Uncle Moon and the case of contraband sausages
My cousin Moon (a nickname caused by the mispronunciation of ‘Simon’ when he was little) and I have always been very close. I have only four cousins, and as we’re the youngest, we always seemed to get bunged in together. We shared a house for a while in our teens but he’s since moved away, first to America and now to Slovakia where he lives with his beautiful Slovak wife, Mrs M, and their lovely little Matej. You may remember when I did cupcakes for little Matej’s christening too.
Anyhoo, waffling. This week, Moon’s been over to the UK on a flying visit, played a weekend of golf with my big bro, IJ and a few mates, and finally came to see us on Monday night. My boys love their Uncle Moon and they insisted on having a ‘proper’ lads’ evening: pizza, beers and lots of ‘manly’ chat (which as far as I can make out consisted of talking about porn and certain ways of male stress relief that I won’t go into on a family website). I didn’t even get to make him dinner - M&S pizzas were the order of the day (check out their woodfired range, very nice indeed) and then a mahoosive slab of chocolate flapjack, the recipe for which I was very proud to have managed to tweet in less than 140 characters:
Chocolate flapjack: melt 170g butter, 4 tbsp golden syrup 100g brown sugar Together. Add 50g chopped choc, 400g oats. Bake 20 min gas 4/180.
Talk obviously moved to food, and more importantly, the sort of food that’s not readily available in Slovakia. Poor Moon misses his cheese, and because the Slovaks keep their own pigs and make their own bacon and sausages, he misses good old English bangers and streaky bacon too. A trip to Waitrose soon sorted that and his Mum’s fridge was soon groaning with goodies.
‘But wait’, I said, ‘how are you going to get that home?’
‘Easy’, said Moon, ‘I’m going to stuff it in my golf bag’
‘Is that allowed?’, I pondered…
‘Dunno, but I’m going to do it anyway…’
And so this morning came to pass when, at 4.30 am I was wide awake, worrying about oversleeping, when my alarm went off. I picked Moon up and, all the way, was worrying about the contraband sausages in the golf bag… what if there’s a sniffer dog? Surely even a dog designed to find drugs can sniff his way to some Premium Waitrose Pork and Apple, can’t he?
We got to Heathrow at 5am, spot on, and all the way home I kept checking my phone for a call from the authorities… ‘excuse me madam, we’ve detained a sausage smuggler and we’d like you to come in for an interview…’
But the call never came.
And if he got through Slovakian customs too, the sausage smuggler is now home and dry and, probably, eating a bit fat sausage sarnie as we speak.
Note: humble apologies for my appalling photoshopping.
BTW, How’s Allen ??
He says hi.
I did take home 4 bottles of HP Brown Sauce, its the simple things .. as for my bangers (oh er missus).. safe and sound in my freezer now, with the baqcon, cheese, lemsip (not in the freezer) .. its the small things you miss. As for the sausages, I am not to sure if it is or is not illegal, but, pack them next your dirty sock, sniffer dogs don’t have a chance !
Dear oh dear. I need brain bleach to clear that lovely mental image…
BTW - if you do ever come to visit, you will need to bring cheddar cheese, pickled onion monster munch, Coleman’s mustard, HP sauce, mango chutney, Branston Pickle, a whole case of baked beans and tub loads of marmite. None of these are illegal, unlike the sausages and bacon, which I would love too, but I would NEVER break the law. I might ask my Mum to bring some over with her though……..
Will I still have room for clean undies?
I’m pretty sure sniffer dogs are not trained to sniff out Twiglets - besides, they are not illegal (thank goodness for that, or I would be banged up for a long time!). As for sausage smuggling, well that is just wrong!
Well quite. BUT would the sniffer dog be able to ignore the delicious scent of Twiglets? I think not…
Sniffer dogs are surprisingly unaware of the wonders of bacon and sausages. I smuggle them back by the case load whenever I’m in the UK. That and twiglets. And chocolate buttons. And cheese. And… and.. and…
OMG you too? I’m actually now wondering if he was joking about the four bottles of HP Sauce…