I love a big thick long one in the morning, there's nothing more satisfying than to have a mouthful. I'm obviously talking about sausages, that staple of the great fry up and something that recently has taken a battering in my view.
Over the years during our travels we have stayed at many hotels and B&B's, one things for sure, you can judge a place on the quality of its sausage. It's true I tell you, there's even a formula for it.
Clean (nice smell x shoe mitt) = great sausage
If any of these fail, you get the sausage equivalent of a rubber band. I blogged a while ago about the virtues of finding a shoe mitt in your room so I won't bore you any longer ( you can read about my shoe mitt exploits here ). Nice smell is a must, if you can smell the carpets as you walk in its a bad sign, if you can smell chips or other fried wares then that too is a bad sign, both point to a tired place relying on clientele who still regard a prawn cocktail with Marie Rose sauce as a bit Mediterranean. Whilst we are on about that why is hotel room service food so bad? We have had some shockers over the years and it seems the posher the hotel the worst the room service, only recently were we served a 'club' sandwich that I can only assume came from a club called 'piece of turd betwix slices of Tesco value bread' and cost the equivalent of a taxi fare from London to Glasgow to bring to the room.
Anyway, where was I? Turds? Ah, close, sausages. It's always a joy to find a good sausage, although it always throws the staff when I first enter a hotel and my first question is 'where do you get your sausages from?' Seriously, if they can't answer this at reception walk out and find a better holstelry, it is a duty as a hotel to know where your sausages come from, forget learning about the emergency toothbrushes you keep at reception or the little sewing kit, learn about sausages, get that right and you will have a never ending line of smiling faces parading away first thing in a morning. Although shockingly I thought there was a program about sausages on last night, it turns out it was all to do with hiding them and I had misread what that filthy Sex Box was about, although it did confirm my suspicions that yes, indeed, we as the human race are de-evolving, I'd give us ten years at the tops.
I'm rambling again aren't I? Possibly the worst sausage I have ever eaten was served to me in Bath, quite a surprise but then again in a hotel that warns you to only drink bottled water it was only to be expected especially after the toilet roll holder collapsed as I reach out and I ended up on the floor sans trousers. That is indeed another story, oh, and the bed hole that I slowly sank into until the spring caught on my pyjamas.
We had already witnessed the waiter roll up his sleeves to retrieve a small pot of conserve he had dropped in the orange juice, he delved right up to his elbows too, when placed before us was a comedy sausage. You can always tell the bad ones, they have wrinkles, no, seriously, think about it. You know when you had a microwave sausage and said to yourself never again, well that had wrinkles too, bad sausages ALWAYS have wrinkles. The breakfast looked a bit like a swimming pool of grease with assorted breakfast items taking a casual dip. The egg had never ever seen a sunny side and lay there rubbery and grey, hash browns were included but these had been deep fried from frozen and remained black and crunchy on the outside and subzero on the inside, a texture and taste sensation I had never experienced.
The sausage stared back at me, it was about the thickness of a finger, around four inches long and very wrinkly, it looked wrong for a start. Jayne giggled. I didn't know how to approach it, it looked, menacing. Glistening with a grease sheen I decided to go for a stab and went for the middle. I didn't expect it to bend in the middle so both ends met in midair before it sprang back into its usual sausagey shape, the damn thing was made of rubber. I tried again but this time only managed to dislodge a mushroom onto my lap. Every time I stabbed it it folded and made a clapping sound as both ends met. Amused by this I decided to entertain Jayne and stabbed it to music turning my sausage into a manic clapper until it exploded.
It's didn't exactly bang as a such but it did get a puncture and sprayed hot fat on my sleeve and face, as I watched it shrank. You probably think I'm making this up but no, it really shrank as it created a little fat fountain from its new hole. Pinning it down with a fork I cut it open to release the pressure. It looked like the inside of a dust bag with flecks of pink and I'm sure I could make out mixed in there meat polo's, or arseholes to you and me. Vile, tentatively I tasted a bit then regretted it as I realised I had nothing with which to wash away the taste and I certainly wasn't going to have any of the orange juice that had just washed the waiters elbow.
So, sausages can be the make or break, in Edinburgh a week or so ago we had two ends of the spectrum, the first a nice round plump meat laden example, the second a mass produced wrinkly object from a self service section. The strange thing is the worst sausage came from the most expensive hotel. Weird isn't it, but really we should have known, you could smell the carpets.
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