My Boyfriend is a Heron

During a trip to the zoo on Saturday, my boyfriend and I stopped for lunch. Having started the day with a large breakfast, we decided to share the one plate of fish and chips. No sooner was the plate on the table than my boyfriend started to tuck into the rather yummy looking fish. I chanced spearing my fork into one piece and cutting off a tiny bite. As I struggled with my fork and knife, the soft fish fell away beneath the prongs and blade. At that moment my boyfriend gave the plate a 90 degree twist in his direction, so the fish was no longer beneath my cutlery, and in the same motion pulled it in closer to himself.
I looked at him in shock. Other girls have boyfriends that turn from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, but mine metamorphoses into a heron. I thought of the poor little penguins that we’d seen earlier down by the pond, the fish being thrown into them by their keeper for lunch, and the wild herons from Phoenix park invading their little sanctuary to steal their dinner. I too knew what it was like to have my fish dinner taken from under my nose. I was left – beak open – watching. I didn't say anything. I just left him at it. As the last morsel of fish was going down his throat (it rippled like the heron’s as it swallowed) my boyfriend began to return, just as if he had taken a magic potion.

.

'Did you want some of that?' he said, as if the idea had just struck him, like a thunderbolt.
‘What would I have wanted lunch for?’ I responded.
He looked rather aghast and guilty at that, so I dug the boot in even further and told him he was like a dog that was half starved as a pup. So he promised me dinner that night to make up for it.

           The place he chose was Jimmy Chung’s, a Scottish chain of Chinese restaurants that serves an all you can eat Buffet. He probably thought this was the safest option after the lunch fiasco – over-exuberance on his behalf would have to be excused in such a setting. We were no sooner there than my boyfriend went into taking charge mode. He suggested, after we were seated in the brightly lit and busy restaurant, that we approach this strategically; 'Just take a little of a few things for the starter and then we can go up again.' Yes, Captain. I tottered up behind him to the starters’ area of the buffet. I put a couple of tiny spring rolls on my plate, a little bit of sweet and sour sauce, a won ton or two, a handful of prawn crackers. I looked over at my boyfriend. His eyes were flitting between the barbeque spare ribs and his already overfull plate. When I’m baking a familiar recipe I often won’t measure the ingredients, I just throw them in to the mixing bowl, giving an educated guess. My boyfriend was doing the same – but I didn’t think much of his institute of learning. I knew from the way he was looking at the sesame toast and the peanut butter chicken sticks that he wanted to split them up by inserting the ribs between them – I also knew they’d be having none of it. I nudged him back to the table, reassuring him he could come back up again, and we tucked into the spoils.

Once he’d satiated the worst of his hunger, he told me I’d done right to take less – I had the look of an expert. Oh yes, he said, it was clear I knew what I was doing. He’d do the same this turn as some of the dishes weren’t as nice as they appeared and he’d rather have had some more of the others. After a short break to ensure maximum capacity on the next trip, he went up again to the buffet and overfilled his plate. As he returned a string of noodle began to slip over the edge, about to throw itself overboard – due to the overcrowding, no doubt.

He couldn’t help himself; two plates of starters were followed by three of mains. Next came some cheesecake, a mango and then a coconut dessert, lime jelly and a massive bowl of ice-cream and strawberry syrup. Dinner took us nearly two hours between pit stops, pauses for recuperation and tactical planning. The restaurant isn’t designed to encourage people to linger, people are crammed on top of each other, happy birthday music blares out every now and again. It seems to be popular with groups of people in their early twenties and families – not a lot of couples were looking for romance beneath the insistent orange lights.
He leaned back in his chair at the end of all that and patted his belly, unfairly slim, one of the benefits for the heron of being such a long legged creature, a look of satisfaction on his face. It was a job well done. Not that he’d bother coming again. It was grand and all, but he’d tasted everything now – sure what fun would it be next time?