27^th Aug 2014_2

Thinking of or saying the word makes me feel one way. But now that I see it on a page, what kind of a word is that. It looks alien to the English language. There is an exception, and that is on a bottle of salad cream, because you can have that with chips.

A quick internet search (ok, Googled) tells me that it comes from the Old French word Salade. There’s no reference to what that old Fench salad would be, but I’m expecting there would be some meat and a tasty cream sauce involved. Then maybe a wine dressing on the right occasion.

In my head, all I see is a boring, tasteless lettuce leaf. But there are good salads. There’s potato salad, fruit salad, and I had some beetroot salad for lunch. I’ve even heard the term “word salad”, but that’s more a derogatory phrase to describe someone who sprays words around hoping people will fall for any accidental sense that you make, and ignore the rubbish you come out with, because you had their buy-in with the true things. For example, most people believe Gulf War II was bad and illegal (if any war can really be legal), but following the person who said it, may cause you to believe that the earth’s moon is hollow. And in this hollow moon, there are aliens watching us. I am talking about the amusing and occasionally correct David Ike. So, Mr Ike, if there are aliens watching us from the moon, wouldn’t they be sophisticated enough to watch us from anywhere they wanted? Don’t even say they are ancient aliens. If they’ve come this far, they’ll have the technology. And finally, what a rubbish place to stay for centuries, if not millennia.

Even in my typing, I’m avoiding real salad. Perhaps it is alien to us after all. Lettuce leaves can be bitter, and everything in our evolution says bitter is bad. It’s not manly, and that is bad for evolution too! Men should be eating stake, pies, and steak pies. Leaves are poncy, and what’s the point?

There is also the idea of personal frailty. There will come a time when a doctor will advise that we eat better food and “cut down” on the bad things. Thinking more deeply, salad is almost an acceptance of my own mortality. Some time in the future I will die. I’d really rather eat another animal that has died. That way I’m proving I’ve outlived something. I’m superior! It’s good that something has been killed and cooked to make me feel better.

I know I must eat more leaves. I’ll just say I’m in training. And anyone who doesn’t like it will have to deal with their own emotional problems with food!