Quality time

Nine years ago me and Dig decided to feed ourselves junk. From the takeaway.

Since then, once a month, we've chewed our way through crap stewed in monosodium glutamate, toxic synthetics, volcanic reds, and rat poison.

Because once the kids beamed down from the mother ship, eating junk was the only way to keep together that haphazard arrangement known as our marriage. No more erotic encounters in exotic locations. No more jungle treks. No more late night champagne parties. Not for me. With three beings hanging from my limbs Dig went off to do those things while a malfunctioning brain sat me down at home and programmed me to protect and preserve the newly delivered little aliens.

And just about the only marriage moment me and Dig have shared together since Shark, Squirrel and Tiger landed on planet Earth is the pleasure we call the takeaway. This means strap the little aliens into bed early and abuse our mortal bodies with curry and tartrazine before sharing the romantic foreplay of a fart and a belch and collapsing into the sleep of the damned thanks to the aspartamane.

But in recent years we have had to accept change even there. The little aliens are now big aliens. They won't sleep before 11pm and have muscled in on the romantic encounter to demand peshwari nan, onion bhaji and pilau rice.

Well that's just how things stand. Our fragile marriage is glued together with a monthly dose of vegetable jalfrezi and we have introduced the alien beings to the Earthly delights of curry cocktail, fatty heart attack juice, and a brain exploding chemical compound called mint dip.

This experience we may now call, not quality marriage time, but family bonding time.

Now there is no real point to all this, except to note that this evening's Sunset Yellow takeaway for two adults and three children cost £140. This is because there is a new waiter at the local balti house who is having trouble operating the card machine and punched in the amount at least five times before Dig despaired, paid cash, and came home complaining.