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Margarine Mind Tricks

January 5, 2026 by Morgan Delaney

A vintage-style black and white photo of two men fighting over a knife while a terrified woman looks on. The caption is "Look out! He's got margarine!"

My mother didn’t have it easy.

She didn’t even have a sense of smell.

And while the rest of 1980s Ireland had miraculous moving statues, we made do with mysterious margarine.

Back in those days, butter was bad and margarine was good, so young Morgan et al. all ate margarine.

Sometimes my breakfast toast tasted fine with it.

Some mornings the margarine was weird.

A brand new tub.

Just opened the previous night.

I had put it on my evening toast.

My mother had put it on her evening potatoes.

No problems.

Now it tasted yuck.

It stumped me every time it happened.

Good margarine.

Toast and potatoes.

Bad margarine.

I couldn’t ask my mother for help.

She had no sense of smell, remember, and that messed with her sense of taste, too.

That’s why she added garlic to her potatoes and margarine.

Aha!

Look, I understand about garlic, now, but I still don’t know where she even found the garlic back then.

Yes, my mother was a double-dipper.

Going in for margarine, rubbing it over the garlic on her spuds.

Then going in for more with the same knife.

Making it taste strange if you weren’t expecting garlic-flavoured margarine.

So, the dark mystery was solved, and Mum’s up there now, spreading margarine with the angels.

It’s time to forgive her for her margarine mind tricks.

But you won’t forgive yourselves if you miss out on 50% off loads of my books – and The Phoenix for free.

You’ve got 72 hours before the Smashwords End of Year sale ends.

Go now.

​Quickly!

The Smashwords sale is over but you can still get two more free ebooks from me here!

Chat soon,

Morgan

Get 2 free ebooks from Morgan here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter.

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Filed Under: Flash fiction

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