Love is a wonderful thing, but to make a relationship work there has to be compromise. Sometimes even the most lovey-dovey of couples will find themselves at loggerheads over an issue and they either have to work through it or call it a day. Many a love will die on the battlefields of principles and taste and sometimes you see your perfect partner in a new light if their views are opposed enough to your own.
This week I have come to realise that the future of my relationship with my current girlfriend (let's keep her on her toes) is in jeopardy, because I have realised that she prefers the sandwich shop "Eat" to the ostensibly similar but very different sandwich shop "Pret a Manger". She would always choose the former over the latter, whilst I am the exact opposite. I think Pret is better than Eat. I don't mind eating in Eat if there is no other option and she is happy to eat in Pret if that's all there is on offer, but if we have the option she will always choose Eat and I will always choose Pret. It's not like Jack Spratt and his wife whose different tastes in fat and lean meant they could share a meal together quite happily. We either have to compromise and make one of us slightly miffed as we choose one over the other or go somewhere else entirely, making us both unhappy or eat in separate similar to the point of being the same, but different enough to cause us to argue, sandwich shops.
You might think there are more important and less middle class issues to be worrying about. But you don't get it. Pret is better. I am not sure I can settle down and have kids with someone who prefers Eat. What if the kids inherit the Eat gene as well? The crayfish and noodle salad there is just not quite as piquant as the crayfish and noodle salad at Pret. Plus there are seeds on the Pret one. Only an idiot could prefer the rubbery noodles at Eat. My girlfriend is such an idiot.
I mean there is a possibility that Pret and Eat are actually run by the same company, and stock exactly the same food in slightly different packaging, but using slightly different marketing to appeal to slightly different reasonably affluent sandwich eaters. My brand loyalty to Pret might all be because of some kind of manipulation. But Pret is still best. I would have to pretend to love my Eat preferring children, but in my heart I would be ashamed of them as I am of my foolish girlfriend.
We were doing some last minute errands at the Westfield this lunchtime, before heading back home, packing up the car and embarking on our odyssey to the Edinburgh Fringe (via Cardiff and Newcastle). "Let's quickly grab some lunch," I said, unthinkingly.
"Can we go to Eat?" enthused my girlfriend - she knows I prefer Pret and I think she might just be acting in this way so as to drive a wedge between us.
"Well," I slyly replied, "I am going to the bank and you're going to Kurt Geiger, and if you look at the Westfield app you will see that they are both situated on the south side upper levle of the shopping centre, and Pret is pretty much equidistant between them - whilst Eat is way up there on the North side on the lower level. I would love to go to Eat... " (this was a clever lie), "but we are pressed for time as we have to get to Cardiff and there is disruption on the M4 in South Wales, so unfortunately we'll have to go to Pret." Check!
"Oh we always go to Pret," she lied, "We'd always go to Pret if it was up to you. It's my turn to go to Eat." This was only technically true - we had indeed gone to Pret last time - but Pret is best so that wipes that out.
"My hands are tied on this. I wish I could be eating the Eat crayfish salad, but we don't have time so let's eat the Pret one."
"The Pret one is horrible."
"Look... I think we might need to talk...."
I looked into my girlfriend's eyes. If only I had thought to ask her about her sandwich shop preferences before I fell in love with her, but you can't turn back time. Not since Romeo and Juliet have two lovers been in two such opposing houses. I had to tell her that our love couldn't be. How would she feel having to bring up children who preferred Pret? Sick to her stomach. She wouldn't be able to bond with them - (and believe me the minute our baby was born I would be putting them next to a Pret crayfish salad and an Eat crayfish salad and seeing which one they chose).
And yet as I prepared myself to break up with her (which was going to be awkward as we're sharing a tiny flat in Edinburgh) something flickered within me as I recalled the first time I had been lost in her eyes and I wondered if there was some way we could override this issue and find a way through. I made the most noble sacrifice a man can ever make. I said, "All right, let's go to Eat."
I wouldn't enjoy it and I would make myself sick and throw up their disgusting crayfish salad the minute I had eaten it, but I had to do this for the sake of love. We passed Pret and I looked longingly in - "They're doing chicken curry soup," I whispered. But the choice had been made. I was being unfaithful to my sandwich shop. I hoped it could forgive me. Someone else would be drinking the chicken curry soup that I would have been drinking, if only I had chosen my mate more carefully. If you're not in love now, make sure the Pret/Eat thing is the first question you ask, either face to face or by means of questionnaire that you make them fill out before you will agree to speak to them.
It felt wrong going into Eat, but I bought the crayfish salad and went through the motions of eating it. It was a lot better than I remembered. In fact, I quickly realised it was better than the Pret one. But if I admitted that then my girlfriend would have won and all the power in the relationship would be hers. But the coffee was also better in Eat. And if I had remembered to bring my now redundant BBC pass I could have got 10% off. It was an epiphany. Eat is the best. My girlfriend was right. Which makes me feel a bit conflicted and silly. But at least I don't have to dump her (though I might occasionally go and have a secret Malaysian chicken soup behind her back when she's away from home and as long as I am not papped there is no way she will ever find out about it).
But if we have a baby and it prefers Pret that does mean we have to leave it on the hillside to fend for itself.
I have done a little preview podcast for the upcoming Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe Podcast which you can download from
the British Comedy Guide or subscribe to on iTunes. The proper podcasts will be popping up daily from 3rd August and you can come and see them recorded live
at the Stand at 2.20pm (the one of the 3rd is at 4.50pm). It'll be a fun show to see live, but they will all be up for free online as well, so you can be a part of the Fringe even if you can't make it to Scotland.
You can also see me on
the Carpool podcast I did in Edinburgh last year.
I had a fun gig at St David's Hall tonight and if you're in Cardiff you can see me again on Friday 29th -
get tickets here.
