An Important Lesson Learned On A Wet Wednesday

Don't pick your nose if you've been chopping chillis.

Not By His Measure

On Monday evening I arrived home to find he had left a Bretzel Bakery treat wrapped in a sweet note on my pillow.

On Wednesday night it caught up with me. It and all the other delicious things I have eaten over the course of my entire life. "I need to go on a diet" I mumbled in a teary, accusatory tone. In bed, at 11.45pm. Because that is when I start all of my diets - on a full stomach before a night's sleep. "I'm too fat". He made reassuring, soothing noises and I nodded off.

On Thursday evening I arrived home to find that he hadn't left a Bretzel Bakery treat wrapped in a sweet note on my pillow. He made the bed! I thought, making mental lemonade. My plummeting sugar levels stomped huffily into the kitchen, where he'd laid out a spread.

~

~

A Voluble Talker Both At Work And At Table

We went out for a recession busting meal last night. The Schoolhouse were offering dinner for two with a bottle of house wine for €50. I was offering to throw a mickeyfit if I didn't get to eat, and soon. So eat we did, rib-eyes and rhubarb crumble. And chicken liver parfait and french onion soup and pavlova (though not in that order). Full-bellied, smiling and self-congratulatory, I had to remind myself that recession busting is all about staying home and eating the leftover curry from the freezer.

But going out for dinner is all about the company. "Look at them!" I whispered, gaping at the 40-odd odd members of the Pugin Society seated two tables away. "Do you want one of them too?" he asked, mocking my fondness for pets. "Yes! That one with the long curly hair and the rounded glasses" I said. "He looks like he eats snails. I'll keep him in the pantry".

That's Two Saturdays In A Row Now

"Toss a coin." We stopped on the corner of Clare Street, squinty with alcohol and indecision. He took a ten cent piece from his pocket and we examined it for clues. "Which is heads and which is tails?" "The harp is not heads" I offered, ever helpful but entirely unable to remember what the side that is not heads is called. "But on an English coin that's where the Queen's head would be, so that must be heads!"

I couldn't argue with such flawless logic. So he tossed the coin. I thought he would catch it and flip it over onto the back of his hand as boys do, but he just threw it in the air and watched it fall onto the footpath. More squinting. "What was heads again?"

"Abra" I suggested, hopefully.

Recovery: Day 7

I ordered scrambled eggs. I wanted the porridge with honey but, as the waiter had already apologetically explained to the lady at the next table, he didn't really know how to make it. He had to apologetically explain himself to me too because I hadn't been paying attention the first time. I was too busy picking at my nose.

The eggs, when they came, were bland and disappointing. He caught me looking covetously at his fry. "You can have a sausage" he said, generously. "What?" I said, squinting, like that would help me to hear. This fucking flu has me deaf; swollen glands either side of my neck are making me mumpy grumpy. He forked the sausage onto my plate and I cut into it lengthways. "I can smell it!" I exclaimed, wide-eyed with surprise and snot. This fucking flu is turning me into Helen Keller.

More Tea, Vicar?

They eat scones in the afternoons. Not scones (which rhyme with stones) like I do, but scones. Probably with yoghurt. Which they pronounce yog urt, instead of yo gurt. It's far from that I was raised.

So I'm wide awake, fretting slightly about what to wear for an afternoon littered with social beartraps. I shouldn't worry, really. He's not. He's lying beside me, dozing fitfully, farting batterburger and chips.

And it's far from that he was raised.

Butterpigs

"I'm gaunnae kick yer fuckin' heid in, ya bam!" he roared, lurching down the carriage, spraying spit and spilling cider. He brayed laughing and punched his mate in the head. I was delighted.

Glasgow.

Saturday night saw us in the Buff, dancing to Pulp's Disco 2000. "I grew up with woodchip on the walls" I laughed. He pretended to be appalled. He loves his bit of rough with her swinging hips, swigging from a tin of Red Stripe, happy as a lark. The pub is called the Butterfly and the Pig and I like its dinky little ditty -

I’ll never forget falling in love with a butterfly,
a pig was I a pig not she,
you see to fly like her or be like me a butterpig you must be,
to care, to share, to love everywhere, to have curly hair,
is the meaning of the butterfly and the pig,
the odd pair.

Though no odd pair we.

