Traffic along France’s A11 motorway is currently clogged [like my arteries!]. The culprit [in both cases!] is mayonnaise. The long and the short of this tale as old as time is that a truck moving 20 tons of the oily condiment caught fire. The Local cites eyewitnesses who project that it’ll take at least two days to repair the damage to the road.
That’s really the whole story.
But if you dig deeper there are just so many threads to tug at.
- 20 tons? That is soooooo much f*cking mayonnaise. What will that do to France’s mayo supply for the year? Will there be a mass shortage similar to the 2012 Parmesan catastrophe? Will children hold tin cups in the street begging for enough mayo to dip their pomme frittes in, like a scene from Les Mis?
- Is it transported loose? Because the article wasn’t clear on that. If so, is that someone’s job, transporting bulk mayo that sloshes around in the back of a truck? Is that how the mayo industry has always been run? Is all French mayo bottled in a separate facility? Is there a mayo lobby that controls such things, like the rule about Kentucky bourbon barrels being single-use?
- Does Bobby Flay know about this? If so, is he on a charter to France with a few hundred pounds of chipotle peppers?
- Are you imagining a Frenchman and his effortlessly elegant girlfriend weaving through traffic, smoking cigarettes, deciding that jobs are for suckers, setting fire to their truck brimming with mayo, then just running off giddily, like in the last scene of Jules and Jim? Maybe that one’s just me.
