Thursday 22 October
And here is the last of my futilely wasted days off. Well – not entirely futile. I have been sort-of ill and I have been sort-of out and about. And in any case there are days when one simply needs to bond with one’s sofa. I will not bore you with the cups of tea drunk (many) or the minor household chores attended to (few). And I have lunched.
Today I skipped breakfast in preparation for lunch with Rioja. We arranged to meet at the junction of Hatton Garden and Roupell Street in Waterloo. I like meeting friends at junctions. It reminds me of being 15 and living in a village and mobile phones not having been properly invented yet and making curiously rustic-sounding arrangements, such as “Meet me by the crossroads at seven” – and then having to stick to them. I’m not used to this any more: first I texted to say I would be ten minutes late. Then I turned up ten minutes later than that.
On meeting Rioja, I was concerned to learn that she had “inhaled sushi” and wasn’t especially hungry. This could have been taken to mean that she had a maki roll lodged in her nostril, but it seems more likely that she had eaten lunch before meeting me for lunch. Hmmm. My problem was that I was hungry, greedy and unfed since Day 22. Luckily, Rioja then proposed a nearby Turkish eating emporium, Ev, which sprawls beneath a series of arches and comprises a take-away section, a bar section and a restaurant section. It took us ten minutes of mad ditherings to deduce that the restaurant section was located in the section marked ‘restaurant’. The waiter then refused to serve us a mixed mezze plate to share for £8.85 (“you must pay twice!”), which plunged Rioja into such confusion that she had to stare at the menu for the next 15 minutes before finally deciding she would just have what I was having. Needles to say, in the process of her deciding what she would have, we were asked at thirty-second intervals if we had decided yet. And the minute she did decide, we could have stripped and wrestled in our humous starter, battering each other about the head with flatbread, and we would still have been profoundly ignored. The time wasted over the course of this afternoon was beginning to exceed the boundaries of a traditional lunch hour.
Eventually, we were presented with a selection of small aubergines stuffed with unnecessarily dry couscous. Far from being the melting, garlicky delight I had expected, they resembled the obscenely firm and gleaming droppings of some exotic, overfed and slightly constipated zoo beast. I think Rioja should have just inhaled hers. (Poor Rioja: I feel that my not-drinking has cursed our meetings. But do not fret: I’m back on the sauce from Friday. Would you and Jim care to pick an evening for a spot of Albert action soon?)
On leaving Rioja, I came home, blew my nose a lot and unblocked my bath. That is not a euphemism.
Units dodged: Three. Under normal circumstances I would have had a large glass of white wine to lubricate the passage of the obscene aubergines.
Non-alcoholic beer of the day: Super Bock Non Alcohol. Another lovely beer and the ordinary version of the Super Bock Stout I was salivating over on Day 18. This has got the balance right between sweet and bitter. It’s quite hoppy, adequately fizzy, ever so slightly tangy in the best possible way. And there’s a hint of honey in the aftertaste. I wish they sold it in pubs. Or confusing Turkish restaurants…
The Unit Dodger
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