Being Mr. Kenny

Potatoes are incredible things. You can do all sorts with them. Make them into crisps, make them into chips… the possibilities are endless.

There is nearly always a supply of potatoes to be had. Statistics say that you are never more than 6 feet away from a potato.* I especially like potatoes when they have have been left in a darkened cupboard for weeks. They sit there in the bag and begin to grow. This is something I find magically beautiful, and yet at the same time utterly horrifying.

I like it when this happens because it’s like the magic of life right there in your own kitchen. I studied Biology at uni, and though I found studying for my degree to be one of the hardest, most disheartening things I have ever done, it didn’t kill my sense of awe at the natural world. I find living things absolutely fascinating. I could stare at a tree for hours and not get bored, just thinking of all the things going on inside it. And so it is with my old potatoes in the kitchen cupboard. Life always finds a way. Let sleeping potatoes lie. A potato in time saves nine. Two wrongs do not a potato make. Et cetera.

Interesting sidenote: Like most good compost heaps, the compost heap in my parents’ garden often has a little dynasty of potatoes growing in it. During the autumn, this compost heap becomes a bonfire when my Dad loses patience waiting for last year’s Christmas tree to decompose, and sets the whole thing on fire. The potatoes lie there and bake where they once grew. Depending on how you define the word, that’s irony!

Despite my love for all things living, I also hate, loathe, detest and despise potatoes that have begun to grow. For one thing, it means I’m too lazy to do anything with them, so they’ve just sat there and got on with being organisms, and wasted my money while they were at it.

Mostly, however, they just look really scary. Odd-looking blobs have been in your kitchen, and have put out tentacles all by themselves. I half-expect them to be conscious. You can almost hear them, in hoarse whispering voices, crying out, “help us … help us!” as they send their tender stalks upwards to find light. I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up in the middle of the night to find that potatoes had climbed upstairs and were about to overcome me with, I don’t know, starch or something. Like something off the X-files, only less exotic and more … well … potato-y.

They have eyes, don’t they — is that not proof enough of their sentience!?

So this is why, as I type, a number of potatoes are currently in my oven, gas mark 9, being slowly turned into food. It’s a one man stand against the tubers. Who will join me in my fight?

Who?

Answer: vegetarians.

* A completely made-up lie.