Someone likes cream

This evening we had our first Christmas pudding of 2010, and although we already had the pudding, and a bottle and a half of practically undrinkable brandy left from last year, we didn't have any cream. I stopped off at 360, the organic supermarket near my office, and picked up a carton of single cream. When I paid her, the cashier gave me my change, the cream, and a plastic knife, fork and spoon.

How depraved did I look? I know I haven't shaved in over a week, and my hair could do with a cut, but did I really have the demeanour of a man who dines on cartons of cream, and is in such a rush that he needs free utensils to consume it before he even gets home?

Come to think of it, what good would a knife and fork be? Perhaps if I was ill-mannered enough to eat cream straight from the carton, but still polite enough to use cutlery, then the spoon might be useful, but a knife and fork? It's not like this was clotted cream, for heaven's sake.

And worse, I declined the cutlery in total. What could she have thought of me now, the kind of base animal that buys cream to eat there and then, and can't even be bothered with a knife and fork? The disgust was clear in her face. I'll have to ask somebody else to go to the supermarket for me until the fuss dies down.

Honestly, it's worse than the time I bought a kilo of hummous and smeared it over my face before I'd even got to the queue for the tills.

Not content with my homage to Richard Herring's incredible yoghurt-purchasing material, I went home and almost set the kitchen on fire. I did have assistance from my fiancee, who has yet to learn the correct quantity of brandy for a Christmas pudding is two tablespoonfuls, and not four glugs from the bottle. Still, such lovely blue flames, leaping two feet above the pudding...