Cheesy Mess

It was a bright sunny day in the medieval town of Gruyères, Switzerland. Gabriel lazily got up from his bed and stretched himself as he looked at the lush green meadows that lay outside his house in the hills. Gruyères is a small town north of the Great Alps in Switzerland. Surrounded on all sides by chilly mountains, Le Gruyères was a peaceful place where everyone manufactured a certain kind of famous cheese called Gruyère.

Unsurprisingly, like everyone, Gabriel was also a cheesemonger. Being brought up in an isolated hill a few minutes away from Gruyères, he grew up with cheese and fashioned a liking towards its making. Gruyères was best known for the Gruyère cheese that was made in the city, but Gabriel was different. Even though he liked the sharp taste of Gruyère, he deeply admired Emmental cheese. He thought that cheese was meant to be made with holes in it, and any cheese that wasn’t porous was fake.

Gabriel slowly made his way out of his bedroom. He went inside his bathroom and started brushing his teeth, swiftly clasping his bottle of shaving gel. There was an unusual tingle in his mind that he couldn’t place. He noticed a dewy glow around the bottle’s edge and the cool flutter of air wafting around it drifting from the open window. The name tag on the neck of the bottle was always a little hard to read, but Gabriel couldn’t help it. He found himself staring at it every day in the mirror. Sometimes it even made him feel odd. He neglected it and went about continuing to shave his short stubble until it clicked! In an instant, he dropped everything and ran out of his house, grabbing a folder containing important documents that he had so carefully filed the previous day.

At the heart of Gruyère, at Le Buche — the “Spoon” (the stadium) — was capable of hosting more than 2,000 people at a time. It was the town’s most massive structure and was host to every significant event that happened in and around the Alps. Built like a football stadium, Le Buche became a hotspot for tourists and occupants alike. Gabriel had registered for the “Annual International Cheese Championship” that was to be held that week, but had totally forgotten about it!

Each year, the Federation Internationale du Fromage, a French body that was responsible for the international cheese industry, hosted a competition that would name the best cheese in the world. The winner of the competition would get one million euros in funding to expand their cheese-making business, along with international acclaim. Year after year, the competition was won by mammoth cheese giants from Gruyères who fawned over the judges using the sharp taste of their Gruyère cheese. Nothing could break their cordon bleu; they dominated the cheese industry on a global stage, easily outdoing their domestic competitors. But Gabriel was a prideful man and did not accept it. For the past year, he had been working on a special formula and was sure to win the competition this year.

At the time, two things were going for Gruyères: their trademark smell and the way they grew. Growing Gruyère cheese required a lot of work. After precisely mixing quantities, it would take several months, if not years of ageing to get the distinct sharp smell and taste that the cheese often had. In such a prestigious competition, growing the perfect cheese was a blend of using the ideal technique, and waiting for the exact amount of time in the perfect climatic conditions required for the cheese to age.

Gabriel was not a person who would miss out on such a dream. His fellow villagers saw him as a bit eccentric for he seemed odd to be living in the town of Gruyères and manufacturing some foreign Emmental cheese. Even though he was mocked by everyone around him, Gabriel firmly believed that his Emmental cheese would easily win the hearts of the judges at the competition. Unfortunately, he had woken up late for the event, and had not realized it until he began shaving!

As Gabriel ran out of his apartment, he looked at his watch and saw that he had around five minutes to reach the venue, which was a few kilometres away. He knew that reaching the venue would be impossible by foot and decided to find an alternative. He looked around and noticed his neighbour.

His neighbour owned a horse farm that had one of the best horses in the country. Fortunately for him, he noticed that one of the horses was right next to his yard feeding on hay. Although Gabriel was not on good terms with his neighbour, he decided that it would not matter once he had won the competition. He quickly jumped on the horse and coerced the animal towards going to the venue.

The horse started galloping at a whopping speed towards the venue. Gabriel knew that he was going to be late. Yet, his will to win the competition had him going. He passed several people en route to the event. He noticed people giving him weird looks but didn’t mind it as he didn’t like his fellow villagers anyway. Midway to the event, he realized that he had completely forgotten to take his wheel of the potential prize-winning Emmental cheese. In his frustration, he turned the horse in the opposite direction and began to ride it faster back to his house. With only three minutes to go, Gabriel was sure that he was not going to make it in time. However, he still kept going.

Gabriel went home and grabbed the 10-pound wheel of cheese. He tied the cheese to the horse and started mounting himself to it when he suddenly heard his neighbour shouting. “Thief, thief!! Somebody catch him!”. His neighbour was onto him. Without turning back, Gabriel raced the horse away from his house and started going to the stadium.

With the neighbour on his chase, Gabriel carefully manoeuvred the horse and finally made it to the stadium twenty minutes after the event was scheduled to begin. As he neared the venue, he decided that the only way he was going to get inside was if he barged inside with his horse. He rode the horse right inside the venue and into the massive football court and noticed the stadium filled with people cheering.

Gabriel was crestfallen. People cheering meant that he was late. He got down from the horseback, and kept his wheel of cheese on the ground, kneeling on the floor wishing to take a breath of fresh air.

Taking a moment, he started looking around. The crowd noticed Gabriel, and suddenly, the 20000 people present at the stadium started looking at him, their cheers turning into laughter. Gabriel was confused. BAM! He got hit on his head with a football. Gabriel starts cursing loudly, turning around only to see a few athletic people kicking a ball around. He had disrupted a football match!

And that’s when it hit him: he was not wearing any clothes and was a day early for the event. Gabriel, in his hurry to get to the event, had forgotten to wear clothes and had forgotten the fact that the event was postponed by a day due to rains.