On the windy way home we blessed an amiable drunk with a cigarette in exchange for directions to our warm bed. He wished us a merry Christmas and congratulated himself on being the first to do so. Aye, second turn on the left... into an industrial wasteland from which you may never escape. An hour later and a pish down a laneway - we were lost. The perishing cold gnawed at my cheer and my chips. I hate Glasgow.

But I didn't, not really. On Sunday morning I ate porridge with maple syrup in the Willow Tea Rooms and tried on every red woollen coat in Scotland. We trailed around GoMA, drank Glühwein at the fair, swung rosie cheeked with cold on the carousel swings. I eyed the Helter Skelter longingly but didn't push my luck - it's cute til the carnies have to pry your ample arse off the slide.

To the dreary Dows by Queen Street Station then to watch the football. I sat with a book as a beard, soaking up the locals. The miserable middle-aged women with their shopping, Bacardi Breezers brightening their smiles, the lone and lonely men. A Glaswegian L'Absinthe.

Before boarding the train from Central Station the Jaffa Cake dipped in to the chippie with a Mars Duo. We sat amongst the pigeons then, grinning, greasy with batter and banter. A fitting end to the weekend. Butterpigs both.

It's Not Off The Ground I Licked It

It was Thursday evening. Jelly, I thought. I haven't had jelly in years. I rooted around at the back of the cupboard and found two packets of raspberry jelly. That'll do. And fruit. All I could find was pineapple, and tinned pineapple at that. Does raspberry go with pineapple? Probably not.

I wanted a good set, so I put both packets in. Remembering how frustrating it was as a child when the lumps refused to dissolve, I took the kitchen scissors to the slippery blocks and cut them into slimy little nubbles before adding the boiling water. Andrew used to eat bars of jelly as a kid, instead of chocolate. I thought he was disgusting. I popped a square of it into my mouth. It was disgusting.

I chopped the pineapple rings into raggedy chunks and spooned them into the warm jelly. They smelled of tin, not coconut, like fresh pineapple does. I don't like fresh coconut much, but fresh pineapple smells like furze and tastes like sunshine. Tinned pineapple smells sad, and tastes a little bit lonely.

They floated. I hadn't expected that, and for some reason I found it horribly disappointing. Perverse, really, as floaters are generally more exciting than foodstuffs which sink. I think it was at that point that I realised I wouldn't be able to eat it until the morning, and that I didn't really want to eat it anyway. How depressing.

It was a ridiculous episode, and alarmingly typical. I don't know where I get these notions or why I feel a compulsion to tell you about them.

I had a bowl of jelly for afters in Nana's on Sunday evening. Somewhere along our conversational meander she mentioned that she'd had a cup of Oxo the evening before. I asked her if she meant Bovril (which is also mankygank) but no, she meant Oxo. She dissolved cubes of beef stock in hot water and drank it. "Funny" she said, "I didn't enjoy it". I'm not fucking surprised. We're not that different, my nana and I.

Salt An' Vinegar

I dithered, my conscience eating at me. Fuck it, I thought, nobody will know. And I was almost, almost there when my phone rang. I silenced it guiltily and placed my order, then, thinking I'd have at least ten minutes to play with, I called him back. I got a whole two minutes of pretending I was out for a walk before your woman behind the counter bellowed at me. "I'm out picking up some dinner" I muttered "in the chipper". I trailed off in embarrassment and he laughed. That's not like you!

Yeah, yeah.

I hurried home with my greasy bag, joking that I hoped I wouldn't be mugged for my chips but glaring at the skangers on Pearse St. as they swaggered past, just in fucking case. Mine. I got home, poured a glass of wine, fetched a plate and some cutlery. I don't know who I thought I was kidding - I licked the salty grease from my fingers ten minutes later, then drank the nice warming rioja for dessert. In front of Ugly Betty.

Intellectual pursuits and culinary adventures will resume tomorrow.

What The Fuck Is Video Art?

Last night saw me in The Joinery up on Arbour Hill, pretending to be cool and wishing to fuck that I was wearing a black poloneck and a mullet instead of curls and a pink satin alice band. I never know what to do at art exhibitions, particularly avant-garde ones. This is in part because I'm not actually sure what avant-garde means, other than it generally applies to stuff my nana wouldn't like.

