ I gave a slight burp, the odour of undercooked loin reaching my nostrils as the noise of my indigestion echoed around the tent. ‘But now it’s time to choose and it’s a shame that there can only be one winner...’
A smattering of polite applause didn’t disguise the psychological warfare going on in that tent. Lest there be any innocent pearls out there thinking they’re having a hard time of it being rolled around some ocean bed, they need only look on shore in the area of the South Coast and witness the fate of their brethren. An oyster is a rough home but at least it’s not Hastings.
The rattle of pearl necklaces and the bristling sound of heavily hairsprayed wigs filled the tent as I took a moment before I announced my decision.
‘So, now the time has come to declare the winner... I think that it will be a long time before I forget Mrs. Kipling’s lard and loin waffle.’
Mrs. Kipling’s leap of surprise nearly put her breasts into orbit. Then she ran at me and launched lard scented lips built to orgy. I responded with elbows. After she was done kissing me, I handed her the five pound gift voucher as quickly as possible and backed out of the tent as the stunned losers began to come to their senses and turn on me. I wasn’t going to wait and put my faith in my heels.
Judy was snoring in the back of the Range Rover as I landed in the front seat and engaged the four wheel drive.
‘Can I smell lard?’ she asked, waking as I hit a cattle grid at over thirty.
‘Lard and loin,’ I corrected. ‘Lard and loin.’
