The Final Course
Three roast potatoes and a Yorkshire pudding left on the plate, half the crackling handed to the dogs, and then the real test: a Sunday dinner with no pudding to follow.
Sunday dinner was awesome, as usual.
My wife’s roast is a proper event, and this one was no exception. I had every intention of doing it justice.
Instead, I left three roast potatoes and a Yorkshire pudding on the plate.
I ate half the crackling and shared the rest with Rosie and Dexter, who took the change in policy remarkably well.
Here’s the bit worth being honest about. I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more.
I could easily have cleaned up. There was no point where my body forced the decision. I sat there knowing perfectly well I could have finished the lot, and I stopped because I thought I should, not because I needed to.
That isn’t the same as being full. That was willpower, not satiety.
And I feel like shit about it, because it was fucking fantastic.
Both things are true. I’m glad I stopped. I’m also pissed off that I did.
That wasn’t even the hard part.
The hard part came afterwards, when my brain calmly asked where the pudding was.
Not because I was hungry. I’d just eaten a roast dinner. This was something else: a very specific wanting for something sweet, and a feeling that the meal wasn’t finished yet. It’s the same contract I keep running into. Eat dinner, earn dessert.
And this is where it gets cruel.
During the week, my wife will produce cinnamon buns or doughnuts that I have to defend myself against. They just turn up, next to my tea, out of nowhere.
But on Sunday, the one day my brain has decided a pudding is contractually owed, there’s nothing.
Nothing at all.
I still can’t work out her motivation. Maybe the roast is the whole event as far as she’s concerned and dessert was never part of the deal. Maybe she has no idea she’s built the perfect test. Either way, the buns turn up when I’m not expecting them and vanish when I am.
None of it is a big deal on its own. Three roast potatoes. A Yorkshire pudding. A pudding that never arrived. But it’s the slow drip that gets you, one small refusal after another, all on the day the food is best.
The contract says eat dinner, earn dessert. I know that’s bullshit. Nobody is owed a pudding for finishing their dinner. But knowing that doesn’t make breaking it any less unpleasant.
So that was the final course. No dessert. Just the contract sitting there unfulfilled, and me at the table trying to work out who I was supposed to complain to.