But it's all about leaving your comfort zone, right? "They have Alsatians here!" exclaimed my brother as we darted nervously through the traffic in Stoneybatter. Presumably it's all poodles and pomeranians in Monkstown.

Having trailed across the city from Grand Canal Street, we loitered outside the gallery, finishing our cigarettes. Smoking makes us look cool. I lack the manual dexterity to smoke roll ups, so instead I smoke expensive and pretentious slims called Vogue. My cool factor would increase exponentially if I could roll, I reckon, but for now I'll just feign it fashionably in the dim light.

Through the window I can see a huge screen, lots of distressing white and flashing images, tracked by the sound of a baby squalling, a high pitched, insistent cry that makes you want to comfort it, or smother it with a pillow. I think abstract and artful* thoughts to myself as I pull on my cigarette, mulling over what this piece says to me about the human condition (and my mothering instincts). A lady comes barreling out the door with the screaming child in a buggy and I realise that unless we're looking at performance art, I have been talking through my hole.

The piece is called Babel, it transpires, and is an apocalyptic (video) postcard to a technohead with a minuscule attention span. Perhaps it is about me after all. After some earnest posturing in front of the various video installations (there are headphones dangling from the ceiling... should I just hold them to my ear, DJ style, like I'm not that bovvered? Or hog them and stand engrossed, pretending to get it now that I can hear the images?) I move into the second room where I am delighted to discover some bona fide performance art in the form of Julian Longchamp and the Apostroph' Ensemble's Somnambule. This time I do stand, engrossed and pretending to get it while a trio of musicians hide behind a sheet, playing an atmospheric soundtrack to a surreal film. When the piece ends (I know it was the end, because there were credits) the uncomfortably close crowd give an uncomfortably restrained clap. I didn't start it, reigning in my compulsion to applaud their performance for fear it might be uncool, but I joined in with faux ennui. Clap clap, yes, very good. All the while thinking I must pick up one of those sheets on the way out so that I sound like I know what I'm talking about when I write this up on my blog. So that people will think I'm cool.

I'm not. So this evening I reverted to form; dispensed with the poseuring and stuck with what I know. Chilli, mostly. Piquante, with parmesan, grated love, honest warmth and hugs.

*You're right, I don't understand what artful means either.

Suggest Your Own Title

The middle-aged lady at the Tesco till gives me a friendly smile and an approving nod as she scans through my soon-to-be purchases. Potatoes, milk, strawberries and a tube of KY. Now there, she thinks, is a single girl who knows how to look after herself.

Rich Tea

I called on my nana this evening for some comfort, some time with my family. They picked me up on Leinster Road, looking sodden and forlorn, tripping along in the rain in my stupid raincoat and stupider headphones. "What's up with you?" Nothing, I sighed, just not in a good mood. She had a big pot of curry for dinner, but I didn't eat much. Then we had tea, and biscuits.

I ate them alright.

I'd Love To Cook A Stew For You, But I Have No Pot*

I have spent my morning slaving over a hot stove. It is not yet lunchtime and there is dinner for a dozen bubbling on the hob. I don't have mouths to feed. There's just me here. The Swede will be home at some stage and will doubtless oblige me by eating a bowl of something, but it's beyond even him to polish off a pot of chilli and another of spiced beef stew. It will make me smile to watch him try.

I have spent my morning cooking because I had doubts to quell, and time to kill.

Now that the flat is rich with the smell of garlic and paprika, I can sit down, pour some tea and breathe again. I have done something simple, I have made something good, I have taken my time with it and poured my thoughts into it - the food will taste of heart and soul.

Well, the chilli will taste as it always does. My knee-jerk reaction to bubbling thoughts, it is my most familiar of foods. It will taste better on Tuesday than it does today, it will sit in the freezer until I need warming some evening after a wet walk home from work.

My stew will taste of home.

I might leave it til tomorrow. By then it will taste of onions, garlic and sweet red peppers, paprika, salt, tabasco and beef, mushrooms, red wine, sour cream and love.

And that goes much better with mashed potatoes.

*Title inspired by my current read, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Emotional cooking inspired by an old favourite, Salman Rusdie's sprawling epic The Moor's Last Sigh.

Fish Fingers And Toast

They say that the surest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, so here I am decked out in my most fetching pinny and housedress, cooking up a storm. By 9pm he'll either be hopelessly enamoured of me, or in A&E.

