To the manufacturers of pasta packets and writers thereof:

I don't understand pasta packets. They always say that the pasta will cook in some random time... let's say 10 minutes... but the time it takes to actually cook to the satisfactory point is invariably 3-4 minutes longer. This is almost a truism, such is the contempt felt for these guides in pasta consuming circles. My lovely wife and I are reasonably partial to the odd pasta, partly because of her Italian routes and partly because of my own love for starch and starch related products. But you expect the cooking time to be at least within the realms of possibility.

And now I get angry.

Today I am at work. Sitting, contributing to the economy of this newly enlightened country of ours, twiddling my thumbs and making up my mind what to eat at the next feasible moment. I have recently returned from lunch, before which my thought pattern consisted of much the same elements. Now, let it be known that I live around the corner from work and thus am able to enact the dream of the working person in being able to return to my abode for lunch. Today I decided I would cook myself a pasta.

I return home 8 minutes into my 45 minute break. I hun around the kitchen for the quickest cooking pasta. Coles brand pasta (no great advertisement to my culinary nouse, but we bought it because it was way cheap and to see if it was edible) cooks in 9 minutes. By this stage I have wasted a further 4 minutes. 33 minutes until I have to get back. I put on a pot of water and wait for it to boil and cook a nice little napoli with some garlic and the use of homemade passata. Nine mintues later, the water is bubbling away. I throw in a spoon of salt and wait for the rolling boil to return. 24 minutes to go. I put the pasta in. The sauce looks wonderful. I decide that I will make it tuna pasta and hunt around for a tin of tuna. I put on the TV, Philadelphia Story is on. I love that movie and watch the wonderful seen with Jimmy Stuart drunk and Cary Grant loving it. I eat a piece of pasta (I maintain this is the only way to tell properly when it is perfect). Still very hard. 16 minutes to go. I need to leave in 8. the pasta should be done (according to the packet) in 1 minute. I add five to this. This gives me two minutes to wolf down my pasta... not a fan of this and Italians would be appalled at such disrespect to the food. I decide I will ride back to work. That takes three minutes. I have a look at what else is on during the add breaks. A documentary on Johnny Hallyday, a rock deity in France where between 1/4 and 1/3 of the population have seen him perform live. I get up and taste again... better but not done.... I continue to watch Melvyn Bragg interviewing Hallyday, taste again... getting there. 8 minutes to go... I add the tuna to the sauce and swirl it around. It looks marvellous. Finally the pasta seems done. I strain it in haste (6 minutes left) and add it to the sauce. Calamity! In my eagreness to get back to work, I didn't let the pasta strain for long enough! There is now too much pasta water in my sauce. Thank god nobody was there to partake. I start wolfing it down. I have only 4 minutes to eat a large (that may be my fault for not measuring the pasta) bowl of watery pasta and be back at my desk. By the time I finish I fly out the door. I hop on my bike and "fang" it down to work. I am four minutes late. I could live with this but I have burnt my mouth... my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

As anyone who accidentally boiled the milk when making a hot chocolate will know, a burnt mouth means you don't taste things for the next few days. This will add to my stress tonight when I go to my bookclub (for which I haven't finished the book- sorry bookclubbers, but I was a little bored) as the food there is invariably good. Nor will I taste the wine after wine after wine... I may even be sober at work tomorrow morning. Get your act together writers of pasta packets! that thing underestimated the cooking time by 9 minutes, that's double the time it said it would take. If I'd had that time, I wouldn't have burnt my mouth and I would have finished the book club book (why the hell not).