What in the flonking donkeys is this?

I gazed down at the bowl before me. In it, something globbed fetidly under a murky cream-like surface.

It's porridge, Daddy-Bear. Like you always have in the morning?

The Good Lady bustled busily around the breakfast table tending to our ever demanding brood.

Porridge???

My hand trembled with a palsied fury that I be served such peasant muck.

Didn't she know what I had been through? Did none of them have any idea of the beast this grizzled warrior had just defeated?

In fact, the beast was not yet defeated if you went by the tests results. My body was still balls-deep in battle with the Wuhan-Joanne.

But today had been a turning point in that battle. The beast had begun to retreat under the onslaught of my many headed and much greased axe.

Today, the first since Sunday, I had managed to stumble out of bed to break my fast after days of fever and smeg-laden COVID induced throaty pain and tiredness.

And what was in front of me? Fucking porridge!?

Where is the meat?

I growled like a bear tired after a hard day dancing in the market for pennies.

What meat? None of us have been out for days. We have been in isolation, remember?

The Good Lady shook her head and harrumphed loudly as if someone had farted in a bag and offered her a sniff for a sixpence.

Then her demeanor shifted and she let out a sinister giggle.

Well, maybe you don't remember because you have been in bed the whole time whining about Covid and how it has ruined you. The rest of us have just got on with it.

She winked at the kids who joined in with their own mean spirited sniggering. Almost as if they were not sat at a table with a hero fresh from the fields of stinking death.

I took a deep breath and lifted my head.

Woman, understand ye not the travails I have been through? I need meat. Good meat and strong wine if I am to recover quickly.

I pointed a shaky COVID laden finger at her and then at the rest of the bastard family who seemed to be giggling at some private joke.

I waved a hand at the porridge bowl before me and snarled.

I have practically walked the halls of VALHALLA and I return to this... Porridge!?

I attempted to stand but my strength failed me.

A man needs steak and good whisky to recover from the evil ills visited upon him by this most insidious of plagues.

I flumped dejectedly sidewards shaking my head on my ridiculously floppy weak neck.

Steak?

The Good Lady thought for a moment.

We have Tofu?

She smiled angelically.

I looked back, my fingers curling, seeking out my axe.

Tofu?! Toh-fucking-fu? The semi-dried smeddom of goats? The curdled pressed toe-cheese of the obese?

I heaved myself to my feet.

No thank you. I might not be ready for Valhalla but I was even less ready for Tofu.