Under The Counter receives a large number of unsolicited emails every day. Most of these are from SLR’s editor, enquiring if the latest Soft Drinks feature has been written yet.
There’s also a couple – inexplicably – from companies in Spain, and the odd one from the World Avocado Organisation (WAO).
Despite his foreign language skills not extending far beyond ‘dos cervezas por favor,’ the Auld Boy usually spends more time reading los emailos españoles than those from the WAO.
Truth be told, he doesn’t really know much about avocados, except that posh people like to ‘smash’ them. This, UTC imagines, must be something akin to foxhunting.
He couldn’t have told you avocados had stones, for example. Until, that is, he received a WAO email titled ‘10 ways to reuse your unwanted avocado stones’.
His experience of avocados, like that of most fruits and vegetables (French fried potato excepted), might be limited, but UTC knows a first-world problem when it plops into his guacamole.
In the unlikely event he ever came into possession of an unwanted avocado stone, the Auld Boy was adamant it was even more unlikely he would deploy it to: make tea; exfoliate; use as compost; add to his porridge; massage Mrs UTC’s feet; make Christmas decorations; construct a wind chime; create jewellery; dye something pink; or even – and as nature intended – grow an avocado tree.
He did, however, promise to launch one at the editor’s head if he didn’t stop bugging him about that Soft Drinks feature.
