I mentally choked (rather like Eminem at the beginning of the film ‘8 Mile’, a tome that I base a lot of my lifestyle on). But I couldn’t even begin to react. As Marshall Mathers said, I only had only one chance to save this tuna and still have a delicious lunch (I was planning to make a tuna toastie). This was my one shot, my one opportunity, everything I’d ever wanted for– was I going to capture it, or just let it slip? Even as I sat there staring, my tuna was getting soggy and useless. THE CLOCK WAS RUN OUT, OVER, BLAM. I was rapidly blowing and it and all I could do was look lamely at my emasculated can opener. Luckily William Shatner was walking past the window and happened to look in and noticed; his reaction was both esoteric and shattering:
(NB: did not actually happen, is more of a description of my mental state)
However, the metaphorical William Shatner was enough to crack me out of my reverie, and with no further ado I leapt into action. The first thing to do was to rescue the tuna. I threw the can opener to the floor and plunged my hands into the murky depths of the sink, which contained a week’s worth of dirty washing up, as well as all the waste fluids that are necessarily produced by a busy teenager (I’m talking spat out toothpaste, phlegm, dregs of coffee/tea that never got drunk, bits of paper, ink, seaweed, manky vitamins, beer, etc etc etc). Frankly the water was congealing to the point that it was nearly solid in some places, what with all the oils and bits of bread and marmite floating about in there. However after stabbing myself with a concealed submarine breadknife and probably catching Veils Disease from the fluid, I managed to fish out the tin of tuna (get it, ‘fish out’, eh eh eh brilliant I’m wasted on you people). I examined it critically. Well. There was good news and bad news. The good news was that the hole made by the can opener wasn’t big enough to let the magically delicious tuna float away into the murky bottom of my abyssal sink. The bad news was that the hole made by the can opener wasn’t big enough to let the magically delicious tuna float away into the murky bottom of my abyssal belly, as, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fit a fork into it to scrape the tuna out. This was bad times.
I turned to my desk, swept the complete works of George Eliot onto the floor, placed the partially opened tin of tuna onto the centre of my workstation, sat down on my chair, crossed my legs, made a little pyramid with my fingers, leant forward and glared at it. I don’t know what I was expecting – the can to open itself out of embarrassment, maybe? – but it just sat there, oozing delicious tuna smells and being infuriating. The more I stared at it, the more I wanted it. To understand the full scale of this calamity, you must start to understand my common nutritional intake as a student. It’s tea, coffee, and bread. That’s it. I have my bread toasted, I have it with marmite, I have it with melted cheese I have it with Philadelphia, but it’s pretty much the whole staple of my diet. And I don’t do meals any more. Today I got up at 930am and my sole solid food intake was a six-piece bread binge at 8.30pm, along with about four cups of tea. I’m hoping to just start not eating at all and just not notice the difference (which I think will do wonders for my Hustings application to be the college anorexia councellor – I’ll have some inspirational stories to tell the girls). So you can imagine that a desire to actually eat some tuna (in a toastie, with cheese and bread) was not just an idle wish – it was an all-encompassing quest, bitches. So. I got out a bit of paper and made a list of options (in fact I wrote them over my photocopy of the poem “Grief” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; I know it’s a devastating insight into the power of bereavement on people, but at the same time fair’s fair, and tuna comes first).
OPTION ONE: TRY AND FIX THE CAN OPENER
I picked it up and cast a keep technical eye over it. I put it down and made some calculations on a bit of paper, along with a small sketchy diagram of the mechanism of the opener. However I realised halfway through that I had no engineering understanding whatsoever so the can opener mechanism blueprint turned into a sketch of Top Cat, wearing a nazi uniform and doing Jessica Rabbit.
I screwed the paper into a small ball and threw it at the bin. I missed.
OPTION TWO: TRY TO SCRAPE THE TUNA OUT OF THE TINY HOLE USING SOME SORT OF SPATULA
The “Some sort of spatula” turned out to be a pen – the only thing small enough to fit into the hole. After two and half minutes of frantic scraping I managed to get out a flake of tuna that was about a square millimetre long. I eagerly gobbled it down and despite the overwhelming taste of ink, it was still the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten up to that point. However my pen nib was bent and leaking ink everywhere. So I threw it at the bin. I missed.
OPTION THREE: RENT ONE OF THESE HUGE SAW THINGS FOR A DAY AND TOTALLY POUND THE CAN OF TUNA INTO SUBMISSION
I realised pretty early on that this scheme was not only expensive, it was also impractical and unworkable. So I screwed the loan contract into a ball and threw it at the bin. I missed.
OPTION FOUR: THROW THE TIN OF TUNA AT THE WALL
It left a greasy sunflowery-oily mark on my Shaun of the Dead poster, sprayed gunk all over my bed, bounced, and landed perfectly the bin. I reached into the aforesaid receptacle to retrieve my lunch and I accidently put my hand into an expired pot of jam that had blue mould growing off of it. I experimentally licked the jam to see if it tasted anything like tuna. It didn’t. It tasted like Ella’s room, and did nothing to assuage the hunger pangs. I was getting increasingly desperate for the tuna, the sweet smell of which permeated every molecule in my room.
OPTION FIVE: LEAVE THE ROOM TO BORROW SOMEONE ELSE’S CAN OPENER, OR SOMEONE ELSE’S TUNA, OR BUY ANOTHER CAN OPENER, OR BUY SOME TUNA THAT DOESN’T COME IN A CAN
I was about to do this when I suddenly stopped. The first reason for my stoppage was that I was wearing only a pair of boxers. The second – and more pressing - reason was that I was highly wary of leaving my beloved tuna alone in the room. Knowing my luck, one of my friends would probably come along, see that the tuna was there, get obsessed with it, spend all the days and nights of the year obsessively going on about it, become the tuna’s best friend and be the popular one amongst all the other tinned fish products at the supermarket then buy his own can opener and eat it. It’s happened before, you know, and this time I was absolutely not letting Mike have sex with my tuna. It was time to take decisive action. MANLY ACTION. And of course, when I say “MANLY ACTION”, what I’m referring to is “STABBING THE CAN TO DEATH WITH A PENKNIFE”. That’s right, I did the patriotic thing and brutally rent my way in with a huge bloody blade. Truthfully, if I was writing an English Literature essay about the manner in which I opened that can of tuna, I would have to comment on the PHALLIC way that I repeatedly PIERCED the previously virginal lid with the big long PHALLIC knife so that the sweet fishy juices gushed forth. Bluntly it was pornographic. Aime would have written a good essay on it I think. When I was done I threw back my knife and leant back in my chair and accidentally knocked the wrecked remnants of the tin onto the floor. I cried out in horror, weighed up my options, and decided that a few hairs/scraps of paper/plasters/ants wouldn’t impede the taste too much, so I scooped it up and mashed it all back into the tin.
There was a heavenly moan of glee as I held my fishy snack aloft in both hands.
YES! I cried.
YES! cried passing neighbours of my room who looked in and saw what was achieved
YES! cried the tweety birds in the trees
YES! cried the clouds in the sky
NO! cried my tuna… but it was too late.
I put that tuna in some bread with some cheese and made a tuna melt. And frankly it was pretty nice. Not the best thing I’ve ever eaten, and candidly I think that the tuna detracted from the overall experience a bit. I mean seriously, putting tuna in the toaster? Bad move gee. But overall I’d rate it 7/10. Possibly not worth the effort. But the main thing was that I got to stab something and use creative visualisation, and to be honest, does anything else matter?
The answer is no.
*scritch scritch scritch is the sound that a can opener makes when it is busily opening a can of tuna
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