Spanish Burger

Is there anything better for a dirty great hangover than a dirty great burger with all the trimmings, egg, bacon, onions, mushrooms and a plate full of home-made chips to just wash it down. All I needed was to get this tomato sauce sachet open and I’d be on the road to recovery. Not that was proving as easy as it should have been. The plastic wrapping obviously was not keen to give up its contents, jealously protecting them . I'd torn the perforations but they were in the wrong place, now I was biting at it to try to get an opening big enough for that scarlet nectar to anoint my food. Finally, after far too much effort for my hungover body, I managed to get in! A millimetre hole had appeared and, with enough force, I could coax the ketchup onto my plate.

I squeezed, it was working but then the unexpected happened. I watched in horror as the ketchup somehow didn’t fall nicely onto my plate but arced across the restaurant like a monochromed rainbow before coming to rest down the back of the pristine white shirt and trousers of the woman sat about 4 feet away. I looked at the perfect straight line of ketchup on her clothes in a state of shock. What to do? Christ if I had done this in the UK it would have been bad enough, but at least there I could have apologised and explained the problem before offering some form of compensation. But here, where I hardly had a word of the local lingo, the situation seemed impossible.

The woman’s whose back I splattered  hadn't noticed the new pattern on her clothes, while from what I could see no one else had witnessed the shooting. Should I tell her, or keep quiet? I was hoping no one had seen and was waiting for me to own up. I decided to brave it out and say nothing. I set about my food with less enthusiasm that I had originally envisaged always keeping half an eye on my fellow diners waiting to see if anyone would come forward.

About halfway through my burger she stood up to leave, as she slipped her jacket on I heard her let out a little cry, an arrgh or urrgh or something. I tried to bury my head further into my burger. I felt my cheeks redden to the colour of the ketchup on her clothes. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her look at her hand and then look around for the culprit. The empty sachet was still on my table exposing my guilt. I could feel her eyes on me, staring, accusing, waiting for me to say something. I rode it out; I kept looking at my burger and eating my chips refusing to meet her angry eyes. But she was not going to give up easily, she took a step in my direction pointing at me. My face was now so close to my plate that my nose was virtually in the little ketchup that had made it on to it. She was speaking to me in Spanish but I was ignoring her. Finally my cowardice paid off, the woman with the ketchuped back realised that I wasn’t going to look up. She turned around and walked away, I moved my face away from my plate and relax a little. But had I relaxed too soon? The woman was coming back, in her hand she had a squeezy mustard bottle. She stood over me and emptied the contents over my head.