Mike skips lunch

Feb 4 2010 Mike Lockley

Did I really need this morning’s council flyer warning of the perils of eating discarded food from the municipal skip?

I can honestly say I haven’t been tempted. Even after a particularly heavy session, I haven’t staggered past the rust bucket on the village green and hoped there was a half-eaten discarded kebab in there.

Call me a snob, but I’d look very differently on any family I caught ‘snacking’ in the skip. It’s a culinary faux pas graver than eating pudding with your soup spoon.

The flyer says the dangers not only come from contaminated, rotting food. Skips are dangerous places to walk around in and you may encounter rats, which, presumably, would be main course to anyone desperate enough to sift through garbage for dinner. If it breathes and bites, you know it’s not past its sell-by date, after all.

According to the piece, our village bobby has been forced to ‘move people on’, which would be something to behold: “Put the chicken carcass down and step slowly out of the skip.”

This is preventing him from conducting his real job of catching criminals, it adds. To my knowledge, there has been only one ‘real’ criminal in this leafy community - and the police weren’t needed. The church council burnt her for witchcraft. That, however, was a very long time ago. 1968, I think.

A couple were once caught having sex in the skip, but nothing like this. When that particular sordid story ‘broke’, I remember thinking: “There’s a woman who’s easily pleased.”

After a night of passion in a council refuse bucket, the only way is up.

The flyer does not name names, which is unfair. Now the finger of suspicion is upon all of us.

My money’s on the fat kid up the road. Anyone who can publicly devour a Mars bar by nibbling all the chocolate off first wouldn’t think twice about diving into rubbish for ‘tuck’. Strange lad - I once saw him eat a banana sideways.

Not surprisingly, the weekly paper has got hold of this ludicrous story, under the headline ’Let’s Skip Lunch’, and I’ve already been ‘door-stepped’ by one breathless young reporter.

“Is this something you would ever contemplate?” she asked.

I thought hard before declaring: “I’d have to really dislike the dinner guests.”

“And,” she added, scrutinising her notebook, “what would you say to someone you saw eating out of the skip?”

Bon appetite. Don’t worry about washing your hands.

I’ve already collared the council chairman about this silly missive. “You know how it is, Mike,” he huffed. “Health and safety being what it is, we’ve got to cover our backs.”

“Is that why,” I asked, “there’s a big sign on the skip saying, ‘could contain nuts’?”

“You’ve got it,” he nodded, and walked swiftly on.

Could this warning be linked to dark news our parish now has, for the very first time, one homeless person, who spends his days at the bus shelter armed with a large bottle of milk and scruffy dog? Where he came from, where he sleeps is something of a mystery.

Only the other day, he begged me for a tenner ‘until pay day’. “When’s pay day?” I asked.

“Haven’t a clue,” he sniffed, “you’re the one who’s working.”

Nevertheless, I fished out a fiver from my wallet. “If I give you this,” I warned, “will you spend it on alcohol?”

He assured me he wouldn’t. He needed the cash for food, the tramp pledged.

“Are you sure you won’t go into the first bookies you come to and put the cash on a horse?” I demanded.

He gave his word.

“And you won’t spend it on green fees at the golf club up the road?” I pressed.

“Are you kidding?” he scoffed.

Right there and then I decided to take the poor unfortunate home for dinner. “Are you sure?” he stammered, “I mean, I don’t smell too good. Your wife might be angry.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I assured the tramp. “I want her to have a good look at what happens to a man when he doesn’t drink, gamble or play golf.”

Thanks to this column, the celebrity engagements are stacking up.

To date, I’ve been enlisted as ‘substitute’ speaker at a local WI meeting following the withdrawal of the ‘Bee Man through illness; opened a Roman Catholic church fete and ‘starred’ in Radio Rural’s own version of Desert Island Discs: “Pick ten songs that mean something to you,” the DJ said, “but it would be a great help if they’re on ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’ volumes one to five…saves all that hunting around.”

Heaven knows what the listeners thought. I had to lie that Kajagoogoo’s ‘Too Shy’ helped me overcome the pain following a hernia op.

All these outings pale into insignificance after I represented this paper at last week’s ‘soup challenge.

“And did you,” I asked one tattooed wannabe chef, who had his soup in one hand, “wash your hands thoroughly before making this?”

“That depends,” he confessed.

Depends on what?

“Depends if I’d been to the toilet.”

One sweet young thing, her hands trembling, presented a tomato and basil offering. “That really is filling,” I told her.

“I know,” she lisped, “we tried it last night and it took ages to finish.”

“Because it was so stodgy?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Because we had it outside on the patio and it was raining.”