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Dear Sir: On Scotch Eggs

One day, fairly recently, I embarked on a journey to my local supermarket, to buy groceries for the week. I purchased some very standard groceries - microwavable hamburgers, three kilograms of lard, orange squash, doughnuts, several cans of super-strength lager and a twelve-roll packet of toilet paper. I also, as is the norm, picked up two scotch eggs, as my housemate, Paul, and I enjoy them very much indeed and have a running joke whereupon we buy a pair of Scotch Eggs with every trip to a Supermarket. The consumption of said Egg upon return home is often punctuated by bursts of shrill laughter.

I paid for my goods, dismissing the cashier’s offer for bag packaging help with an airy wave of my hand, climbed into my cat and headed home. As I drove home, I felt a familiar excitement building in my loins. It’s an excitement I always get driving back from the supermarket, and it’s got nothing to do with driving past the Girls Sixth Form College. No, it was due to the two brown, bread crumbed balls of pork and egg sitting in the boot of my car. Two Eggy, Piggy paradises, each slightly smaller than one of my testicles. My mouth was filling up with saliva and I could not wait to tuck in to them upon my return home.

Getting back home, I parked the car haphazardly across the pavement and the front of my neighbour’s garden, Mrs Brown. “No time to correct that parking, old boy”, I told myself as I exited my vehicle at top speed. “There’s Scotch Eggs to be had”! I galloped into my house, slamming the door behind me, cutting myself off from the world and Mrs Brown’s indignant cries that I move my car - something to do with her cap being stuck under it, or cat or something. I was in no fit state to listen. Hurling my shopping to the floor, I dug out the Scotch Eggs, frenzied fingers tearing off the packaging. I handed an egg to my housemate, Paul, who had been breathlessly awaiting my return. His eyes lit up like beacons of wonder and hope as the conker brown ball plopped into his hands.

“Oh David, you are a naughty scamp!” Paul exclaimed – our ritual greeting when the other returns home with Scotch Eggs. “This shan’t do my bottom any good at all! I shall be farting like a French Housewife all evening!”

With excitable, girlish giggling, the pair of us sat in the living room, Deal Or No Deal on the TV, feet up on the coffee table and Scotch Egg clasped in hand, and we both agreed that this was as close to completion as one could hope for. However, when I sunk my teeth into the Scotch Egg, I felt a crunching sound. In disgust, I pulled back, and examined my egg. Shell. Little bits of eggshell riddled through my Scotch Egg. I felt violated. Sickened and violated.

Disgusted, I flung my Egg into the bin. Paul, equally appalled, sat down at this typewriter that very instant, and we compiled a letter, sent to Morrisons’ Customer Relations, detailing the evening’s ordeal in full. Because, as my father once told me, “Son, if you want something done, write a fucking letter.”