Pass the Cheese?  Non!!  Fling zee Fromage...

Warning: this is a tale of GCH (Grievous Cheese Harm), mass hysteria (alcohol-fuelled) and Donald Duck's fan club.

Once upon a time in the idyllic Lot region of France a group of erstwhile college chums, myself included, were staying in my brother's gite.  Correction - it was not yet a gite but we could all see its phenomenal potential.  It was, in fact, a derelict barn, a half-derelict house, and a charmingly rustic pig-sty.  We camped in some discomfort in the overgrown wilderness which was naively referred to as 'The Garden'.  Halcyon days passed, eating the fine local Wild Boar and drinking the 80p a litre Vin Plonk from the mayor's back parlour.

My chums were all getting on famously. We had no need for outside entertainment, ice-cream vans or wildlife magazines to while away the hours.  However, there were storm clouds gathering on the horizon, in the form of John the Farrier from Cornwall.  He was a vague 'pass-you-in-the-pub' sort of acquaintance of my brother (who, as fortune would have it, was back in Blighty, keeping his head down in a skulking sort of way).  The Farrier arrived to an almost total lack of welcome from the gang and immediately set about trying to convert us to Vegetarianism in a most pedantic fashion.  Bemusement was swiftly followed on our part by mild irritation, and then downright aggrievance.  Our holiday was no longer the idyll it had been.

At the local Auberge, matters came to a head over the duck and then all hell broke loose with the arrival of the cheese board.  It was only a very tiny Auberge who had one menu on offer, whether you liked the ingredients or not. That night it was Duck and he, being a Vegetarian of trying proportions, did not.  He launched into a diatribe starting with the merits of ducks being ducks for the sole purpose of paddling about ponds and ending up extolling the virtues of Donald, Hewey, Louis and Dewey.  We were bored, very bored - and also very drunk, as libations of generous proportions had helped us blot him out all evening.

The Fromage approached - to his delight.  He then did a very stupid thing and asked my good friend Woller (known to Easypeasy regulars as Big Al) to pass him the Brie. Big Al is generally known as a good-humoured, easy-going kind of girl, but pent up aggression, fuelled by alcoholic verve, transformed her in one instant to a Hooligan.  She picked up said Brie and hurled it with all her might, down the long table, past our amazed but secretly delighted faces - straight into his equally amazed, but rather less delighted, Visage.  It was a beautiful sight.  He was splattered all over.  Our party fell about in mirth, clapped her on the back and held her, from that moment on, in awe.  Michelle from the Auberge grinned.   He, the Farrier, departed in silence, dripping cheese down his back.  We cheered as one.

If there is a moral to this story, let it be this - never ask Big Al (Woller) to pass the Brie, having previously offended her to the core.  You see, Duck is her most favourite of foods.  Zut Alors!!! 

Moy