Afternoon tea is the greatest meal ever invented. A nice bit of flowery china and steaming Earl Grey, cucumber sandwiches so soft you can gum them, and then a big wedge of buttery cake. But imagine you slide your knife between the moist segments and find a grey furry ear, or a whiskered cheek – that’s what happened to an Irish man who discovered a whole mouse fossilized in the crust of his malt loaf, apparently put there by a reckless baker, who was sick to the pink furry nose of his competitors unrivaled success. Pretty fucking rank. And what’s more, it’s not the first time there have been added extras in plain-faced delicacies.
INSECTS
Last week some kid called Devon (HE’S AUSTRALIAN) ordered a takeaway from Ronald. As he rolled up that brown paper bag and let the oily fumes wave over him, he greedily dug his hand into the carboard chip packet, his fingers closing round a fry. Only it wasn’t a fly. It was a deep-fried fucking cicada. We nearly wretched when we read that, well, after we’d looked on Wikipedia for what exactly a cicada was (it’s an insect of the order Hemiptera, suborder Auchenorrhyncha, in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. OBVIOUSLY) The worst part – “It was perfectly formed, about the size of my thumb. Not a little baby.”
The photo below is kind of weird, because they must have set up a studio for the shot, so it was some photographer’s job to work out the correct lighting to best show off the cicada in the chips. Something about that makes us really really sad.
FAKERS
Obviously there are bonuses to buttering a rodent into your toast – protein, fame, but mainly money. And lots of it. So it’s not surprising that every now and then someone is tempted to slip a cheeky (amputated) finger into their sandwich, then cry gross wolf. On March 22, 2005 Anna Ayala did just that. She somehow “obtained” the finger of a man who used to work with her husband, and then COOKED IT in her kitchen. After that it was simply a matter of lying the burnished digit next to her beany chilli, and perfecting her horror face. The flaw in her master plan was that no one in the chilli preparation process had lost a finger, so it was patently obvious she’d faked it. Lesson there – make sure you can point the finger, when you find the finger point.
SEX
SPOILER: We want to make it clear that no one actually found ’sex’ in their food, because that’s impossible. Sex is a verb really, not a literal thing you can “find”. Just wanted to explain that, so you aren’t all looking though your flapjacks murmuring, “Where’s my sex? I am sure I ordered oaty sex”. Anyway, never underestimate the importance of safe coital-escapades, especially when it comes to fishy clams. Chowder is a big thing in the U.S., it’s creamy soup packed with seafood, and as some of you cultured foodie types who regularly read Platform will know (Big up Heston), squid and prawns can be rubbery and chewy. But probably not as rubbery or chewy as a condom, which is exactly what one woman discovered as she sipped her creamy broth. Can you imagine the sweaty factory sex that must have been happening above the stew pot before the jonny fell in? THAT’S HOT.
KNIVES
Of all the food horror-stories we feel most sorry for the people involved in this one, mainly because of their photograph. That woman is so upset she can’t even look at the camera. Can you imagine that? You’re so sad that when someone goes to take a photo of you, you HAVE to LOOK AWAY. You cannot bear to gaze into the lens that reflects your pain, and instead turn your grey head towards the aching woeful sadness. That is a tragic day.
We also empathise with them most because of the amazing downward mope the man’s face is contorted into. We’re pretty sure that when William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were sketching out their first impressions of Droopy, they used this man’s mug for jowl-spiration.
The story is that after hand-picking their sweet chilli chicken Subway sandwich, this couple from Cornwall unwrapped it only to find a knife nestled all cosy alongside the lettuce. After kicking up a right fuss they were told that if they took it further they would “ruin a small business”. Pretty harsh - this to them was “a guilt trip”. Fair enough, especially when they very courteously went on to say that if they’d picked out a hair it would have been “absolutely fine”. Really? A hair? Well anyway, they got fifty quid and also were quoted as saying, “‘We normally have our grandchildren on a Sunday”. Completely unrelated to anything in the story, but still. Isn’t context nice.
WORDS: ELIZABETH SANKEY
