Sarah Ashley Neal - Emotional Sandwiches: Warning: All fillings contain perspectives

Emotional Sandwiches

Warning!
All Fillings Contain Perspectives

Sarah Ashley Neal

Copyright 2018 Sarah Ashley Neal

Emotional Sandwiches is a registered trademark owned by Sanartina Ltd

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador

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Email: books@troubador.co.uk

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ISBN 978 1789010 671

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Dedicated to my Mum
for all of the reasons she knows to be true

News Flash, News Flash: Sandwiches cause reactions! All fillings contain perspectives.

*

Imagine, for a moment, that you have just read this announcement while sitting in your doctors waiting room, staring into oblivion. The unusual headline jumped off the page and abruptly entered your field of vision uninvited. Boom! While you appeared to be in a world of your own, the empty stare was but an illusion. You were simply taking precautions and mentally wrapping yourself in Clingfilm to safeguard against those who were trafficking contagious bacterium. And you werent quite sure who they were. At this point, you didnt actually know what you were playing host to either, or if it was all in your mind.

Out of curiosity you picked up the article which went on to say, The effects may be more noticeable when perspectives are digested for the first time. Another line read something about managing your reactions. Skipping over that paragraph for fear of being lured into having to do something far too serious, given it was a Monday morning, you settled for the more philosophical bit that followed:

Although fillings by nature dont tend to fix anything or anyone (all on their own), it is the fusion of new flavours which filter through that has the potential to make a difference. Where possible, Ive resisted using artificial additives, keeping them all home-grown and thoughtfully packaged to subtly entertain.

Beginning to feel as though the author was talking directly to you, and on a personal level, you couldnt help but sense that you were being groomed; being prepared to go on a journey where even your own doctor wasnt equipped to send you. Uncertain at this stage if a recipe was in hiding, you decided to read more before shaking the magazine to find out a risk not worth taking, judging by the forlorn patients lounging around the room. Any sudden movement was bound to prompt a zombie uprising, disrupting your flow of concentration.

The fanciful language seemed unconventional and appeared to draw you in. Even if there was nothing edible to look forward to, you were still intrigued to find out more about the Emotional Sandwiches. What did you have to lose? After all, what didnt educate was apparently going to entertain. Anyway, some light reading would come in especially useful while allowing your phantom illness to get its act together and make up its mind if it wanted to come or go ideally, within the next few minutes.

Looking up at the clock, the doctor was running reliably late. Great! This provided the perfect excuse for you to give yourself permission to get sucked further into any abstract ideas that were certain to lie ahead and probably satisfied the writers inward desire to exaggerate, too. The next chunk of narration only validated your gut feeling, shedding more light on the News Flash that had recently illuminated your imagination.

Each Emotional Sandwich may provoke an emotional response that impacts positively on how you feel about yourself, relationships, work, family and general life as you know it! Equally they could wind you up leaving you mildly irritated. This is a common side effect associated with not being in the mood really, in which case I suggest you explore them another day. Otherwise, keep going, as one sandwich contains enough filling to contaminate you with an increased sense of self-awareness if you are in the mood for some light reflection.

Just like food in my opinion. Some days, you dont have an appetite for that something you seemingly enjoyed the day before. Yet, on another day, it returns with a vengeance reminding you how sublime it tastes and you cant imagine how on earth you could become bored with it. Putting food aside is something that I find hard to do. The thought of it runs through my veins in the same way that words flow through my mind. Constantly! Food and words bring meaning to my life and they both have the power to make me feel emotional.

Emotional?! All this talk about food was making you hungry. The author had no idea how emotional you were about to get. Not only were you reading about the potential for food to make you feel irritable, you had skipped breakfast, making certain that the lack of it had the potential to do the same. Apparently, it was wise to fast so the results from any impending tests werent skewed even if your thoughts were getting twisted, in response to starvation!

So, what is the book Emotional Sandwiches about, if it isnt about real food? Well, it is most definitely about an exploration of how several words that appear in our vocabulary come to mean so much more to us than just a string of letters that wed learned to assemble at school. Their arrangement can be questioned later. A word can be placed on trial, at any point in the future, and tried far beyond the dictionary definition it has been assigned. Do you have any vivid memories of standing in a spelling test line at primary school?

Unable to stop yourself from blurting the word No out loud you turned to the lady beside you and apologised profusely for your vocal outburst, telling her that you had no recollection of being involved in a military operation at such a young age. Aware that this superfluous information only confused her further, judging by her look of angst, you went on to learn more about the authors own experience:

I remember it all too well. It snaked around the doll-sized desks (seemingly for miles) before reaching the teacher. I recall the pressure expanding in my head as I fought hard to keep the letters in the right order, too afraid to breathe in case they fell apart. Finally they emerged in one piece so did I! The next step involved placing the final creations into sentences in such a way that their meanings made sense. Little did I know that this would take the next forty years to do! This time I gave myself permission to sit down as I continued my quest to squeeze them into lines that breathed new life into their meaning. Although some of us still refuse to negotiate their meaning, in spite of the context, I think a word can be forgiven more easily for existing in isolation. Do you?

After all, if words could talk, what would they say? A word may tell us something about what they are and their relationships with other words. People they work alongside would get a mention as would the stories that belong to them. Words would describe the roles they play and their ability to influence in one way or another; how their interviews, to play a part in Emotional Sandwiches, didnt start off as planned, because