After a meal of spaghetti Bolognese I emerge like a butcher from the slaughterhouse

I have a lifelong tendency to accumulate stains, involuntarily. It would not be inaccurate to describe me as “Patsy McGarry, Collector of Stains”. Sounds like a profession. It means I probably have one of the larger collections of ruined shirts in Ireland, followed only by my collection of ruined ties – which sacrificed themselves to save other shirts of mine.
Part of the problem is that I eat too fast. My late mother would have to look away as I savaged the latest (medium to well-done) steak. It was not just the speed with which I devoured the poor cooked beast, but also the size of portions I shoveled into my mouth.
I blamed her. I would say that if she hadn’t had seven of us, I would never have got into the habit of eating large mouthfuls and so fast. It was a matter of survival, learned as a child, which became a lifelong habit. Or so I would say. She was having none of it.
A consequence of all this speed-at-table is a certain sloppiness. As you can imagine, in such stakes (!) spaghetti bolognese and I are an unhappy combination. To make matters worse I love spaghetti bolognese.
Generally, after a meal of spaghetti bolognese I emerge like a butcher from the slaughterhouse, my napkin splashed with the blood-like, tomato-based sauce. I, of necessity and through unhappy experience, always wear my napkin as a child would its bib at such meals, and for similar reasons. Still, the success rate is limited.
It means many shirts stained by tomato sauce, which is spectacularly difficult to remove, and to explain. At a launderette some years ago, I tested the owner to the limits of her patience with so many such stained shirts that she finally cracked and lectured me forcefully on the difficulty of removing them and my carelessness in accumulating so many.
I made a firm purpose of amendment, which I held to. For a while. But I couldn’t resist spaghetti bolognese for ever. That would be inhumane.
She might have applied detergent to the tomato stain, rubbed it in with an ice cube, applied vinegar and a clean cloth, and washed as usual. But I hadn’t the courage to tell her this.
Stain, thought to be a merger of Old Norse steina and a shortened form of Middle English disteynen.
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