An egg sandwich delight turns into a messy moment for Kevin Page. Photo / Getty Images
This story is about a fried egg and how it can spoil your everyday life. Now don't ask me how or why this happens but there I was sitting in front of my computer the other day and I suddenly felt hungry.
More particularly, I wanted a fried egg sandwich.
I should explain. I am London-born and bred and my dad, along with all in his family and community, worshipped what is commonly known as "a fry up", the full English breakfast with all the trimmings.
I certainly don't mind an expedition to the unfashionable culinary wildside from time to time but as I've aged and felt the benefits of a healthier lifestyle I've tended to shy away from the full-on job in recent years.
But sometimes a man's got to do what a man's got to do and that's how I found myself, at 1pm in the afternoon, over a hot frypan carefully crafting an egg which I could place on the thickly buttered bread waiting on a plate nearby.
Obviously if you are a fellow aficionado you will know there's an art to cooking a fried egg.
I vividly recall my dad showing me how it was done. Gently tipping the pan away from the heat so the bottom didn't catch and then flicking the runny fat (doesn't that sound scrumptious?) over the yolk with the egg flip to "mist" the outside, allowing for slow, even cooking on the inside.
Not too runny, not too hard. Just perfect.
Childhood memories came flooding back as I returned to my seat in the office, heavenly fried egg sandwich on a plate awaiting ritual demolition.
There's also an art to eating a fried egg sandwich and I went about the task with military precision.
The first bite was as good as I remembered. Not a big chomp through the middle, that would come later.
This was a small bite through the white of the egg, a combination of warmth and buttery goodness as the bread melted in my mouth. Just to whet the appetite.
Now I'd take another bite and get to sample that lovingly prepared yolk.
There will be many among you I'm sure who will know what can happen next. Let me save you any doubt. It did.
I took a bite through the yolk and it spurted out the side of the sandwich.
Actually "spurted" is not a true representation of what occurred. It "exploded". Big time. And it went everywhere.
So now I've got a problem.
My childhood memories have been cruelly swept aside and replaced with a more recent memory of Mrs P telling me, quite forcefully, not to eat in front of the computer because it makes a big mess.
It would be fair to see she was quite correct in that assumption.
Not only is there egg yolk on my chin and my shirt, it's also on the keyboard, the computer screen, the wall behind it, the rug on the floor and the curtain by the window.
Panic sets in.
Okay, okay. Calm down. She's out for a few hours. I can clean it up.
Luckily I have previous experience in this area and, like cooking and eating a fried egg, there's an art to it.
You have to let the whole mess dry first. Then it's easy. You just scrape it off.
My previous experience of something similar was in the wee small hours one winter's evening.
Mrs P had spent a fortune on some nice new curtains and to celebrate we had a nice candlelit dinner.
Once the evening was over she took herself off to bed and I followed, blowing out the candles as I went. Unfortunately, I blew too hard and the hot, runny wax went right across the table, the floor (tiled thank goodness) and across her brand-new curtains.
Luckily the wax dried reasonably quickly and it was a case of scraping it off slowly and methodically, albeit at 2am and quietly so she didn't wake and become aware of my disaster.
So, with that memory in the bank, I waited for the egg to dry and scraped it off all the hard surfaces – and my chin. My shirt went in the wash and that only left the rug. I couldn't get that bit out so I moved my chair over a bit so you can't see it unless you really go looking. Perfect.
And all that cleaning was finished but 10 minutes before my beloved came home and we began work on a new shopping list.
Top of the list was carpet cleaner. She'd seen a few spots that needed a clean near the couch where I usually sit so she thought she'd check the whole house. Gulp.
We also need eggs. She wasn't quite sure how but apparently we've been going through them a bit lately.
• Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief too much serious news gives you frown lines. Feel free to share stories to editor@northernadvocate.co.nz (Kevin Page in subject field).