FORK'N KNIVES

Like evolution from ape to man, you start off as a kid eating with fingers, and then slowly progress to scoffing takeaways with a plastic fork. Until one day, perhaps at your drunken wedding reception, you look down, and suddenly your plate is surrounded by more sharp and shiny instruments than a surgeon’s toolbox in ER. Your plate is besieged by cutlery!


It happens to me on a Med cruise booked on You’ve Left It Too Late Dot Com. So I’ve no time to learn table manners. In the ship‘s restaurant, I’m confronted by a monstrous regiment of prickers and prongs. So I spurn them all.

I make lobster butties instead and shout for the Chief Steward to bring on the mushy peas. I don’t want to look common, though. So I shout louder for a big spoon for the peas.

But a week downstream, perhaps seduced by Etiquette, the French girl at my table; I look down and begin to wonder just what all this scrap metal around my din-dins is all about. A butter knife? If the I Can’t believe it’s not lard is that hard, take it out of the fridge earlier! And here’s a gravy boat. We all love gravy on the plate, but not so much you’d need a boat to reach the pie in the middle!

Ah, the dessert fork. I know this one. The SAS started from the Long Range Desert Group. Who Dares Wins! It was one of their improvised weapons. They were tireless and brave, moving quickly throughout North Africa, hunting new desserts to conquer: Date pudding, fig rolls and prune surprise - which made them even quicker!

It’s enough to make you long for something simple like Spotted Dick. So I go ashore in Tangiers, and – success! A week later, the ship’s Doctor congratulates me: “Well done, lad, you’ve got spotted dick!”

© Mike Atkinson