NOW THAT MY wife has swanned off to Canada to visit her family, I am left on my own to venture again into largely unexplored territory that on past experience can bring on attacks of the sweats, loose bowels and the odd pimple. I refer, of course, to the kitchen.

It is in my nature to be wary of cardamom, oregano, cinnamon and other things I cannot pronounce. And I prefer to steer clear of what I gather are the tools of cookery but which include a three-sided skin scraper, a twisty something called a "skewer" and a knife that Jack the Ripper would have killed for.

But also I like to eat, if for no other reason than it stops me from fainting headfirst into the cats' litter tray. And since Elizabeth is across the water somewhere exploring opal mines and looking out for grizzly bears, it's down to me to do something about food.

Which means finding my way around canned food cabinets and cutlery drawers and the refrigerator and freezers. And most of those are in the kitchen. (Well, except for one of the freezers, which is snuggled up to the lawn mower, garden hose and feather duster in a hovel that she calls the utility room.)

It's not that I'm totally kitchen ignorant. I go in there a few times each day, largely to feed the cats, Currant Bun, Ali Magraw and Angel Gabriel. (And why, anyway, does cat food have to look like jellied rabbit poo or something that got scraped off the highway and jammed into a can?)

Also to wash the dishes, but that's mainly to avoid having to go along and help walk the neighbor's dog. I like dogs well enough. I just don't like walking, particularly since the doctor told me to do it or maybe die, or worse.

Beyond that, I restrict my presence in the kitchen to "need-to-know" situations, which conjoined to a firm belief that ignorance is bliss, has kept me pretty well out of it. Until now.

It's not as if Elizabeth totally abandoned me, foodwise. She spent days stocking the fridge and the freezers with a variety of goodies, such as shepherd's pie (a sort of meatloaf with mashed potatoes and taste), risotto (grits and sausage with rice instead of grits) and beef casserole.

All these were neatly stacked away, and a typed set of instructions as to how to go about preparing each, like removing the plastic wrapping (I forgot only once, in which case it was cheese sandwiches and Ritz crackers for dinner), what numbers to set the gas oven on (Numbers? Didn't these used to come in degrees Fahrenheit?), and so on.

Even this cheat sheet wasn't enough to keep me from turning the beef casserole into a sort of mush, the color of which approximated that which your pajamas become when you run into a disembodied hand clutching an eyeball in your bed, or you get your tax bill, whichever comes first.

I'm not sure what I did wrong, other than coming into the kitchen in the first place, but it still tasted fine, as long as I ate with my eyes shut. Angel Gabriel had what missed my mouth, thus keeping the carpet reasonably clean. We are a team here.

But even two freezers will hold just so much, and their limits were about reached when 10 dinners had been stocked away. At that point, my insanity gene kicked in and I allowed to Elizabeth as how don't worry, I'll cook my own meals for the other four days (she's away for two weeks).

That's the biggest mistake I've made since I married my first wife, The Creature from the Black Lagoon of fond but thankfully distant memory, for a second time. Or maybe it was the day I got lost for 2 1/2 hours in the one-way traffic system in Basingstoke, England. My memory isn't what it used to be.

Whatever, the last of my wife's pre-packaged victuals (down South where I grew up, these were "vittles," like how it's pronounced, but never mind), a tasty dish of macaroni and cheese, is gone.

So now the handwriting is on the wall, a sort of shaky scrawl, although in a rather attractive pastel blue: Cook or die.

I would essay a repast of scrambled eggs and bacon, except that when I try it the eggs come out about the consistency of either yellow barf with slimy white bits or an ochre hockey puck that has gone all out of shape. The bacon turns out as strips of charcoal redolent of incinerated pig.

I do a nice line in grits and salmon (canned, not the horrid fresh stuff out of some polluted river downstream from a row of Scottish outhouses), except there are things with legs wandering around in the grits. Better throw that out before she who must be obeyed gets back, or I'll never hear the end of it.

I'd have a can of tomato soup, except I had the last of that at lunch. Ditto the Vienna sausages a good pal sent me in a care package from Texas a few months ago. Thought about toast, except one of the cats sat on the loaf and the bread slices now resemble little 3-D maps of Slovenia.

I actually can construct a pumpkin pie, and I have the makings for it. What I don't have is the turkey to go with it, and even if I did I still have pungent memories of the last time I roasted one and forgot to remove that plastic bag full of innards in its innards.

And I'd treat myself to fish and chips down at the Blackbird Inn, except I forgot to go by a cashpoint yesterday and I have about enough money on me to buy one-half of a copy of today's Daily Telegraph.

Meanwhile, it's still six days and counting before Elizabeth returns to the cottage, her kitchen, our cats and - providing McDonalds takes credit cards - a slimmer and trimmer, but reasonably alive, me.

But we've got to get a bigger freezer.

Thought for the Week: Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

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