The fortnightly column that puts words in your mouth. This week: FOOD

They throw a good party here in Barcelona. I was at a wedding till six yesterday morning and round about first light the honey of a bride starts telling me how she lost her cherry back when she was barely a cup cake. Not that it was so bad, she even tossed her cookies first time, which was peachy, but she was gone on the egghead and he was just a crumpet fiend who clocked her as easy meat. Told her she was the apple of his eye but it was all tripe; he just hammed it up so he could get his oats. She was nuts about him; it was ages before she saw what a bad egg he was.

All this rhubarb brings out the milk of human kindness in me, so I fish out my flask and pour her a shot of the water of life. Well, she says, she settled his hash long ago but she's been getting the rough end of the pineapple ever since. Every man she meets is either a fruitcake or a doughnut, some beefcake who treats her like a tart, or a flake too far out to lunch to be worth the breakfast. The last one was just a long drink of water, a couch potato who never had any beans, all he ever wanted to do was veg out and chew the fat. Drove her bananas.

So, she says, she got cheesed off working for peanuts trying to make a crust and then coming home to a crumb whose been on the sauce since lunchtime who tells her some porkies about how he's heard on the grapevine about an easy-as-pie bank job. That one ended up in the soup and he's doing porridge now.

She says to herself one day that it's time to wake up and smell the coffee, she should use her noodle to get out of this pickle and find some other fish to fry. Maybe find a sugar daddy who's crackers about her and doesn't turn salty or clam up every time she has to work nights.

Well, babycakes, I say, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Look on the bright side, you're a dish and you're not in the pudding club. Amen to that, she says. So, I say, where's the beef?

Louis Palabrota