It’s a tightrope. The email states that the person will call around to fix your phone line between 8am and 12pm. By 9am, there’s no sign, so you risk making some toast. An hour later, bolstered by the success of your risky breakfast, you commit to a toilet visit, and not a toilet visit of the ‘number one’ kind. Giddy as you sit on the pan uninterrupted by the doorbell, you rebelliously look across to the shower and think ‘Could I? COULD I?!’ Do you play safe, or do you go for it? Your decision says so much about the type of person you are. I’m a risk taker, a gambler, an explosion of spontaneity, so I went for it.

The act itself wasn’t the mistake; getting away with it was. I began to feel like I could get away with anything. At 10.50am I baked banana bread. At 11.10, I started my family tree. Twenty minutes later, I’d mowed the lawn and brokered furtive peace talks in Israel/Palestine, and that without the use of a landline. It was all too much. Too many plates to spin. The bread was burning and in the Gaza Strip things were getting testy. By the time the phone bloke turned up at 11.55 I’d passed out on my newly cut lawn. I still haven’t got the phone fixed.

Bread was burning and things were getting testy on the Gaza Strip...

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Phone hacking
The phone-hacking scandal has left me outraged and befuddled: I mean, who are these people that leave voicemail messages containing anything remotely useful or interesting? Until now I thought that all messages left on phones consisted of the words ‘Hi, it’s me. Just wondering what you were fancying for your tea. Give me a call back when you get this. Bye.’ Apparently, though, there exists a class of people who take the words ‘Please leave a message after the tone’ to mean ‘Please reveal confidential information at length after the tone’.

Food Review Extra
Summer’s lease lasted long enough to grant many a meeting between food and open air. Al fresco dining: a marriage as fine as chariot and horse or Ant and Dec. Eating under God’s sun is a chance to embrace all the world’s food and a chance to mix the countries – a samosa here, a hot dog there.
Mrs Portraits and I have been enjoying British Tapas (or, as those with less culinary erudition refer to them, ‘crisps’) for the best part of a decade. Early on, we devoured the work of Walkers of Leicestershire, before a long affair with the Golden Wonder stable.

Aside from a brief maize flirtation five or so years ago – Monster Munch were doing some wonderful things back then – we’ve continually stuck with potato-based British Tapas. Both of us feel that our country does them best; foreign trips, with their miles of aisles of paprika ‘Lay’s’ and cheesy ‘Cheetos’ have only reaffirmed this.

Exoticism, then, comes from stepping off the British mainland and embracing Taytos of Tandragee. The County Armagh producer (tagline: ‘Bout ye’) is a giant on the island of Ireland, and upholds a cult following here. Lounging between disused fag packets on Leith Links, we both tried two flavours each.
For my part, the salt and vinegar (in a blue packet, as they should be) hit the spot marked ‘satisfying’, their tangy bark placated by a smooth bite. Beef and onion avoided the usual pitfall of tasting like Oxo-sautéed curtains, emitting notes of satisfyingly chewy pub steak baguettes instead. Mrs Portraits lingered long on the spring onion before offering ‘It’s so hard to get them right, but I think Tayto have done it. Can we go home now please?’ On the roast chicken she added, ‘Yeah, fine. When are you going to take me for an actual meal?’

Far better than a mixed bag, then. Daniel Gray

Score: 8/10
Damage: The right side of £1.97

Info: stramashthebook.com, Go on, you know you want to!