Actually, it was lunch, and I wasn’t really condemned although death would have brought relief.

I’ve lived away from England for forty years and there are very few things I miss. Arsenal, pints of real ale and cricket for sure, and The Great British Breakfast Sausage.

Across the border in Divonne, France, just a 2 minute drive from home, is a Casino supermarket which has discovered that Brits abound in the region and no matter how well they have assimilated, nothing can replace Branston pickle, Marmite, Bird’s custard and the sausage. The sausages in the deep freeze are Westaways Honey Roast Pork.

Now, I’m a single man and I don’t know much about freezers and defrosting, but I do know how to cook a sausage. I took the last pack from the supermarket freezer and scampered off looking forward to lunch.

Something was strange, the pack and produce looked as though they were frosted, inside and out, but it was too late to stop and think, my appetite had been whet.

Two hours and three sausages later I was sweating, belching, vomiting and experiencing some of the more unfortunate bodily functions. That night I was hallucinating. This has been going on for four days and I’m now on antibiotics. Apparently the frosty pack was a sign that the sausages had been partially defrosted, just enough to sweat, and re-frozen.

I can’t blame Mr. and Mrs. Westaways for my condition, I’m sure their product is first class as the pack has the recommendation “The Champion Butcher’s Sausage” and was stamped “Use by 02JUL09”.  I can’t blame the supermarket as they are at the end of a long chain of packers, shippers, distributors and warehouses. I can’t blame anyone – just bad luck I suppose.

With stomach still churning, I emptied the contents of my fridge, all those things I’d scoff on lonely nights. Pâté, bacon, frankfurters, corned beef…

I even threw out the eggs. I can no longer look at an egg since I read somewhere that the word “egg” comes from the Icelandic “oeigg”, meaning sausage.

It was in 1955 that I unintentionally put a foot through the worn seat of my Wynciette pyjamas. Granted, they were weakening a bit as I’d been wearing them for three years and I was finding it difficult to breathe once buttoned in. I remember them very well. There had been a cord but mum had replaced that with elastic for fear of me strangling myself in my sleep and there were steam trains puffing all over me – I especially liked the funnel and the cloud of steam that had somehow found itself stitched in the seam and appeared to be coming out of my bum. In those days, comic strips always showed men in striped pyjamas buttoned to the neck and tucked in the trousers with the cord tied over, never under, the tummy making them look like little, well-fed concentration camp inmates. They dressed like that in Carry on Nurse too.

Since then I have never worn pyjamas – even when I lived in my own house and was too mean to pay for heating, winters were spent under double duvets.

Now I’m living in a flat and can keep the temperatures as high as I wish – why not? Everybody else does. But I do like the window slightly open and this week has been positively Siberian with nocturnal brass monkeys of  -8°, so in anticipation of those moments when the duvet slides, I wear one of my favourite Jimmy Buffett Coconut Telegraph tee shirts which has, inexplicably, a huge rip down the left side.

I have a fondness for satin sheets and pillowcases and I have four sets in ivory, taupe, burgundy and gold. Pretty, but a little slippery and restless nights are spent picking it all off the floor. I once bought, for the girlfriend of the month, a very expensive white silk pyjama suit and every time she turned over, she slid out of bed. One girlfriend from the Southern hemisphere insisted on having her full-length mink on the bed whenever the temperature dropped below 10° and it made me sneeze. Another beauty who would not be seen without make-up and had to have lights out for our more intimate moments would scare me in the mornings. I had gone to bed with a gorgeous mature broad and woken up with a 90-year-old crone in a Betty Boop tee shirt. More than once I had considered gnawing my arm off at the elbow rather than wake her. Nightshirts, baby dolls, boxer shorts, rugby shirts, ski bonnets and socks. The list goes on and on but nothing can beat nothing.

Sleep on it.

William Shakespeare wrote that, without the asterisks, for the 2^nd Witch in Macbeth (Oops, sorry my thespian friends, “The Scottish Play.”) The reason I have used asterisks is because, without them, this little billet before you today risks filling my in-tray with a million wicked, unsavoury and unsolicited responses.

I shall explain:

I’m new to blogs. I’ve been scribbling away for only a month or two and I still have a lot to learn. But one of the things I learned early on in this game is not to use headlines containing words with double meanings or syllables which, when separated, become rude. Because somewhere out there, be it Bangkok, Odessa, Los Angeles or, Heaven forbid, Leeds, are rascals of such utter brilliance in computer spamming that they can pick up a dodgy word, no matter how innocent, and use it to their evil ends. A month ago I wrote a blog about double yolk eggs with the harmless headline “C**k-a-Google-do”.  For the past three weeks I have been receiving an average of 40 e-mails per day offering services ranging from sex toys and penis enlargement to animal sex web sites. And I can’t get rid of these bastards.

I’m sure Ol’ Will never had this trouble.

We all know that if people can play games with a product name, they will.

But there is nothing like those names in other languages that do the job for you.

We’ve all giggled like school children over Pschitt lemonade, Colon vineyards, Extra Dick marking pens, Fanny jam, Cockburn’s port, Bimbo bread, JussiPussi bread rolls, Aass beer, Blackbush whiskey, Bonka coffee, Horlicks milk modifier, Cock soup, Fart ski wax, Big Nuts candy bar, Finger Marie biscuits and, who could forget Spotted Dick pudding. I could go on, but you’d think I was making them up.

As you will notice, these names are usually found on mass-market consumer goods and make us laugh depending on which language we are thinking in. Fart may be funny to you, but it means “luck” in Polish. When Nestlé bought out Rowntree’s Chocolate Company, they soon found out that the UK’s favourite Kit Kat chocolate bar is also the rest of Europe’s favourite cat food.

It is rare to see these gaffes on up-market gear. And the reason for this little story is a magazine that I found in my dermatologist’s waiting room.  An intellectual monthly edited by a respected authority on the arts. Pierre Hügli. Unfortunately, egotism got the better of him and he just couldn’t resist adding his initials to the magazine title banner.