You know something’s not right in the kitchen when...

You know something’s not right in the kitchen when;

• Your peas have singe marks on them.

• You can’t find the word ‘congealed’ in any of your recipe books.

• Formerly frozen sweet corn now sport fluffy blue coats and mostly live secluded, albeit lonely, lives under the fridge. Happily, they all have the crusty conviction that one day they will be discovered anew.

• You think that shopping lists are a bit ‘passé love.’

• You have just added the thirteenth tube of ASDA tomato purée to the cupboard. And that’s only this week.

• The bottles of severely greying herbs are mostly dated ‘ best by Oct 1969.'

• Some of those bottles feature cobwebs – on the inside. The spiders are free.

• The potatoes that you’re peeling with the new peeler look like the result of a slasher movie and you have no fingertips left.

• The vigorous flames on the toast are now a foot high and rising.

• Your eggs have been carbon dated back to the age of dinosaurs. Or earlier.

• Whatever’s in the plastic rubbish bin has melted it beyond recognition.

• Dense smoke has replaced fresh air in the area of culinary wizardry.

• You can smell burning at two in the morning and stumble dozily downstairs to find a blackened saucepan boiled dry – three hours since some boiled rice seemed a great idea for an après pub supper and then you fell asleep. Fast asleep.

• Dirty take away containers are the latest ‘must have’ kitchen collectable.

• You can’t move an inch/centimetre without bumping into an empty wine bottle whose origins are totally unknown. Honest.

• The dog’s tummy is suddenly whole chicken shaped and Sunday dinner has mysteriously disappeared. Could have been chicken. Weird co-incidence? I think not.

• The M&S potpourri sometimes looks a good alternative for breakfast cereal. Just add prunes.

• Cookery books have taken over the shelf where actual food use to be.

• Every recipe’s main ingredient is MSG.

• The rice is rather too animated in its storage jar and has started to resemble a mini vortex in action.

• Every fruit and vegetable you cut in half features the face of Jesus. Miraculously they all talk to you. About fish and bread mostly. Sadly it is in a combination of Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew and hard to prove to the general public.

• The redundant vegetable rack now houses chocolate bars only and in bulk amounts.

• You realise when, after your house is reduced to smouldering ashes, that BBQs are best enjoyed outside, preferably without petrol as an aid to combustibility.

• Freshly posthumous fish bursts out of your filthy fridge and tries to swim back to the supermarket – successfully.

• You spend more time re-reading the packaging than actually cooking the meal.

• The untouched poisonous fungi at the back of the fridge celebrates its tenth birthday by rapidly regenerating.

• You believe that salmonella is best served en croute with new potatoes, peas, a cucumber relish and a glass of chilled Chablis.

• Your deep freeze resembles a fetid sea of water and solids. Cross-contamination meets cross channel swimming.

• Diarrhoea is an unwelcome, yet common, topic of conversation in your family.

• You find yourself suddenly obsessed with phallic shaped fruits and veg, but have no idea why.

• You can’t see the kitchen sink for filthy pots, pans and oversized - multiplying bacteria, some with evil faces.

• Mice, rats and cockroaches avoid your kitchen like the plague.

• The plague avoids your kitchen too.

• The rancid runner beans sign up for a marathon in a kitchen version of The Great Escape.

• The pasta has been in the cupboard so long that it has been ingored by three generations.

• The bloated tin of Heinz baked beans dated 1965 is still being kept for a rainy day. And we are talking England here. Rain- England? Geddit?

• You’ve drank so much red wine to help you cook that you can’t remember what you think you’ve cooked. Best re-read for maximum humour.

• The local bird population refuse your stale breadcrumbs and form an avian protest outside the local Environmental Health Offices.

• Black, burnt and acrid are your favourite descriptive words when penning personal recipes.

• That forlorn bag of flour at the back of the pantry is now Weavle World.

Can you think of anymore? All ideas welcome.