I know, I know, I know. It is so very easy to find my inner resolve after an event. But faced with full-on spiel and slight amateur dramatics by someone standing on my doorstep and I am the dream consumer. God damn it. Whoever they are, and no matter what they are selling, they seem to catch me at a weak moment. Seeing as weak moments for me start from about 7am when I have the first Illy of the day to about 11pm when my eyes clam up tight for the night, there is every chance if I open the door between these hours, I will be suckered in. As all good businessmen will probably tell you, timing and opportunity is every bit as important as product. And quite frankly, if you approach a door where you can hear the bickering and cries of children, a harrassed female voice and the clatter of kitchen utensils as you stand on the street, you're just about to strike hawking and trading jackpot.
So there I was mid re-wiring the toaster because the elements had just burnt out and couldn't face another morning's round of toast done only on one side whilst simultaneously preparing lunch for the boys, when the doorbell rang. With my multi-tasking skills pushed to breaking point as I tried to simultaneously twiddle a screwdriver, wrap a saucisse in a galette and stop the baked beans catching, I was secretly quite pleased to have an interruption. And look! A little old farmer with a face that is begging to be snapped by Selgado, trying to sell his homegrown root vegetables. Bless! Come on in!
I was immediately suckered in by his frailty and his ability to talk very quickly whilst holding up vegetables with the rapid-fire speed of flash-cards. I watched his gnarled hands seize and release his wares in an almost hypnotic whirr; an apple switched for a turnip which switched to a carrot which switched for a potato which then switched to an onion which then switched to a shallot which then....STOP! I heard myself saying that I would take the very smallest quantity of shallots so that it would stop, he would go away very quickly and very happy and leave me to butterfly though the trauma of lunchtime. Cue him looking really sad. Obviously. After months spent planting, nurturing, watering and growing, then hours of picking and packing and all I wanted was a bag of shallots? No wonder he looked downcast. And I felt bit sad for him too, so I found myself adding carrots, onions and potatoes to my initially rather meagre order.
He perked up a treat at the revised order, actually stopped talking and waving vegetables and tottered off to his van to get the barest minimum quantity of each.
With each sack that he staggered back with, and groaning under the weight of 32kg carrots, 10kg of onions, 10kg of shallots and a mighty 100kg of spuds, he managed to gasp through broken breaths that the quality of his vegetables was such they would last six months. I looked aghast at the small vegetable mountain that was clogging the hallway. 10kg of potatoes? Six months? I don't even eat flipping potatoes. S & B only like them mashed and then only once a week and taking into account the child to potato ratio, it would be six years before we'd finish them all. There was more chance of one of them growing eyes and getting a guest appearance on Eastenders, professing to be Phil Mitchell's long lost brother, than finishing them in six months. He swapped back to looking sad and frail and said it was the smallest bags he was selling them in and that, if stored in dark, cool conditions, my family would feast like kings for the winter months.
Sold. By the frail little old man who's just trying to earn a crust. To the daft brush of a mother of two that needs this man gone from her doorstep because she can smell the beans burning and has both children currently clambering up the side of a huge onion bag.
Whilst I mentally calculated how many weeks it would take four guinea pigs to eat their way through 32kgs of carrots and how many winning ways there were with onions, I wrote him out a cheque for roughly the same amount that a pair of Bottega Veneta boots I'd had my eye on would cost. Before the ink could dry, he neatly pocketed it, wished me a 'bonne fin d'journee',and ploof! he was gone.
As I turned my hand to salvaging the boys' lunch and ordering them à table, I tried to focus on the vitamins and hearty nourishment my newly-acquired store cupboard staples would bring to my little family before I was gripped by clammy sweat at how my husband would react to me being so gullible.
Given that it must be utterly tiresome to have hitched up with someone who is borderline stupid, has a tendency to live in a fantasy world and never says 'no' to anyone, this could have been the straw that broke the camel's back. I pictured him typing the words "hot divorce lawyer" into Google, as I announced "Look! Our very own European vegetable mountain for just one month's housekeeping. Fantastic.".
I spent ages loading them into a wheelbarrow, ready to cart them out to the darkest, coolest endroit my tiny mind could think of in a kind of cleaning up the crime scene sort of panic. Ahh-ha! Over there. Dark. Cool. Perfect. Mmm. Also happens to be my husband's workshop. Not so perfect as it forced me into a very early confession of how I'd allowed myself to be duped into buying kilos of vegetables by a wily old man. He was working in there at the time, sawing up some wood.
Understandably exasperated that I could once again have been quite so silly, he very kindly focused less on what I done and more on the obvious flaws in the little old farmer's sales pitch. Marvellous. And he came up with some awfully good points. Surely chemicals were invented and slapped on vegetables in order for them to last inordinate amounts of time because cool and dark didn't work that well. How, indeed, would an untreated spud last six months, even if kept in the darkest, coolest conditions possible? Indeed. Shall we see if the old farmer was right?
As punishment for my actions, I have been set the tricky old task of seeing if the vegetables will keep fresh and usable for a full six months. And I must use them on a daily basis in a variety of interesting and tasty dishes until all evidence of my foolishness is erased. And surprise! surprise! I am not allowed to answer the door to strangers ever again.
What a relief!
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