There is something delightfully subversive about coming home for lunch in the middle of a working day. For a start it implies that home and work are not too far apart, either physically or mentally. It also tacitly assumes that you actually have such a thing as a lunch-break at work (and indeed a home worth going to), and are not expected to carry on regardless like some sort of automaton who lives in a box. Finally it can make for cheaper, better food.
What is this "physically or mentally" business? Well obviously it's better to be able to get home in a short stroll (or possibly a quiet few minutes on a bike) than it is to have to fight through traffic and then on your return for the afternoon play Russian Roulette for a parking space. The "mental" bit is that I have noticed in several places I have worked that some people actually like to put as big a distance as possible between their work and non-work lives. This would be understandable if their work involved dealing with the darker side of human nature (prison service, social worker, polis), but the people involved here were engineers. What, I wondered without quite being able to find the words, do they find about their job that is so repulsive?
Right, that's enough existentialism on an empty stomach.
Here is a slightly impressionistic picture of the dhal we had for lunch, made by simmering 250g (1/2 lb) of dry orange lentils and tipping into the nearly-done brew one finely-chopped onion and one very-finely-chopped clove of garlic, both fried gently til transparent, and a pinch of chilli powder. The green frilly stuff is corriander, which we chop up and sprinkle on the dhal. This lunch offers energy, protein and vitamins for two hungry people at a cost of about £1. Less still if you have had the foresight to plant up some corriander a few weeks previously.
It also makes sure that if your boss is a vampire he (or she) leaves you unmolested for the afternoon.
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