Perhaps I should just try sticking my tongue in his bellybutton.

When Solitaire's The Only Game In Town

Noody Nady

Originally conceived as Naked Tuesday, the muggy weather these past few weeks has encouraged me to abandon trous as soon as I fall in the door from work each evening. In the hallway. Although I find it quite liberating, I still give myself the occasional fright when I pass a mirror. I have never been comfortable in my skin but for the past few weeks I've been practicing hard, making every effort to subscribe to Jack's Nice Dream.

Rhubarb Roulette
Mother is the necessity of invention - we had a bumper crop of 'barb back on the ranch this summer and I am doing my level best to get through it. This game of chance involves finding out how much stewed rhubarb you can eat before you get the runs, and I can now conclude that it is unfortunately not as much as one would think.

Pillage & Spillage
Where I raid may flatmates cupboards because they have heartlessly abandoned me, and also because I have been too lazy and/or absent to shop. I then cook with such gusto and Gordon Ramsey-fuelled abandon that the kitchen looks like the aftermath of [something apocalyptic] as painted by Jackson Pollock. I do not clean up. I shrug, wipe the soot from my chin and the tears from my eyes and sit down to enjoy a beautifully presented meal at a table set for one; crockery, cutlery, coaster and all.

See? I'm not an animal.

On My Lonesome

The Leitrim Lady left me a week ago, she's off frolicking out foreign for the next eleven weeks. I'm not bitter; or at least I wasn't until the Swede fucked off to Kenya for a few weeks on Friday. Now I'm just scared. He left me with a fridge full of liquid sustenance and a plea not to burn the flat down in their absence - I'm trying hard, but to be honest I'm more concerned that I'll adopt a cat and start wiping my arse with my hair in the absence of human company of an evening.

Obviously they've left me unsupervised before, just never for this length of time. I worry that I will start talking to myself. Or become so accustomed to walking around naked that I'll turn feral. So in a desperate plea for some form of human company, I broke the washing machine. Saturday morning then was spent in the company of deliverymen and plumbers, and while none of them quite lived up to my bored housewife fantasies (I really must lay off the porn) they were affable and chatty. Also, one of them is a helicopter pilot in his spare time. None but the finest of hired help for Rosie! Sadly, he charges by the hour, and is very bloody expensive.

Having exhausted his patience for demonstrations of the spin cycle, I put on an overdue wash of dirty knickers and set forth into the sunshine in search of some convivial company. I met the SWF and the Vet for a stroll around the chocolate market in Temple Bar. The place was jammed with wild-eyed women in search of of a cocoa fix who, like me, just read "chocolate" and bolted for the square, neglecting to check times or dates - the chocolate market is in fact on today. We ditched in favour of a spot of accidental handbag shopping (a little brown leather mini-suitcase from Urban Outfitters) and a table in sunny Bloom's Quarter where we drank wine, talked shite and snarfed tapenade.

From there I headed off to dinner with a pretty lady, feeling all cosmopolitan now that I was full of wine and olives. My date had chosen our destination because the waiter is "one hot motherfucker" (and she figured we could both do with a little sexy distraction) but she proved to be more than ample distraction herself. We spent a pleasant few hours gossiping about boys and bloggers, comparing lies and statistics and solving the world's ills. A few drinks and a charming young man later I tottled home, slightly squiffy and chuffed at the idea of having the flat to myself. Why, I could do what I liked! ("Have lots of sex" counseled Annie. Which is great in theory, we agreed, but short of my stopping men on the street it is unlikely to transpire over the next three weeks).

In the end I had a cigarette on the balcony, with a cup of earl grey and two paracetamol to ward off this morning's hangover. I texted my date to tell her how lovely she is, while slathering my lips in the honey balm she'd so thoughtfully brought as a present for me. I somewhat ill-advisedly texted last week's date to see if he has indeed disappeared in a puff of smoke up his own hole. Quite probably - I didn't get an answer. Then, reasonably full of tea, affection, and philosophical thoughts, I went to bed happy. Saturdays on your Todd aren't so bad after all. My Rabbit may not cuddle but it gives good head, and I don't need to make it breakfast on a Sunday morning. What more could a girl want of a weekend?

