Saturday 10 October 2009
There is a small selection of chaps who I have known for a very long time and the way it goes is that I will not see any of them for three years and then I’ll see three of them three times in three months and drink far too much cider. This is how it happens. Big Ben is one of these chaps (so named because at six foot nine he’s a bit taller than Little Ben, who at six foot four is a little bit shorter than Big Ben). It was Fat Ben who got the raw end of the deal in this particular naming process.
Big Ben was heading from Ireland to Egyypt by way of London, and wanted to meet for lunch in Waterloo. We went to Tas, a clatteringly cheap Turkish restaurant where the free beseeded bread and lovely staff make up for the atrocious house wine. I always check the bottles with suspicion, just in case the label ever does says: ’Spray on and wipe off immediately. Do not leave in contact with any surface for more than two minutes.” Hence Tas is a very good place to go to eat but not drink. Big Ben had a Coke and I ordered a rose sherbet.
The rose sherbet was not what I expected. It came in a fat little tumbler and it was, well, squash. I half expected it to be passed to me in conjunction with a Tunnocks Caramel Wafer and an instruction from my mum to do my French homework after Neighbours. Can you tell I think I’m a bit too grown-up for squash? Yet it was a revelatory debate. “It tastes like a flower!” I announced. Big Ben had a taste: “It’s basically half a pint of liquid Turkish Delight.” Oh yes – so it was. I wonder if the Co-op stock it? You never can tell with the Co-op: they won't have any olives or semi-skimmed milk for a week, but then will unexpectedly acquire a whole freezerful of Quorn mince. The Co-op should never be second-guessed. I bow to its mysterious methods.
We finished the meal with some fresh mint tea and, I have to say, drinkwise, I wasn’t feeling seen off at all. Better still, when we popped down to The Windmill to meet Floozie, Two-Woman and Daisy, Becks Blue was on offer. Oh Becks Blue with your farty, toasty aroma. Despite the brevity of our acquaintance, already I am a little obsessed with you. My heart either leaps or sinks in accordance with your presence or absence in a pub. And you don’t even contain any alcohol. I wonder if this obsession is something I can carry on into my real life when 30 days are up? As in “I’ll just hav a Becks Blue to start off with.” Quite possibly not, as the Windmill is only the second pub I’ve found that stocks it, and I’m not spending the rest of my womanly prime in a Yates Wine Lodge.
Floozie had brought Brigitte to the pub with her. Brigitte is a 21-year-old old German on a work exchange. I think she became a little bored with us going “How young? Twenty-one? Ooooh. Go on Brigitte tell us what year you were born. 1988. Ooooooh.” For her part, Brigid was a little scandalised that everyone was tucking into raspberry mojitos at 4pm (although she did have one herself) and haltingly explained that, in Germany, people go out for dinner at seven and then maybe have a few drinks after that. Clearly she had never before met with such a debonair cocktails-before-dinner set as us.
By Becks Blue number three, bubbles were beginning to froth forth from my throat when I spoke, so I switched to a tomato juice that was 75% Worcestershire sauce and concentrated on unravelling the mysteries of Two-Woman’s drinking metabolism.
Two-Woman is a woman of immediate needs and an incredible metabolism. A small Sheffield bird of Chinese extraction, we attribute most of her metabolic idiosyncrasies to her Chinese enzymes. When she is hungry she has to eat NOW. When she is full she stops IMMEDIATELY. Then she is hungry again five minutes later. Then she’s a little bit tired and goes to sleep IMMEDIATELY (most impressively to date whilst stood among thousands of people watching Bruce Springsteen at Glastonbury). Drink affects her in a similar way, so it was fascinating to watch her drink a raspberry mojito and be pie-eyed, then have a glass of tap water and be sober again, then have a vodka and be crashingly drunk once more. My favourite moment during this metabolic roller-coaster (I was taking notes for the thesis I am going to write) was when Big Ben began relating a tale about a Polish knocking shop and Two-Woman announced “I’ve been there – it’s great, isn’t it!” They then had a vey entertaining conversation entirely at cross-purposes because Two-Woman was talking about a bar in Soho And assumed Big Ben was doing the same.
By 8.45pm, I was ready for the off as Two-Woman was attempting to force-feed me knocking-shop inspired Polish vodka whilst hissing in front of several other people “it’s ok – I won’t tell anyone.” She is indeed two women: one good and sober, and the other bad and extremely drunk. I left with Floozie and Brigitte, with Big Ben telling Two-Woman “…and we have to match each other vodka for vodka.” This felt a little like a Shire horse challenging a chihuahua to a drinking competition. If that is, dogs and horses enjoy Polish vodka. I did once have a budgie who was partial to a drop of shandy.
I left them to it, feeling vaguely irresponsible and then spent a marvelous evening of sofa-sprawling in floppy clothage.
Units dodged: Hard to say with this one. I did have a few sniffs of other peoples drinks (which mostly smelled of fruit anyway), but I was delighted with my rose sherbet and the Becks Blues were actually doing the job quite nicely in the Windmill. At the point where people descended into talking utter drunken bollocks, it would have been quite nice to join them – I am a great fan of utter drunken bollocks. So that would have been say, three pints from 8pm-11pm? Let us say six units dodged.
The Unit Dodger
No comments:
Post a Comment