The kippers they went in two by two. Hurrah

1 June, 2012 – Roasting garlic a tad too long, a little too liberal with grated ginger, zealous with the anchovies; of the many enthusiastic mistakes that I make habitually in the kitchen, the happiest error, I think, is one which I fell for again today.

On the each of the last three times that I have been in the fishmongers, I have fluffed my lines. Each time ordering whatsoever it is I’m after then, while waiting for the fish to be scaled, I start multiplying. Might as well pick up some smoked trout while I’m here, and they’ve got samphire, and, because I know that I’m always most famished at breakfast time the morning after a feast, Oh yes, “a pair of kippers too please”.

“Pair”, no sooner has the ambiguous plosive left my lips and I realise that I’ve done it again. The fishmonger gathers up two plump Manx kippers. I only meant to ask for one, I swear. I should have learned by now that I should perhaps spell out that all I want is a “single pair”.  Does the fishmonger willfully misunderstand, is it a sales trick to interpret “pair” as two, contravening the linguistic traditions of butterflied fish? Still I might have learned that I’ll get twice as much as my rational brain orders, but no less than my appetitive soul demands. And now the double pair have been rustled up in paper and I can’t possibly say, “No. Actually. I only wanted…”. Rather I resign myself to an unhurried breakfast of curled, glistening amber kipper, smoky and rich  with scrambled egg and wholemeal, well-buttered toast, not just tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow too. To err, it seems, is to have the same splendid breakfast two days running.