Black Hole Food

Meanwhile, there were some shocking events at the Beaker Whole-Food Self-Serve Salad Bar this evening.

The rules are simple - each Beaker Person can have as much salad from the counter as they can put into one of the pots and get the top on. It's a great selection of veggies - mixed beans, pickled chillis, couscous. But Rodnie decided he was going to get as much in as he possibly could, within the rules.

First up the cream-cheese-filled peppers, then he filled in with the spicy rice. Then layers of salad leaves. Then he pushed it all down and packed some more in. Then he put as much pressure on as possible, and got some beetroot in. Then he decided he fancied a little bit of shredded carrot.

It was pushing the courgette topping down that did it. Just pushed the salad pot over the edge, to the point where the salad started to collapse under its own weight. Beaker Folk started to be dragged into the gravitational field in a way that hadn't happened since Bogwulf Chapel fell into a black hole. The seafood counter hovered on the crevette horizon. It looked like we were all going to be dragged into a massive bowl of spring onions.

Thankfully at that point, fusion kicked in. Under extreme pressure, the cherry tomatoes merged into beefsteak tomatoes, and the resultant explosive release of energy caused Rodnie's pot to explode in a salad supernova. Beansprouts and mooli were driven out under the expansive energy of the collapsing tomatoes. Chaos reigned as vegetables were blasted across the Great House and into the surrounding countryside.

Eventually we reached a point of calm. There was just one, giant tomato, orbited by shredded lettuce. A kind of salad Saturn. Rodnie stood there, gravitationally locked with his face permanently pointing at the giant tomato. We're hoping to drag him away at some point. But with all those vegetables around, we reckon we're going to need a tractor beam.