Envy, The Amazon and Linford Christie

I'm not a catholic so can't seek absolution for my sins in the confession box but I do feel the need to own up to one serious flaw, in the hope that you, my fellow blog readers, will forgive me.

You see I am guilty of one of the seven deadly sins, the sin of envy. I am not a generally envious person, I don't envy those who are richer, prettier or more successful than me. I don't envy those with better cars, bigger houses or the latest Apple products, but I do suffer from a very specific form of envy. Lunch box envy.

I'm not referring to the Linford Christie type lunchbox (get your minds out of the gutter please) rather the plastic container that fellow colleagues bring to work to sustain themselves through out the day. I suppose that it would be more accurate to say that I am envious of the contents of their lunch boxes rather than the tubs themselves, however I am still impressed by people who carry pretty insulated bags and pots to better display their goodies.

To save money I am making a concerted effort to always take a packed lunch in to work and most days I succeed. However I generally leave it too late to make anything interesting, and even if I have the time to make a nice lunch the contents of my fridge rarely cooperates. So I have to resort to slapping something uninspiring between a couple of slices of slightly dry bread. Last week to ring the changes I bought some tortilla wraps but forgot to get anything tasty to put in them, so ended up with having a rolled up wrap smeared in peanut butter then shoved in a sandwich bag along with a handful of wrinkly grapes.

Compare this then to the people who bring their matching picnic sets filled with meticulously chopped and diced salads, as lush looking as the amazon rainforest and containing tasty morsels, such as perfectly ripe avocado and crispy bacon, maybe feta, vine ripened tomatoes and black olives or grilled chicken and croutons. They then get their separate little container out and pour over the freshly prepared dressing, which always seems to perfectly match the salad, they have balsamic for the avocado, a vinaigrette for the feta salad and Caesar to dress the chicken. Next follows a premium brand yoghurt (in date) then a fruit salad which they eat with a fork. My boring lunch has gone before they have even poured the dressing over their mixed leaves and so I have to sit and enviously watch them tuck into their feast.

If I were to attempt to bring a salad one day it would probably contain rather sad, limp lettuce, some tomatoes (probably cherry tomatoes that would burst and squirt me with juice when I try to eat them), chopped pepper if I'm really lucky, mushy peas (it's all I had, the dish was too empty and I panicked) and tinned tuna. I don't have a little pot to put dressing in, so would add oil and vinegar in the morning which, by the time I ate my lunch, would have made the veg even slimmier and the whole lot would look and smell like the contents of a rock pool. I ask you, who is going to envy that?

Don't even get me started on people who bring leftovers for their lunch. People who smuggly heat up last night's lasagne, stew or curry, filling the office with a cacophony of savoury aromas that has me salivating onto my keyboard. Yes I cook extra in the evening, planning for there to be leftovers for lunch the next day, but invariably I've eaten it all before I've gone to bed.

In my present job you're not allowed to eat at your desk so everyone has their lunch in a little dining area and there is no escape from watching others eat their lunches and in turn feel eaten up by envy. Therefore when I was approached and offered another job last week, one of the reasons I accepted was in the hope that I won't feel quite so envious of my new colleagues lunch boxes. Yes you read correctly, I have once again handed in my notice and will start my third new job in the space of 4 months. Nearly 16 years in one job and now 3 jobs in 4 months, and all because of lunchbox envy (well maybe not all because of envy, but possibly a little iddy, biddy bit). Now I've got to go as I know that I have to scrape the mould off the cheese before I can make my cheese and tinned tomato sandwich, I wonder if I've got any bread?