Apparently it’s Thanksgiving in the United States, when families all over that third world pre-fascist country reunite, in a parody of the ideal TV-standard happy family, to be superficially thankful for their ancestors turning up and basically saying, “Nice country. We’ll take it!”; then gorging themselves on artificially inseminated, chemical-sodden  and probably genetically modified food; and finally collapsing into various forms of acrimony and unsupressible hatred before fragmenting again.

Years ago, I landed a night fill job for a branch of the national red shed outfit, which was moving to new and improved premises. One of the items made by Chinese prison slaves and imported for the cost-conscious? Turkey platters.

This is New Zealand. I didn’t think the local Yank population was large enough. Oh, I know that there’ll be a few nostalgic for a country where you can’t walk down the street because a) there are no sidewalks, since true patriots drive everywhere, and b) you’ll be shot dead for looking like either a poor person, a homeless bum, or a criminal. We don’t get that many turkeys around here, do we?

Anyway, as I was stacking these overlarge ceramics on the shelf, I found myself spoonerising the name. And you know something? It works. Come Thanksgiving, out comes the turkey platter, loaded with deep fried or roast carcinogens on a meat base. Afterwards, the plurkey tatters are wrapped up and put in the fridge en route to their inevitable destination in the rubbish.

And there’s probably plenty of other uses for a plurkey tatter. They were a good size. You could assemble a cheese plate, for one; arrange a nice salad, that sort of thing. Or you could get drunk, finally express your frustration and rage, and break it over your family’s head. Now there’s versatility for you.