Shana was wearing her headphones, or as she prefers to call them, her ‘cans’.
“I’ve been listening to ELP,” she said, removing the cans and waiting a minute for her ears to spring back into shape.
“Oh, I like them,” I enthused. “‘Mister Blue Sky’, ‘Wild West Hero’ and all their other classics.”
“That’s ELO,” huffed Shana. “I said ELP — Emerson, Lake and Palmer: ‘Brain Salad Surgery’.”
“Ah,” I said, realising my deliberate error. “I still like ELO though. Especially their lead singer, Yasser Arafat.”
Shana was pretty sure I was joshing but added a mild harrumph for good measure. “I think that risotto had a funny effect on you.”
“Maybe it was the ‘shrooms,” I ventured.
“What!” said Shana. “You mean you didn’t wash them first?”
Now it was my turn to worry. What if, owing to a rare accident at the packing plant, a tiny spore of fly agaric had become intermingled with our chestnut mushrooms? And what if I had ingested this particle? Why was the room suddenly spinning? And where was that strange hippy-trippy music coming from? (Answer: probably still coming from Shana’s ‘cans’. Well, at least she wasn’t really listening to Bieber. That really would‘ve been a step too far.)
