So there I was, cut from stem to stern (I’ll spare you the gory details), surviving on a liquid diet for days, before finally being able to eat real food.
I ordered a steak sandwich, thinking about the nourishing protein embedded in a lovely piece of carbohydrate, lettuce and tomato. I had to order the tomato sauce separately, and even the salt, discovering from past efforts with the hospital menu that none of these items came automatically.
I wriggled up in bed, pushed all the buttons to move into an upright position and began the task of relishing and eating said sandwich. But first, I opened the bread layer, picked up the squeezy plastic sauce container and aimed it at the steak.
My penchant for sauce goes back to childhood days in Oakleigh – rather plebeian but there you have it. The smidgin of sauce was in one of those pesky, hard-to-open miracles of modern engineering that you are somehow meant to point and squeeze at the same time.
So I did.
But as is the law of physics or some such rubbish, the sauce decided on its own trajectory – all over the new nightie (because, of course, who actually owns any of these and only bought for this visit) and over the crisp, pristine white starched sheets.
I mopped up the mess as best I could, cursed the loss of sauce on steak and sat surrounded by what would appear to a visitor to be blood.
At least someone else would do the laundry.
Have you ever tangled with one of those sauce sachets and came out the loser? Share your ‘adventure’ in the comments section below.