Oops 3 (London)

I’ve always loved the bits of food that most other people don’t like or don’t eat.  

Bones would be sucked dry, if not crunched down (if soft enough) — I always say I must’ve been a dog in my previous life.  

There’s a street-food dish in Singapore called kway chap: mainly pig offal and skin cooked in a dark soya sauce, eaten with rice-lasagne triangles — I’d quite happily just have the skin.  I actually do make a version of it at home, now that such things as chicken wings and pork skin are available in multi-cultural London — they weren’t in the 70s when I first arrived, as white British people didn’t eat such things, it seems.  (Another great thing about multiculturalism.)

Eating a cooked English breakfast, I’d notice my British friends cutting off the bacon rind.  (Nowadays, the rind is already cut off before the bacon gets to the shelves, or the restaurant kitchen, it seems.)  I’d ask them if I could have their rind, getting strange looks in return.

Ex-student Jo had invited me over to hers for Christmas Dinner a few times.  Unfortunately, her daughter loves skin as well, so I’d be fighting her for the turkey skin.

Christmas last year, the planned Christmas Dinner at Nigel and Graeme’s got cancelled because of the Covid lockdown.  Jo, who had been tasked with providing the turkey, put aside some of it (meat, skin, bones) for me, in three boxes.  With Jo’s daughter away studying in Australia, I had no competition at all.  Hmm, all the skin and bones to myself!!  Yum!!

Collected the three boxes on Boxing Day.  Got home, picked up one of the boxes at random to eat the contents.  Only meat.  No skin, no bones.  I thought, I’ll have to text Jo and “complain”: “What, no skin, no bones!? I’m being short-changed!!”

Ate the first box, took the other two round to Brazilian friend, to whom I’d been publicising the gift of Christmas turkey, all cooked and ready to eat.  (Like me, she has no work pension, and can only start claiming a small state pension next year, so I try and share my food and other things with her.)

In her kitchen, I started to open one of the boxes to show her what I’d brought, looking forward to her gleeful reaction.  It was full of skin and bones!!  Oh no, Jo had packed the food separately: meat in one box, skin and bones in another!!  And I’d eaten all the skinless, boneless meat!

Luckily, the third box had more skinless, boneless meat.  Phew.

PS:  The Brazilian friend cannot eat fatty food because of her health condition, so I couldn’t even leave her the skin and bones.

(London, 2020)

For those who might need help with the English, I give below my Mac dictionary’s definition for “oops”:

oops | uːps, ʊps |

exclamation informal

used to show recognition of a mistake or minor accident, often as part of an apology: Oops! I'm sorry. I just made you miss your bus!

ORIGIN

natural exclamation: first recorded in English in the 1930s.