Pizza

Today I had an appointment at my doctor's office, during which I was weighed and blood pressured. It's a month until I have to go through the same thing again, so guess what that means...?

PIZZA!

We used to eat pizza whenever we felt like it. Maybe once a month. We'd put through an order on the website and then watch the clock - seriously just listen to the radio and watch the clock - and then make comments every few minutes about how well we thought the driver was doing.

When I was a little girl I obviously dreamed that this would be what my life was made of.

If the driver was running late, we'd talk about the time that after forty minutes we'd received a phone-call from the company saying their driver was in a car accident and they were giving us free chips due to the delay. Not as good as it sounds as they were already free due to the ordering the pizza online when they were still trying to entice people to do that by giving them free stuff. Ah, the good old days.

BTW we also checked to see that the driver was okay before accepting their apologies. We're not monsters.

If the driver ran early we'd pull faces and wonder if this was going to be like the time that the chips were so undercooked that they had crunchy wee centres, and the oil congealed on the surface. Not in the good way.

And then one day the dream ended. Why is it only when the good times stop that you realise how happy you've been?

We tried to order pizza online and thought there must have been a malfunction or a kitchen fire (three times that's happened over the years, three) as the delivery time was two hours away.

We grumbled and resorted to the telephone; our least favourite method of communication. Or my darling did. Sometimes he just has to suck it in and man up.

Same answer.

We assumed it was a one-off and ordered inferior pizza from another company. They didn't deliver all of the desserts I paid for. After a long standoff on the phone we received a late night home invasion from a driver insisting on paying us back. With change. At nine-thirty. Thanks.

The next time we needed to order we struck the same problem. Darling manned up again and questioned the friendly new owners. They were never going to have deliveries before 7.30pm at night but luckily we could come by and pick it up.

No we couldn't. Someone doesn't drive and someone else has Friday night drinks whether anybody else is invited or not.

We ordered from a different pizza company instead. They didn't deliver all of my desserts. It gets hard not to take it personally.

I was dragged to a phone call where I was told that if I came into the physical pizza company at some point in the future they would give me a free dessert! I pointed out it wouldn't be free because I'd already paid for it. Two free desserts! That would still just be the one free and the one I paid for. We reached an agreement; he would put a free credit (that I'd paid for) against my account, and I would never set foot in their physical shop to redeem it. Sorted.

We were miserable for a few months. We ate pizza from yet another pizza company in grim silence, trying not to complain to each other about how it wasn't like the real thing, but thinking it nevertheless.

And then we discovered that we pass fairly close by the pizza company we like on a couple of different occasions. One of these is when my darling is returning home from his dentist, and the other is when we're returning home from my doctor.

And the rest has become habit. I get out of my doctors office, whip out my phone and place an order, and we pick it up twelve minutes later. The pizza we like. The break from it has drawn out attention to just how bloody good it is.