A Judgment Day Dressing

Or: Armageddon in a Bottle

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From time to time, I will be sharing bits and bobs from the now-locked vault of my former blog. These essays haven’t seen the light of day in several years and some deserve a good airing. Like this one. I hope you enjoy reading this one as much as I did writing it.

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Whenever I see salad dressing being made and vigorously shaken in a mason jar or cruet, I can't help but feel-- for a brief moment, at least-- that the End of The World is coming.

And it's entirely my brother's fault.

When I was studying for my Catholic First Communion, Douglas took it upon himself to augment my religious education.

"Do you want to see what happens to people's souls when they die?" he asked. At seven, I didn't know many dead folks, apart from a great-uncle or two, but I'd often wondered what had happened to my recently deceased beagle, who my Sicilian father said he was "taking for a little ride*" and then returned an hour later, alone.

I followed my brother into our father's kitchen, where not so very long before I had nearly found my own way into the afterlife (but that’s a story for another time).

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