Letter to Fiona: Re: Sausages Mostly

20 August 2026

2004

R. Linda

AND

Fiona:

It all started innocently enough, or I thought it did. Me Mam was busy in the kitchen making sausages, special sausages because her favourite person in the whole wide world let us know (for the first time, we got a heads-up) he was coming to visit AND he wouldn't be alone, he'd have his Scottish sidekick Robbie with him. Yes, you guessed it, Fiona, after all the hints you gave him, the Weasil took the bait and arrived last night.

That's not all that arrived last night; the Dragon lady flew on her broomstick from the shores of New Jersey to alight upon our doorstep as well. And why? Because me darlin' wife shared her angst that The Weasil was arriving, and you know the Dragon is a Weasil fan as well. Tonya's reasoning was that her mother would keep Weasil busy and out of our hair. I've heard lame excuses before, so I rolled with this one out of defeat that I could stop any of this.

In between all this, you'll be happy to know that Sam and Ms. Jaio are "starting over." Isn't that sweet? Last night was a community supper, and Sam invited Ms. Jaio. After the supper, they dropped by to say hello. Yes, they did. Now Ms. Jaio has met the Weasil, but Sam has not. After all the fuss you, Fiona, made over Sam being me best new friend, Weasil couldn't let that happen, as he considers him my best friend. So you may imagine the angst that caused yours truly to have them both meet for the first time.

I was expecting one-upmanship from Weasil. But that didn't happen because the sausages me Mam made suddenly disappeared. Nobody admitted to taking them. This happened when we were all in the kitchen, introductions were happening, and me Mam suddenly piped up about missing sausages. That stopped everyone's polite chatter. 

"Sausages? Missin' Missus O?" Robbie whined at the thought.

"Well, yes, I had 'em 'ere on da counter an' wuz goin' ta serve 'em up to yas." She said, looking around for them. 

"OH NO, NOT THE SAUSAGES!" Robbie shouted in a muck sweat, looking under the table, lifting chair cushions. 

"What is wrong with you?" The Dragon asked him.

"Missus, never coom b'tween a man an' his meat an' pastry-based snacks!" 

Sam piped up and said he thought we should investigate, and I thought he had lost his mind. 

"Only another Scotsman would take sausages," Robbie said, looking suspiciously at that fellow Scotsman, who looked innocent as the day he was born, or at least, was trying to. 

"Iz bein' unfairly blamed fer being a sausage-loving Scotsman," Weasil said, holding up a finger like he was giving a political speech. 

Just then, the phone rang, and I picked it up to hear the melodic voice of me sissy Sheila on the other end. Everyone in the kitchen was talking at the same time, and Sheila could hear all this, and she somehow accused ME of being the culprit, and she wasn't even in the same country!

"Ack! This sounds like the "Sausage Roll Row" that's been goin' on! Dare be da debate over semantics gooin' on over 'ere. Everyone be debating da definition of snack food. Dey be callin' sausage rolls, "Savoury plant-based puff pastry cylinders."

"Jayus, Mary an' Joseph dare, Sheila," I said, "Thot has nothin' to do wit wot's bein' 'debated' in me very own kitchen!" 

After more back and forth, and the people in the kitchen getting louder, I hung up on me sissy. Yes, I did. Somehow it was me fault I had started the 'sausage roll debate' back home AND in me house. The phone started ringing again; I hung up, then took the receiver off the hook because I knew who it was, and I was not about to defend meself over something so stupid. 

Everything stopped when Wolfie suddenly arrived. 

"I rang the bell, but no one answered, so I let meself in and called out, but all the loud shouting, not one of you heard me." He said.

And with his handsomeness standing in the doorway, everyone forgot about the sausages. Yup, Wolfie managed to steal the spotlight without doing anything but looking good. When I think about it, I have spent years developing relationships with people only to have the handsome Wolf walk into the room and instantly become everyone's favourite. 

"I did not know you were coomin'" I was so flustered by all this and all of THEM that me Irish was making itself prominent in me speech. 

"Oh sorry," Tonya gasped, "I knew, and I meant to tell you but with all this going on . . . "

Wolfie had no idea what he walked in on. I wasn't going to apprise him of the situation because, frankly, I couldn't get a word in. They all started talking again at once. That is until me Mam took Wolfie by the arm and seated him at the head of the table and said, "Haf ya eatin', luv?" The woman was in Mam mode, and it was obvious who her favourite was.

