Tuesday, April 28, 2009

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

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

SMEG... headI 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?

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