Hear no weevil, see no weevil

My husband loves Weetbix Multigrain. He has at times begged visitors to bring packets from Australia, but they are heavy, hard to carry, and his supplies are getting low. I tease him about it from time to time. He would have given our children a very hard time if they had insisted, in postings in Syria and Malaysia and Jordan, on having a particular cereal. Here he is so fond of these that he has been known to hide the packs in the back of our storage cupboards so visitors will not find them and eat them - even if they have just carried them out from Australia.

He is down to the last pack. He only has these because I had tucked them so well into the back of the deep cupboard under the toaster at one point with about five in the house some months ago - that he could not find them and opened one of his last new packs. They were forgotten - and unknown to me - started to grow.

A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that I had found his Weetbix - an almost full pack with only a few missing. He was thrilled. I noticed he was using them - they were left on the top bench (no visitors just now) and the pack was slowly going down.

Today he confessed. They are infested with weevils. He said that it got a bit hard by the third morning to make himself eat them with so much wriggling going on. I cannot believe he ate them wriggling for three mornings.

So - he microwaved the packet.

"It wasn't a good idea," he said in a thoughtful way, "it rather brought out the flavour of the weevils in a most unfortunate way."

For two more mornings he had struggled with his favourite cereal, microwaved and now strangely leathery, reeking of steamed weevil, and with small bodies floating - all sizes of grub, and a few crunchy brown ones at the beetle stage, absolutely determined not to throw out something he loved.

This morning the conversation started as I was bemoaning the difficulty of deciding what to eat for breakfast. Ahmed, our lovely Egyptian chef, had chopped a mango for me yesterday, but I found it after dinner and ate the better bits out of the bowl. Egyptians do not mind mangoes that are dark and transparent when you cut them open - and almost at the slithering-out-of-the skin stage. I like them firm and golden and opaque. This was a compromise mango - some of the outside was firm and golden, and I ate these bits and even shared them with Bob. I tasted one of the dark slimier bits and didn't like it.

This morning I mentioned that it was a pity the rest of the mango was not good as it would be nice for breakfast. I commented that we had put it back in the frig but I would chuck it out and tell Ahmed not to bother with mangoes at that stage as neither of us liked them. I was almost out the door when Bob said "Don't throw it out."

I turned and asked why not as I knew he didn't like it that way either.

He said, "the rotting mango drowns the taste of weevils quite well."

So - this morning, he finally confessed, he had eaten leathery Multigrain Weetbix strongly flavoured with weevil, with rotten mango to drown the taste! What is worse - he was prepared to do the same tomorrow when the mango was worse.

And to think I was complaining that I didn't know what I felt like for breakfast!

So for those who think ambassadors live a life of luxury - I thought this might change your mind. Mind you - not all ambassadors are like mine.