Why, that's a very large salad. . .

My lunch. The last of the bulgar wheat, more of the feta, the scraplets of the waffer-thin ham. But why such a large bowl? Why is that necessary? You want to know why? Because of lettuce.

Lettuce, lettuce, obnoxious lettuce.

Now the sins of lettuce, as you are all only too aware, number in the thousands. Here I confine myself to the top three transgressions of this most uppity of salad-stuffs.

One.

It has no right taking up so much space in a bowl. It has nothing nutritious to offer besides a bit of water and some smugness of having 1 of The Five. The Five is a tyranny that shall be addressed at a later time, when lettuce has been utterly Denounced. As it stands, lettuce is party to this tyranny, and therefore must be eliminated as an enemy of Freedom.

Two.

It simply refuses to be cut down to size. No matter how one shreds or tears - or indeed pummels - there will always be a frond here or there, its ludicrous self-belief refusing to be contained by any hapless consumer’s contorted or sucking maw, forcing one to flail facially in order to tame the bastard. Put them high if you hear me people – TESTIFY.

Three.

Everyone with the most basic knowledge of alliances among vegetables acknowledges that lettuce has a long-standing arrangement with the cherry tomato, both plotting night and day to enslave the eater of salad via a process of attrition and humiliation. Lettuce, I can now reveal, is, in fact, the pimp of the cherry tomato. Brutalised by life in the greenhouse, a cherry tomato on-the-vine (a bargain at Farmers’ market for £1.50) appears from its brown paper carrier, its pendulous fruits quivering with ripeness, only then to be shamelessly used as a ‘fluffer’, distracting from the lettuce’s own inadequacies.

So there we have it. Why salad is the devil.

That being said, it did make a very tasty lunch, and there was even some left for a tasty side tomorrow. Turns out characterising the ingredients of one’s salad can make for a jolly and, in my case, indulgently self-righteous lunch hour. 

 (lettuce is tamed)