Courgette Episodes

My earliest food memory involves courgette - the young Cereal Killah choked on one as a classmate shat himself. It was a tough day at the nursery.

I still recall my pride, tottering up to the table and grabbing a slice of alien veg. The nursery's bosomy staff all coed their admiration – this courageous young lad would try any damned food he was offered!

Yee-ha! Whoopy-doo! Hair-ruffles all round! Then Timmy Brinkley pooped his pants, and Cereal Toddlah's moment of triumph turned to tragedy.

As I impishly slipped the courgette into my mouth, I had no idea of the semi-digested tragedy unfolding in my Brinkley's pants. But as his pathetic cries sirened behind me, the smell of two separate substances – my courgette and my classmate's milky shite – began to mingle.

They intertwined, like a name and a face that one can't quite put together. Their sweet, vegetal scents mingled closer, on the back of my palate, as I prepared to swallow. Then, as I bit down on the squidgy bolus, those two substances united as one in my mind. As I swallowed the courgette, I may as well have been eating poop.

I halted the poo-gette as it made for my stomach. It resisted arrest, and a struggle ensued around my oesophagus. By the time the renegade vegetable finally emerged, cuffed in phlegm and panic, even Brinkley had fallen silent.

Surrounded by helpers, I swore through bitter tears that I would never eat another courgette.

*

Fast forward thirteen years: the adolescent Cereal Killah has revised his courgette embargo.  City living had broadened my horizons.

I had just moved down to London to live with my father and step-mother. My mother was left fretting in the country while her little boy hit the big smoke, with all its temptations. She warned the old man that young Cereal Killah would soon need to be told about the birds and the bees.

When I returned home from school that day, I was thinking nothing more frisky than giving my algebra homework a damned good seeing to. Imagine my shock when I entered my bedroom, and found my father lurking in its shadows. He turned to face me, but left his hands behind his back:

“It's time you and I had a little chat, son....”

That was as far as my father had planned our 'little chat'. After an awkward pause, he tossed a courgette onto my bed. It was swiftly followed by a strawberry-flavoured condom.

“Now put it on.”

My father probably thought he was performing a paternal duty. In reality, he had planted a major insecurity in the churning thoughts of his pubescent son. That courgette must have been twelve inches long.  He probably worked his way though the fruit and veg box like Bruce Willis settling on his samurai sword in Pulp Fiction.  Moving wide-eyed from from carrot to banana and, finally, to courgette.

To my young eyes, this auxiliary phallus looked an absolute whopper. Perhaps that's normal, thought Cereal Killah, terrified. I buried my alarm and set about the task with a cool nonchalance – pretty tricky when you're trying to wrap a johnny round the Incredible Hulk's wanger.

• Do you put it between your own legs, as your father looks on? Most convenient, but humiliating.
• Or do you prop it up beside you, holding the base as you roll down the rubber? Surely that looks like you're practising putting it on someone else!

My father watched stocially. After what seemed an eternity, I stepped away from the bed and the pair of us admired this bizarre piece of modern art.

“Good” said my father. “Good. Now can you tell me why you might put on a condom?”

Ten seconds later, it was over. Thank Christ. My father sloped off and I did some revision on Gladstone, but my mind was elsewhere. I was grateful to be called downstairs for dinner.

“What's cooking?” I asked my step-mother, acting as if nothing had happened.

“Courgette risotto.”

*

Now I'm 28. And I'm looking at one of the biggest courgette gluts this country has ever seen:

My farmers' market is full of them. My housemates have just unearthed a couple of monsters from our backyard. And my mother's partner has handed me a bagful of prize specimens. I'll be damned if they're going in the bin.

So I'll be trying a fair few courgette recipes in the next few weeks. I just wanted you to know. It's not going to be easy.