7932/20873
Catie had an important phone call at 9am so I got the kids out of the house and took them to Waitrose in Hitchin. We didn't need loads of stuff, but Catie wanted to make a fish pie for dinner and sent me a text with the list of ingredients.
I checked the list a couple of times, got the potatoes and carrots and cheese and onions and parsley (even though I had to get a plant as they didn't have any packets). I nearly forgot the frozen peas, but got them too. When we got to the check out I checked through the list again and was satisfied I'd got the lot.
I am a great husband.
We got home and as I put the stuff in the fridge I thought, "Hold on, I didn't get any fish."
That was quite a bad error, given my wife was making a fish pie. I decided to blame her list, which I was sure hadn't mentioned fish pie mix, but even then I was on shaky ground. Fish is one of the main ingredients of fish pie.
Then I checked the list and fish pie mix was on it. It was first on the list. Like you might expect. I'd just not seen it.
It was a shame to have got all the other ingredients and not the main ingredient. Catie could, I suppose, make a fish pie with no fish. But I felt partly responsible for this error and so decided that I would go out and get some fish pie mix, so the day could proceed as intended.
I don't like the word hero.
And it might not be applicable in this case.
For fun I went to a supermarket in a different town. That's right, for fun and not because I didn't want the staff at the supermarket to see me coming back in again and buying only fish pie mix and remembering that I'd bought all the other ingredients for a fish pie and then worked out what had happened.
How they would laugh at me.
I was at the Welwyn Garden City Waitrose, hoping that all Waitrose staff wouldn't have set up some kind of WhatsApp group to catch out inefficient husbands. I should probably have gone to Tescos. Ha, as if. Do you know who I am?
It struck me, as I got to the second supermarket that my initial error had really turned my day upside down. I should be at home right now, annoying people who'd signed up to Substack by sending them way too much stuff. Instead I was in Welwyn Garden City, and my life completely changed as a result.
Joey from Bread should do a Sliding Doors style film about this. About a man who forgets to buy fish pie mix in one Waitrose and so has to go and buy some at another Waitrose. In it we'd see how differently that man's life turned out as a result of this small change - in one section we get to see what his life would have been like if he'd remembered to buy the fish pie mix and in the other we see the other life he gets to lead as a result of forgetting. He could call it Fish Pie Mix. And then when people experienced a turning point in their lives (which let's face it happens every single second of every single life, every single day) they could say "This is a real Fish Pie Mix moment." And that would be better, because Mix has a double meaning. It's a mix of fish, but also a mix up of the time line.
If the protagonist was a 57-year-old man then the two lives probably wouldn't be all that much different. He'd have his lunch at Caffe Nero instead of at home and he'd have to cram all his work into the hours from 2pm-6pm instead of starting at about 11. In the second reality he'd get to write a blog about how the mistake had very mildly changed his life and that would in turn affect all the people who would read that blog, rather than the one that he would have written, which would have been about- who knows what? Maybe he'd have got stung by a bee or farted and followed through (but would he write about that? Yes this guy would, that's how desperate he is).
To be honest, a film with very small differences that gradually panned out into huge world changing events would be better than Sliding Doors and closer to reality.
When people think of Sliding Doors moments (or Fish Pie MIx-ups as they will now be known in this reality) they tend to give themselves more agency in their lives than they actually have. There's a sort of belief that we control our own destinies, but of course most of the Fish Pie Mix-ups are beyond our control. Liz Truss put money on our mortgages, a lunatic at the wheel or in the street can take away someone we love, a war breaks out and your home is in the middle of it, a politician gets into power who turns his supporters against people like you.
I still think the knock on from my fish pie mix up will shake the world in unknown ways - someone in the queue behind me in Caffe Nero had their day held up and failed to meet their soul mate, a person in Welwyn who was going to make a fish pie found there was no fish in the shop, someone in Hitchin who would otherwise have not been able to make a fish pie was able to make one. The list is endless.
Catie made a fish pie. It was great. We ate it round the table and the kids talked about their day. In another reality I forgot the fish and didn't bother to go out and get some and the kids ate baked beans in front of the telly. So this was better. I controlled that bit.
I just accidentally deleted this whole entry whilst I was trying to copy, but luckily I was writing on a notes app with an undo button. The me in the Universe who didn't do that is fucking fuming. There's your film Joey from Bread.
But what about the Universe where Sliding Doors was made by Joey from Friends.
If you have been transferred from my old mailing list to this one and think it's a bit much do feel free to unsubscribe!
