Thursday night I found myself having a takeaway with my lovely sisters in the city. Just like that, we ordered from an Asian cookhouse before leaving the homeplace and collected it on the way to my middliest sister’s house. From the extensive menu, we ordered Asian food and it came to us so easily in the cutest little cartons. And while I tried to focus on my sisters, I couldn’t take my attention away from the food, so fresh and hot and aromatic. I thought, there has to be more, these are very small cartons but on opening them up there appeared just the right amount of food for all. Delicious. Easy. An accessible meal.

Everything consumable in the city is easy.

I was telling my sisters about our attempt to have a Chinese takeaway some weeks back as our eldest indignant that his classmates had all eaten takeaways, would like to try some. Fair enough. Now, I must add, that others may have tried and may have been more successful but it is not an easy task and after one or two attempts, women stronger than I have said to have given up. So I know of a lovely Chinese restaurant in our nearest big town, Listowel. It’s good enough food and reasonable. What more does a seven year old want for his first takeaway experience? It’s about 15 km away. Problem number one, how to keep the hot food hot and tasty. It’s manageable enough. But alas, there is always the problem of directions.

The entrance to our house has red gates, symphony red according to the colour chart and they are a beauty. Aside from being aesthetically lovely, they are a beacon to lost delivery men when looking for our homestead. If you see the red gates, that’s us. Alas, at nighttime, the red gates, in the absence of street lamps or streets in fact are not visible. Problem number two. So having called up and ordered we waited an unusually long time before I got a call from the village from a forlorn delivery man to say that he was lost. Not the best at given directions (reference red gate), I handed the phone to my farmer who explained the way to our house.  Some ten minutes later, I received another call to say that he has been driving up and down the street and village, he just can’t find the turn off to our house. ‘Stay right where you are’ I said and hopped in the car to go and find the lonesome delivery man.

‘I didn’t think that road led anywhere’, the man said shocked that anyone would even think of living up ‘such a lonely road’. ‘Everyroad leads to somewhere’ I said now channelling my inner hungry Buddha. ‘Amazing’ he said and started to chat about living in the country and how he could never do it. Ordinarily, I would have been delighted to engage but I was aware of the luke warm package in my hands that needed feeding to the wide-eyed expectant family. ‘Rightso,’ he waved me off, standing in the village street-light watching me off not quite believing that there was a road beyond the sportsfield; one he had dared not to travel. ‘Townie’ my Buddha whispered while sending him much good tidings for his return journey.

As for his first takeaway experience, my young son ate it up. Not bad he said.

The moral, everything consumable in the countryside is not so easy. But you can curse the darkness or learn to make a very good Chinese meal. Now to find some of those cutesy cartons.