I Fed The Vicar A Bit Of My Finger (from the archive)

Never underestimate the sharpness of a brand new kitchen knife, especially if you can’t tell the difference between the end of the chilli and the start of your finger.  One moment you’re a budding chef with your sights set on an appearance on The F Word and the next you’re an amputee with no further use for your guitar.  It was only after my guests were seated that I realised that in my panic to improvise a bandage I’d neglected to pick out my finger from the fajitas.

I had a moment of complete panic.  Should I confess all and offer a substitute meal of beans on toast or pray that the nail had softened during cooking?  Never before was morality pitted against faith so keenly.  After weighing up my options I opted to trust to The Big Guy Upstairs, even though we live in a bungalow.

The vicar and his wife are earnest vegetarians and have never indicated any lust for human flesh.  So I hoped that even if they ate the finger they wouldn’t recognise it as such. Yet if their suspicions were aroused by the main course, they would only be confirmed by the sweet.  I’d clumsily dropped the lemon torte face-down onto the kitchen floor just before their arrival and whilst I’d tried to pick out the hairs, I was bound to have missed a few.  With flesh in the main course and hair in the sweet I feared my guests would conclude I had mashed up an entire human in their dinner.

Thankfully they did not and the evening passed without further incident.  But my worries are not over yet.  I’ve just received an invitation to join them for a buffet lunch next week: ‘Nothing fancy’ it says, ‘just finger foods’.