Finger Lickin' Good.

 Decide to cook a chicken for Sunday dinner, so I have to buy it on Saturday because I live in Northern Ireland and the butcher doesn't open on Sunday. So I go to Fayre in Gilnahirk. Fayre is an expansion of our local butcher's Corrie's. There was a handy bank of shops down there: a cafe, a butcher, a Boots, a fruit and veg shop, a launderette and a Chinese takeaway. ("If we don't use these places we'll lose them.") All human life was there. Corrie's took over the fruit and veg shop, closed down the butcher, combined the two and called it Fayre. So I'm left with a butcher the size of a cupboard in a glorified farm shop. And it has no chickens. 

So I walk a mile and a half to Ballyhack in the rain to go to the other branch of Corrie's. Corrie's sell very good chickens. We no longer eat meat very often - in training for that winter austerity the government have promised - but when we do we like to have good meat. Not a three quid bird so swollen with chlorinated water it flaps round the kitchen like a punctured balloon when you pop the fork in. And Corrie's do a proper chicken, when they have them. And this shop does. 

There are two customers in front on me: a delightful chatty older couple, and a young man with a beard and no socks. He's wearing sunglasses on a wet September afternoon, and is playing a vigorous set of pocket billiards in his capacious sports trousers. Reader, I did not take to him. He was attempting to buy Chateaubriand from a butcher's in Ballyhack with his hands in his pockets. That's a level of confidence I shall never achieve. The butcher showed him enormous quantities of mouth watering beef. The sunglasses came off and there was a sucking of the teeth. "No, I'll need twice that amount for what I have in mind." The accent was that pseudo-Scottish one that affects only Northern Irish people with more than one home. The butcher toddled off to the back of the shop, presumably to kill a fresh cow.

Meanwhile, the delightful Irish couple, were still chatting away to the other butcher while I held a surprisingly heavy chicken. No water weight - all muscle. They asked after his family, his children, the provenance of the food they're buying. They wanted to buy a bag, but there were a couple of design choices, so they took time to weigh up their options. 

I feel something drop onto my hand. The chicken is leaking...something. It's not blood. It's a clear liquid: chicken dripping. I can't see any holes in the plastic wrapper but, still, I've got a mysterious fowl discharge falling onto my fingers and I'm not keen. It continues to splash gently, as the old couple reveal they've never paid for anything before and don't quite understand the concept, and are slowly taken through the process by the methodical butcher. 

I map out all the things that have to happen now. I have a palm slick with salmonella. I need to place the chicken on the counter. I'm going to have to remove my wallet with my contaminated fingers. I have to take out my debit card and pay. I'll have to take the shopping bag out of my pocket and get the chicken into it. I'll walk home in the rain clutching my umbrella, and fish the keys out of my pocket to open the door. I have to turn the door handle. Smearing disease over everything I touch. 

I get home. I wash my hands. I wash my keys, wash the bag. I wash the umbrella. Then I wash my wallet and debit card, carefully drying the last two. I wash the door handle, and my hands again. Thank God for the pandemic - I'd never have known how to do this diligent digital disinfection without Boris Johnson telling me to sing "Happy Birthday". I double-bag the chicken in the fridge, and wonder whether to tell Susan about this, in case she makes me chuck the chicken out in a fit of cleanliness. 

I decide to come clean. 

And that's how it's done, Adrian Chiles. All that happened was I went to the shops, got chicken goo (what is it?) on my hands and cleaned them. But I gave you an insight of the modesty of my life, the quiet frustration and the madness barely kept banked down, which constantly threatens to destroy my me with endless pointless anxiety. It's not 300 words on how you've noticed young people use Americanisms these days. I won't writing a note to your partner - the editor of The Guardian - "There you go, Katharine. Invoice attached". 

Expect a follow up to this story where my bank cards no longer work. Or I get salmonella.