LOUISE WORTHINGTON - REFLECTIONS FROM AN EPICURE

Louise Worthington's flash fiction and short stories have been published in various literary magazines in the UK and overseas and her collection - called Stained Glass Lives is available from Waterstones, Amazon and other stores. Her debut novel, Distorted Days, was self-published in 2019. She has a degree in Literature and lives with her family in the West Midlands in the UK. Bloodhound Books will be publishing her first psychological thriller, Rachel's Garden, in 2021.  https://louiseworthington.co.uk/   

​Reflections from an Epicure

​It was the Spring season when we met. We skipped straight to the desert: you just know when it’s the right thing to do, there’s no point in wasting time over canapes and foreplay when you are ravenous for each other. He was spectacular, gorgeous! The veritable icing on all cakes; the big daddy off gateaux. He needed a glass house not a desert cabinet. Take it from me, when you know what you want, grab it, devour it- or someone else will.
 
I didn’t crumble, but my first love broke my heart. I was a rhubarb fool for a while after that.
Not that I cried over spilt milk for long. He’d stolen my cherry, but a diet of carbohydrate soon got my blood pumping again. I had my pastry phase. My mornings began with pain au chocolat and freshly squeezed orange juice.
 
Then I met a butcher and for the next five years I was won over with beef. Beef and I were his muse. With red wine, the finest oyster mushrooms, finely chopped parsley…. he cooked with creme, with sticky honey and Madeira sauce.
 
I got so gorged on meat I was satiated so I became a vegetarian, got thin and lean. Dined on swordfish with lemon and learnt to scuba-dive. I loved myself. I loved me and food and gave up romance for a while. I cooked things for myself I hadn’t even contemplated: honeyed parsnips, paella with the juiciest, fattest prawns and the tenderest of rice; smoked salmon and scrambled eggs with cracked pepper and piping hot coffee. The scents in my kitchen were finer than any perfume I’d been bought in all my romances.
 
But it was the eggs that did it.
 
When you live alone it’s sometimes hard to get the shopping right. It does get lonely. Time stretched out. I must have muddled up the best by dates. I poisoned myself. After that, I lost my appetite. I started living on tin food. Even tinned fruit cocktail. It was a sad time. Baked beans. Tinned spotted dick.
 
I am a dried fig now, a raisin in a sealed packet only good for porridge with a short sell by date.
 
If I could have anyone, I’d have a soup man with a dishwasher. A thick, wholesome, homemade soup.  Broth. I’d happily spend my final days with a Broth man.
 
END