Donostia Uncovered

6pm

I enjoy another Campari & Naranja served in what appears to be a goldfish bowl, sitting looking down onto the beach which appears to be entirely populated by young lovers, naked children and elderly nudists. We spend a pleasant few hours feeling like genial perverts.

8pm

Much talk of dinner, particularly the kind of dinner that comes all on the one plate (the others are not so enamoured of the pinxtos). No actual dinner materialises.

10pm

We're on the prowl, but bladder issues see the search for a cool grungy bar abandoned in favour of grotty disco bar. Toilets appear to have been recently frequented by H-blockers.

12am

Cosy corner in a lovely little bar, all knocking back pints of vodka and lemon because we don't know what anything else is called, and the Basques do not speak our particular brand of Esperanto. The hand-dryer in the small shared toilet causes power cuts, painful electric shocks and some mild distress.

1am

My attempts to chat up the bemulleted barman fall on their snot owing to inebriation, insurmountable language barriers and the presence of infinitely more attractive women. Instead I indulge in excited conversation with a charming skinhead in the jacks (who also speaks Esperanto, or perhaps just English).

2am

We acquire cheeseburgers (apparently by magic) and I find police riot helmet on a bin. Eat cheeseburger while wearing helmet and staging mock arrests for photos, sustain punch to the face from brother who has not realised that helmet is child-sized toy replica. Sulk a little.

¿3am?

To the playa we go, full of spirits. I carefully pile my possessions into my helmet and splash around "swimming" like a tipsy sea lion in the shin-deep sea. Greeted by friendly Australians as I stroll home in my bra and knickers, I fail to seize what will turn out to be my best chance to score on this holiday.

Review: Last Night's Dinner

The venue:
Real Gourmet Burger in Ballsbridge.

The verdict:
Both the food and the decor were as safe and bland as their brown and beige website. Certainly not a patch on Jo Burger in Rathmines (whose site is cute, noisy and a funny shape - much like everything else about the place). Jo Burger, however, are trumped in the beef stakes by the burgers over at Bobo's (who get bonus points for their inclusion of a coke float on the afters menu and double bonus points for referring to afters as afters, but whose cramped tables and high stools are a pain in the hole). Nowhere does a burger like Rick's* though. It's a kip, I'll grant you. The decor wouldn't encourage you to linger (nor would the bouncer) and they don't have plates or cutlery or any of that fuss. They don't have a booze licence either, so it's best to arrive pre-oiled - the atmosphere in there is best savoured at half past time-to-go-home after you've spent a few hours spazzing out in RíRá's. But you won't find a better burger to dribble all down your front as you stagger off down Dame St.

In conclusion:
If you have time to kill, are stuck in Ballsbridge, can't go to the HorseShow House for fear of exam flashbacks, can't go to any of the other pubs along there because they're shite and filled with back-slapping cunts in suits, then Real Gourmet Burger is a safe alternative. Safe; not exciting or particularly tasty though.

*Rick's burgers are so good they don't need a site and RíRá's site is three years out of date and slightly embarrassing so I'm not even going to link to it.

In The Company Of Men

I went for dinner in Kitty's with two schoolfriends last night and over the pleasantly bloody steaks we got to talking about age. Turns out that the eldest of us thought he was a year younger than he is (cue a fleeting look of dismay), the second guy pretends to be a year older than he is because then people aren't so surprised at him being married and bald (he's 27 - I think both the acquisition of a wife and the loss of his hair suit him immensely) and that I pretend to be two years younger than I am, because then people tell me I've "plenty of time yet!" rather than sucking their teeth when I say I'm 27 and telling me that I'd want to get a move on.

Whingeing Explained

Auntie Flo' arrived last night, three months to the day since her last visit (blogs - useful for tracking your menstrual cycle). I'm so proud that I feel like calling my mam over in Kenya to tell her, so that she can be proud of me too.

And then I realise that I'm 27, not 12.

Jack over at Pandemian wrote a great post about what happens to her when she's premenstrual and doesn't know it;

There are many pleasant things about being sterile. [...] But my personal favourite is the sense of inner peace and beatific calm that settles upon you when you are able to finally let go of the constant low-level fear that is worrying about the tardy arrival of your period.

In her case she suffers from lapses in good taste while shopping. I suffer from that all the time. Mine instead seems to be heralded by crippling weltschmertz and a craving for cheese.