I swear I grew extra abs from trying to control my laughter this
morning while reading this (via creativeloafing)
Dear Mr Branson
REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008
I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use
it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few
years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.
Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over
a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary
journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your
corporation.
Look at this Richard. Just look at it:
I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind
as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why
have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which
one is the starter, which one is the desert?
You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less
than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you
will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of
sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the
green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person
would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this
Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:
I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard.
It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it
wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s
only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my
palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our
miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on
the left might be the desert after all.
Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly
but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert
before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my
worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see
what’s on offer.
I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old
boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat
their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know
what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue
and wrote to Santa about.
Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster
Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing.
That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that
Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard
Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a
month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in
a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some
mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was
decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through
the digestive tract of a bird.
Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with
a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.
By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I
needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It
had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation:
It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A
CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of
back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac
high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be
caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a
piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the
specimen above.
I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had
to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the
sponge shafts moved at one point.
Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous
onboard entertainment. I switched it on:
I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was
incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the
flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it
would be better on another channel:
Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over
again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the
film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was
the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting
headache from squinting at a crackling screen.
My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait
for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long
time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:
Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in
the white stuff.
Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to
be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at
it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard
sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had
overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and
refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it
loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it
formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like
your baaji-mustard.
So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only
question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what
dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a
nature documentary.
As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a
shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and
begging for sustenance.
Yours Sincererly
