Interesting excerpt that moves me... from Douglas Adams’ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

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“Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body? It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters into a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.

Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.

"Something off the shoulder perhaps?" suggested the animal. "Braised in a white wine sauce?"

"Er, your shoulder?" said Arthur in a horrified whisper.

"But naturally my shoulder, sir," mooed the animal contentedly, "nobody else's is mine to offer."

Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively.

"Or the rump is very good," murmured the animal. "I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there." It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again.

"Or a casserole of me perhaps?" it added.

"You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?" whispered Trillian to Ford.

"Me?" said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes. "I don't mean anything."

"That's absolutely horrible," exclaimed Arthur, "the most revolting thing I've ever heard."

"What's the problem, Earthman?" said Zaphod, now transferring his attention to the animal's enormous rump.

"I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing there inviting me to," said Arthur. "It's heartless."

"Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten," said Zaphod.

"That's not the point," Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. "All right," he said, "maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ..."

The Universe raged about him in its death throes.

"I think I'll just have a green salad," he muttered.

"May I urge you to consider my liver?" asked the animal, "it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months."

"A green salad," said Arthur emphatically.

"A green salad?" said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.

"Are you going to tell me," said Arthur, "that I shouldn't have green salad?"

"Well," said the animal, "I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am."

It managed a very slight bow.

"Glass of water please," said Arthur.

"Look," said Zaphod, "we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare steaks please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years."

The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle.

"A very wise choice, sir, if I may say so. Very good," it said. "I'll just nip off and shoot myself."

He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur.

"Don't worry, sir," he said, "I'll be very humane."

It waddled unhurriedly off to the kitchen.

A matter of minutes later the waiter arrived with four huge steaming steaks.”

I have not been ignoring the blog… a lot has happened. And good things too! :) I am embarking on a new phase of my career journey in the new year though it’s not exactly how I planned it. In some sense it is perhaps better than how I imagined it would be because I never imagined I would scale the next mountain with a small step. I didn’t even know if the small step would take me anywhere higher up the mountain but this is doing that… so as they say, when you think one window has closed, another one might just open… and the view might just be better if you take your eyes off what you wanted to see to what is really in front of you! :) I am pretty positive about where this step is going to take me… so hang on, dear reader, we are in for a ride methinks!

A new friend of mine invited me to go to the chaplaincy with her for some carol singing. At first my lazy self said a no, and then my mind popped up a story. I am not sure if I have mentioned this story on my blog before—I might have—but it’s a pretty popular one. A man seems to be drowning at sea and he keeps praying to God to save him. Three boats pass by asking him to hop in or calling out to him to help save him, but this man refuses each time, saying that God will save him. The man dies and goes to heaven. When he questions God as to why He did not rescue him, God tells him that he sent boats to his rescue three times. I suppose the moral of the story is that God might work in mysterious ways and we need to be open to the signs? I’m not really sure why I thought of this story in this context but it struck me that ordinarily I wouldn’t have visited a church or a chapel, so if this opportunity sort of came out of the blue, maybe I should heed it? The fact that there was the possibility of cake after the carol singing seemed like a not-so-bad side effect of the whole thing… hehe…