On the cold, dark heart of the Ministry of Cow Counting

On the cold, dark heart of the Ministry of Cow Counting

I got talking to that nice Mr Danny Baker on the radio again.

"Food labelling? Don't talk to me about food labelling."

I somehow found myself on BBC London (again), as yer actual affable Cockney presenter asked about the Hell of having to share a fridge with people who insist that every last scrap of food has a label to denote ownership.

"Food labelling? Don't talk to me about food labelling."

But he did, anyway. And I, after all these years of pent-up anger, exposed the cold, dark heart of the Ministry of Cow Counting.

I arrived at work one Monday morning at my office at the Ministry of Cow Counting - a drab, Stalinesque block with views of the Reading inner ring road - clutching a supermarket own-brand ready meal and a pint of milk to find our entire communal fridge had gone missing.

All that was left was a patch of discoloured carpet and a small, dried-up square of cheese.

And on a shelf, a weekend's worth of milk-turned-yoghurt, and various dead foodstuffs, some of which were CLEARLY LABELLED.

After a couple of hours of frenzied violence and Sherlock Holmes-style detective work (only without all the bummery and cocaine) I learned through the in-house witness protection scheme that a colleague had experienced a sudden unexpected domestic refrigeration failure, remembered the collective staff fridge and "borrowed" it for a few days.

Borrowing, in this case, involved getting it down two flights of stairs, past the security guards, across a busy shopping centre onto a number 17 bus.

There was a short, non-fatal bout of negotiations - all held through a third party, before the travelling fridge was returned, defrosted and cleaner than it had been for several years.

So: Don't talk to me about labelling food. Our ENTIRE FRIDGE was labelled: "Ministry of Cow Counting ACCOUNTS (A) (Cereals) – GET YOUR THIEVING HANDS OFF"

Anyone want to buy a photocopier?