20 Quid Well Spent

My eyes are a bit tired this morning I am off to bed very soon , but thank you all for your birthday greetings, phone messages, cards ,gifts and T shirts! they are all much appreciated

As I was leaving work this morning a booming Hungarian voice sang out
Tank You Tank You Mr Gray, your sausage bloody lovely!"
It was Rita, one of the care workers, and she was slapping her big hands in excitement
My sausage had obviously made her day,
Just as I hoped it would
I must admit now that My sausage was in fact not MY sausage at all, but a mere imposter brought in to save my bacon and to bring a smile on the face of a homesick Hungarian who just loves pig meat
Its not a complicated story.

Now Rita misses her small village in the Hungarian countryside. she misses her family, her family farm and her rural home cured bacon, and so when one day she learned that I used to keep pigs she homed in like an Exocet missile
"You ave pigs?" she asked me excitedly one evening before going off duty "YOU kill your pigs?"
I told her that I used to keep pigs and I had them slaughtered for meat
"I love pig meat! Rita shared, her lips all of a quiver " At home I eat pig meat everyday EV-ER-LY DAY!"
"That's nice!"I replied feeling a bit queasy
But Rita wouldn't let it alone and the sudden prospect of getting her hands on a homemade sausage  filled her with excitement that I found rather moving
"I NOW buy from you pig meat!" she announced with that Eastern European directness and because she looked so excited I just didn't have the heart to say that we had eaten all of my pigs' meat years ago now
I promised to bring her some sausage in as a gift
Rita clapped her hands like a big toddler
Yesterday I did just that.....ok I pretended that it was my home grown sausage where it was a local bespoke butcher's finest organic Welsh brand, and OK it cost me 20 quid on the nose
but the look on Rita's face when she said "Sausage Bloody lovely!"  WAS WORTH IT!