When the going gets tough……

….The tough make pizza. That’s how the saying goes, right? 

 

Actually, it’s not - but that’s what I did the other morning when January became too much for me. 

 

It wasn’t a well-thought-out decision. It’s true that I’d been missing pizza, the only ones I’d eaten over the last few years having been either a) doughy American-style jobbies topped with what tasted like tomato ketchup and Monterey jack cheese or b) trendy, hipster-style thin ones with right-on toppings such as rocket and avocado. In other words, salad served on an over-sized water biscuit. 

 

So when I went into the kitchen the other morning and spotted some flour spilt on the units, I thought: “I know. I’ll compound that mess and make a pizza”. And the project was a qualified success because the result was edible and it helped to pass a few hours.

 

However, the fact remains that the going is indeed getting tough in this overly-long winter that feels like wartime.

 

I used to wonder how I’d cope in a wartime situation. I even on occasion thought it was a shame not to have been tested in the ways our heroic forefathers had. But overall I think this is probably a good thing in my case, because I would probably have been a collaborator.

 

Shocking, right? Though I certainly wouldn’t have sided with the enemy or slept with members of the occupation forces. And I wouldn’t have taken any gifts of stockings or cigarettes from any strange foreign men, either. I would merely have tried to make the best of things and given the marauding army the benefit of the doubt. Not much of a strategy, is it?

 

So as far as I’m concerned, perhaps it’s just as well that our generation’s “war” calls for no difficult moral decisions, no tarring, no feathering and no actual fighting – just overly long days filled with muddy walks and pizza. Not so bad when you look at it that way.