A CARVE UP

Many marriages breakdown when a couple discover that they simply aren’t compatible. Compatibility doesn’t, of course, mean that you both have to like the same things; sometimes it can be a question of complementing each other.

For instance Outdoor Man loves cooking and I enjoy eating; you get the picture? Moreover when he cooks chicken, I get to eat the dry but tender breast, he loves the juicy and, so he believes, tastier drumsticks.

When you can’t share food as we do, differences can cause real wedges (and we’re not talking potatoes here). Take the case reported by Nehanda Radio this week of Zimbabwean, Mr Ncube, who became enraged when his wife ate the whole of the chicken breast, back and a thigh. He delivered her a beating but rather than finding himself in trouble with the law, it was his wife who appeared before the tribal court. Apparently local tradition requires that the tastiest parts of the chicken must be eaten by the man of the house. Sadly for Mrs Ncube she had eaten her husband's portion; hers was the entrails.

Both she and her grandmother, who had failed to teach her granddaughter how to properly share chicken with her husband, were fined a whole chicken apiece and now Mr Ncube is allegedly threatening divorce should his wife try the same trick again.