A very Gorey breakfast

Saturday night Lord Fauntleroy made us a scrumptious meal of pork roast and roasted vegetables. We started with his homemade quince brandy and finished with glasses of wine. As his Lordship, Kitkat and I retired to the fireside, more brandy in hand, our conversation drifted willy nilly from one topic to another.

We somehow got on the topic of transferring products from their original package to another. Like pouring cheap wine into a bottle with an expensive label to see if anyone catches on (fun) or when you open a cereal box and ruin the bag inside so you have to transfer it to Tupperware for fear of it going stale (practical) or in order to save space you put the last few drops from a Price Club sized laundry detergent in a smaller jar (good housekeeping).

Lord Fauntleroy recalled public service announcements from his childhood warning parents against such a practice. Apparently, people in Scotland would put things like bleach in juice bottles and rat poison in salt-shakers. I guess if you had too many mouths to feed this was a convenient way to “make room at the table.” Having had our fair share of libations, we giggled at our Edward Gorey type jokes about Zilla drinking too much ‘gin’ and putting arsenic in the sugar bowl and watching your unsuspecting children sprinkle it on their wheaties.

Like his Lordship, I too had a flashback to childhood. At the tender age of 9, I arose early (a fine habit that I have to this day) one Saturday to start my day with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Little did I know what a spring it would be! My parents are social creatures and love to have guests round for a nip of some sort or the other. As it happened, they had had a few neighbours over on Friday night and rather than make screwdrivers one at a time, they half emptied a carton of OJ and topped it with Smirnoff.

I am not sure how many cartons of said concoction were consumed, all I know is that there were leftovers. None the wiser, I poured myself my usual and sat down with the Saturday comics. Man were they funny! The juice tasted funny, but I liked it (another habit I have to this day) so I had a couple glasses.

It was a lesson learned for my parents and one that we now laugh about every time we enjoy a screwdriver.