Of course he hadn't, or said he hadn't, and she immediately forgot other people were standing in her kitchen who apparently could have starved to death without troubling her in the least. "I'll git ye sumthin'," and she started rummaging around to find something to give him. Robbie stood there in the middle of everyone, looking quite a bit put out, if not appalled, that the Wolf apparently was going to get fed when the SAUSAGES ARE STILL MISSING!

Instantly, Weasil started cosying up to Wolfie; the word food was music to Weasil's ears, and he'd think nothing of picking food off Wolfie's dish.

"EXCUSE ME!" Robbie shouted. "We still 'ave a meat-based crime tae solve, yeah?"

"There is no crime," I said.

"There's missin' sausages!"

"That does not constitute a crime," Sam put in, backing me up.

"It does in Scotland."

Sam nodded thoughtfully, "Actually, Gabe, technically if somebody took them—"

"Don't—no," I said, shaking me head.

"I was only saying—"

"Well, don't."

Sam was somehow getting dragged into the missing sausage mystery by interviewing Robbie. The Dragon, seeing the smart way Sam was questioning the Great Scot, started interrogating everyone else. Interrogating being the operative word here. Ms. Jaio was trying her hardest to be polite to the bullet-quick questions Dragon was shooting at her, something about spring rolls resembling sausage rolls. 

The Weasil had positioned himself beside Wolfie now, probably hoping some of Wolfie's handsomeness might rub off on him. It wasn't going to happen. Sam was watching the two of them; Robbie was still suspicious of Sam; the Dragon was watching Robbie; Ms. Jaio was watching everybody; and Tonya was watching me because she knew I was approximately thirty seconds away from ordering every last one of them out of me house.

Tonya, seeing this, had stepped in, thinking that apologising for everything that had happened in the world would make it all go away. It did not. 

And me? I stood there realising this is me abode, and I have abso-bloody-lutely no control over anything happening inside it. 

Meanwhile, in her dramatic apology, Tonya placed the phone back on its cradle, and it instantly started ringing. Before I could shout, NO! Tonya had picked it up, and Sheila was BACK! Just as Tonya was about to hand me the receiver, I said, "DO NOT GIVE HER TO ME."

"Hi, Sheila."

"TONYA!" I couldn't believe this.

Everybody went quiet. Even from where I was standing on the other side of the room, I could hear me sissy squawking through the phone. 

"She wants to know if you've found the sausages."

"Tell her I have left the country."

"You're standin' right 'ere," Weasil said loud enough to carry to the phone. I threw a dirty look at him, and he shouted to Tonya, "Tell 'er he said to lie he's not 'ere."

Tonya listened to Sheila and told me, "Your sister apparently told half of Northern Ireland that YOU are involved in an international sausage controversy."

I stood there with me mouth open in astonishment, and everyone else stopped what they were doing and looked at me suspiciously. Everyone but me Mam, who was busy putting together a plate of food for her favourite person, Mr. Wolf. It was then that she opened the dishwasher to put a utensil inside when she discovered, yes, you guessed it, the missing sausages! 

Seems the woman was afraid that Robbie, the Great Scot and lover of sausages, would get at them before everybody else. 

"Oooh 'dere dey be," says she. "Now I remember."

Every head turned towards her.

"Wot?" Robbie asked.

She looked at Robbie, then she looked at the dishwasher.

Robbie slowly rose from the chair cushion he had been inspecting. 

"Remember wot?" 

Mam reached into the upper tier of the empty dishwasher and pulled out a covered dish. There was silence. She removed the cover. Sausages. Robbie made a sound I have only heard previously from wounded livestock.

"THERE THEY ARE!"

Weasil stared at me Mam. "Why were dey in dere?"

She shrugged, "I hid 'em."

"You HID them?" I said.

"Well, yeah."

"Why?"

She pointed at Robbie.

"Because I knew he'd be coomin'."

The kitchen exploded.

"I KNEW IT!" Robbie shouted.

"Knew what?" I yelled. "You've spent the last half hour accusing every Scotsman in New Hampshire!"

"I wuz protectin' the sausages," me Mam said indignantly.

"FROM ME?" Robbie cried.

"Well, ya ate fourteen sausage rolls las' time ya wuz, 'ere."

"Twelve!"

"Fourteen. I counted."

"That's slander."

"It's not slander if she counted them," Sam offered.

I turned on him.

"Samuel."

He shut up.

Sheila's voice came from the phone. "WOT'S HAPPENIN'? DID DEY FIND 'EM?"

I grabbed the phone.

"YES, SHEILA! THE INTERNATIONAL SAUSAGE CRISIS HAS BEEN RESOLVED."

There was a pause.

Then she said, "So ya took 'em."

I hung up.

Again.

Gabe

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