Student Stories – What Supper Means to Me

Supper to me implies the (usually disastrous) meal prepared immediately after getting back from the pub. I find the defining features of this meal are as follows:

  1. It seems like an excellent idea at the time through the beer-induced haze.
  2. The complexity of the meal varies in inverse proportion to the amount of beer consumed earlier.
  3. A portion of the meal is nearly always fried (with the usual painful results).
  4. Again, dependent on the amount of beer imbibed, a short nap may be in order whilst the meal is cooking (this usually leads to a kitchen full of black smoke and much jeering when the rest of your house mates get back).
  5. This meal is rarely consumed (due to the amount of cooking oil and the general charred texture of the food).

I’d love to take creative credit for this but it really is drawn from real life. In my first year at Polytechnic I shared a house with four other guys. One night I somehow managed to get home before them from the pub and they arrived back about an hour later to find me passed out up stairs on my bed, the kitchen full of smoke and a whole packet of fish fingers black and burning in the oven.

I seem to remember that I got home staving from the pub and decided that I wanted a little snack. After depositing said fish fingers in the oven I decided that I should have a quick lie down for 15 minutes until they were cooked. Oh well!

I think this may also have been the night that one of my flat mates convinced everyone that by putting a penny into the light fitting between the two contacts, screwing the bulb back in and turning it on would cause sparks to seen. Please don’t try this at home children!