[nilesfunnies] Fw: Tomato c*****y

I would consider it a great kindness if everyone could avoid mentioning
tomato chutney at this time of year for this is when I become a c*****y
widower. When great seething cauldrons of the stuff glurp and slurp to
volcanic mud bath arbitrarily defined perfection; when every erupting
tetter gives off a greenish gas of unknown toxicity; when every square
centimetre of cat-sprawling space in the kitchen is occupied by a huge
variety of glass jars that have been saved all year in an as yet
undiscovered dungeon to await filling with the stuff. It is when the
spidery copper plate characters in her grandmother's hand-written
notebook, dated 1860 because it belonged to *her* grandmother, are pored
over like spells on ancient papyri. It is when I'm tasked with tracking
down an enormous .TIFF file I created some years ago for printing on
six-up self-adhesive labels which proclaim the contents of the filled jars
as "Mothers' Union Home Maid Tomato Chutney".

Actually I'm quite proud of that file. It took ages to get right. In each
corner is a tiny clipart picture of a cluster of plums that pass muster as
tomatoes. The main title is set in a semi-circle banner of Avanti
calligraphy fonts. To comply with the law, there's a list of ingredients
which I'd set in almost unreadable 6pt old English. About four years ago,
when she'd sold at least a 100 jars of stuff at the MU Christmas Fayre,
the local newspaper, the Messenger, discovered that buried among the
ingredients was 'eye of newt, ear of bat, tongue of toad'. They enlarged
the label and splashed it on the front page with the eye-catching
headline: 'Witches Launch Takeover Bid for village Mothers' Union'. My
punishment was thirty days cold suppers and no nookie, and since then my
laser-printed labels are examined with a magnifying glass.