I was sitting in a well-known Dublin cafe this week staring at a blank page and a deadline when, suddenly, a giant bird came crashing through the stain-glass windows carrying a lamb in its beak, which it dropped, blood-soaked, into my lap.
As I sat there, stunned, it occurred to me that here was a brutal metaphor for the sort of Ireland . . . .
All right, that didn't happen at all, except the bit about the cafe and the blank page. But what did happen - and it was every bit as welcome at the time - is that a woman I had never met before came over to my table and said: "Excuse me sir, we're doing some market research on our coffee products. Would you mind answering a few questions?".
So, masking a sinister smile and slipping the blank page and my pen under a newspaper, I said: "Why, I'd be delighted." Which was nearly true: market research is something that always seems to happen to other people and, by my calculations, the fact that I had finally been chosen meant that a lottery win couldn't be far away either.
Anyway, many of the woman's questions concerned the cup of coffee I was having, which I was asked to analyse under the headings of temperature, taste, freshness, price and overall quality. These in turn were to be marked one to five, ranging from "not very satisfactory" to "very satisfactory".
This kind of thing can make you feel a bit foolish, of course, so I quickly decided that "four" - a number I have always found "quite satisfactory" - was the answer to everything. Except once, when I primly replied "three" and a second time when - to show I didn't lack generosity - I said "four-and-a-half".
There was no box for "don't know" or "undecided," needless to say. One of the embarrassing things about consumer surveys is that, often as not, you have no opinion at all about the thing in question, but you're not allowed to admit it. And it's not just consumer surveys. Maybe you too have experienced the moment at a posh dinner party when one of the guests uses a fancy adjective about the wine and, sucked in by the silence, you feel obliged to riposte and you blurt out something like "four" and hope you haven't made a fool of yourself.
But there was a deeper sense of deja vu about this market research and, after some thought, I realised why. I have often been subjected to this process in my own home! By my wife!
Now, we all need reassurance from time to time, and I am no exception. On the rare occasions when I cook dinner I like to know it is a success, which I define as "nobody turning a funny colour afterwards". Compliments are welcome, of course, but I will never, ever ask anyone what they thought of the food. Leave well enough alone, is my motto.
When my wife cooks dinner, (using recipes from her favourite cook book, 100 Easy-To-Do Experiments), it is never that simple. There will be a brief post-prandial pause, during which I may volunteer a statement about the cooking. Then, if I have chosen to remain silent, there will be a question, which always takes the same form:
"Well?" I have some stock answers for these occasions, three of which are "er . . .", "duh . . ." and my favourite - "it's too early to say". But these are only delaying tactics and are little use when it cuts up rough, with questions like "yes, but what did you think of the sauce?" and "on a scale of one to five, from `crisp' to `soggy,' how would you rate the broccoli?"
Sometimes, I will suspect a trick question, like: "could you taste the coriander?" This leaves me floundering, playing for time as I try desperately to remember if coriander is used in food, or for removing limescale.
I should say here that my wife is an excellent cook, with a genuine flair for classic French cuisine and an unnerving way of passing behind me as I'm writing this.
In fact, the problems I have in describing food have more to do with my palatal inadequacies. It is a fact (according to a recent column in this newspaper by Dr William Reville) that men (generally speaking) have less developed taste buds than women (generally speaking).
Which may be why, minutes after a meal, I often have difficulty remembering whether it was chicken or fish, never mind what the sauce was like. And it's probably why the sort of food that would have Mexicans licking the inside of the freezer compartment is the kind to which I am most likely to award a five on the scale of "dull" to "interesting".
The woman in the cafe terminated our question and answer session by telling me they were holding a taste-test in the near future and participants would get a £15 coffee voucher. This sounded a bit too involved for my liking. I could imagine breaking down under intense questioning, like: "when did you first have these feelings of revulsion about getting too much milk in your coffee?" So when she asked me how I'd feel about taking part in the test, I was blunt but honest: "That's a one, I'm afraid."