When good intentions go wrong.

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I have a friend (let’s call her Nicola) who lives just about ¼ mile away. She lives in a tiny house with her two boys, having recently separated from their father. There’s hardly any space in her kitchen, her oven recently stopped working and she can’t afford to repair or replace it. One night I got a ’phone call from her at 10 pm, asking whether we had any spare room in the freezer. Hers was full and she had just received a delivery of frozen ready-meals. I told her to bring them round, then rummaged around and reorganised stuff and we managed to fit them in. When she came over with the box, it turned out an old friend had sent them as a birthday present. There were ten individual, prepared gourmet frozen meals. This friend knew about her financial difficulties and lack of cooking facilities and must have thought this would be a help. The snag was that, apart from finding room in a full freezer for these packs at 10 o’clock at night, most of them then needed to be cooked in an oven! A few could be microwaved if they were first removed from the foil trays in which they were delivered, but that was only two or three. What a moral dilemma! Should Nicola thank her friend for her thoughtful gift, with the risk that she might think it was a good idea and send more of the same? Or should she tell her the truth and as a result make the friend feel bad that her good intentions did not have the desired effect? Luckily that wasn’t my problem. I helped by cooking the meals in batches in our oven and Nicola picked them up and took them home for an easy dinner. It confused her boys though – they couldn’t get their heads around everyone having a different meal at home!! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2019.