Thinking man’s omelette: creamy, cheesy, unctuous.

The day of the house auction, a couple of weeks ago, had been significant: the final day of autumn, the end of our 72-year family ownership of a west-facing, sunset-drenched oblong on the edge of the great city of the south, and the last day of warm weather. The following morning had dawned ominously cold to a ferocious blast from Antarctica. (‘Ominously’? It could have been any adverb - ‘oddly’, ‘ironically’, ‘appropriately’, ‘strangely’ - as long as it signified meaning in the context of sheer randomness. We fear the anarchy of existence, so we invent fate, investing the electrons and quarks and bosons with the ability to talk: untold billions of particles as seers and prophets, inhabiting infinity, unable to shut up.) 

I think while I cook. It’s purposeless, but fun. It makes time go by: the ‘don’t watch the kettle boil’ theory. Thinking helps pasta cook faster when the sauce is already done. If I don’t think, I will keep checking it, or pulling the griller out or opening the oven to see if what’s in there is ready, and it will punish me by taking longer because I keep delaying the cooking process by being impatient. Did I just say non-readiness - a negative concept - will punish?  Now I’m anthropomorphising nothingness. 

Thinking is fun? I’m as frightened as I was when my older brother told me at age twelve that because physicality is infinite both ways - infinitely small to infinitely large - our physical existence has no meaning and is a mere relative concept. Some siblings don’t like each other, but infinitying me out of existence was a whole new family war. And that’s before we used to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night, climb onto the garage roof, lay flat and gaze at the stars, some of which, he told me, were so far away they might no longer exist due to the time it took for light to travel to Earth. Hundreds of years in some cases, he said; adding, if you went that far away you might also not exist. 

The omelette was ready. It hadn’t been difficult: a late-night supper on a bitterly cold winter night - the first! significant! a sign!

Dice 500 grams of sliced ham. Blend six eggs with half a cup of cream and season generously. Add some very finely chopped onion for redolence rather than discrete pieces, and shower with parsley and chives (both growing faster than I can use in the old concrete laundry tub in the garden). 

Melt some butter in a pan. Pour in the egg mixture. Centre with half a cup or more of grated cheese; mozzarella for a stretchy arm-wrestle at table; or anything else for a more genteel eating experience. Blue cheese for advanced tastes. 

When underside has sealed (trial and error), fold omelette carefully to capture cheese; cook until preferred doneness, if that is a word. Some in this household will not eat soft - ‘runny’ they call it - omelette interiors. So I bring it to a fawn-tinged exterior yellowness with a firm interior excepting, of course, the unctuous strings of mozzarella which stretch out like thin pale live stalactites. 

More salt and pepper, chopped spring onions to finish. Serve with buttered toast triangles. 

The moon had risen above the old poplar at the end of the street and was a crackled white arc behind the pale orbs and black branches of the laden lemon tree visible through the darkened sash window at the east end of the kitchen.