Sad Food

There must be a special place where all the bad food goes. Not spoiled food. Bad food. Food that's badly made, made using bad ingredients or by someone who doesn't know how to cook. Food that's made on production lines by sad people. The food you get in garages and hospitals and regional airports. Food with no taste. No soul. Sad food. The kind that is easy to chew but difficult to swallow, that leaves a slight lump in your throat as if you were about to cry. The kind you feel ashamed to eat. That leaves you feeling full, but somehow, slightly empty.

There must be a special place it goes. Not a real place, of course. Not tangible or visible or visitable, in any case (who has the right to say what's real and what's not?) But a place like heaven, or hell; some spirit-world, some purgatory, inhabited by cold, badly crimped pasties, dry scotch eggs and packaged sandwiches that taste like soggy paperbacks, amongst infinite other culinary mediocrities.

Perhaps they don't go anywhere. They don't pass on to the next life. They stay here in the mortal realm, floating forlornly after those who had the misfortune to eat them. The saddest part is most people don't even see them. They don't notice anything's wrong because that's the only kind of food they eat. There's probably a taxi-driver out there being followed by a ghost jacket potato covered in rubbery, insipid 'cheddar', and behind it, a whole host of other banal breakfasts and dismay dinners, trailing after him as though he were a kind of sorry, school-canteen pied piper. Does that woman at the bus-stop see the microwave lasagne sitting on her shoulder like a squat parrot? If these things were visible to you, you might even come across a swarm of those greasy prawny-chickeny creatures Iceland sells in 'party boxes' drifting forlornly around the office. Or white-flecked, flaccid bacon and a big lump of over-cooked scrambled egg hovering around a construction worker's hat.

I too, am haunted by these monsters. I am followed by a ghoulish, phantom picnic. I see them all, sitting on my desk or stalking after me in the dark. The own-brand biscuits. The discount lemonade. The curled up egg sandwiches. The shrivelled cocktail sausages. I am followed by a ghoulish, phantom picnic.

Stop, stop, it's too sad, I might cry.