If you look back you'll turn to stone (1)

When we were a proper family - you know man, wife, two children, one girl one boy (I think there was supposed to be a 0.4 child too, to keep the statistics right, Friday was take away night. Inspite of some Catholic heritage on my side (pretty lapsed, and only by dint of my father's family having allegiance to Rome)it rarely involved fish and chips. Chinese or Indian were tip top favourites, and at an early age the boy had a thing for chicken chat....although it did make him screw his nose up. Such was the tradition, that long after I departed the family home, the boy continued to enjoy Friday Night Take Away, and why not. After all there was more to go round.

When the boy came to live with me permenantly, in the confusion and panic (oh what do I do, how will I manage this, etc, etc), the FNTA died a death, although it was quite fondly spoken of on a regular basis. So at the boy's suggestion, on Friday we had new FNTA. Chinese was the dish of choice. It duly arrived half an hour of ordering, and it was certainly a feast fit for a king with sweet and sour this, lemon sauce that, peking the other and black bean who knows what. In true Chinese tradition, there was enough to feed the entire street. And it seems that it was at that precise moment, when we started taking the cartons out, the romantic notion of FNTA evaporated. We both had some, but 90% lay uneaten whilst Have I Got News For You wittered away in the background. Perhaps we shouldn't have done it, perhaps the expectations were wrong, but it certainly didn't make for a great evening.

And funnily enough we were both hungry an hour later....