is this anything?
have a slice of life. and another. and another.
I’m not sure whether it’s an exercise in writing, in vanity, or in pure self-amusement, but every day for the past week I’ve written a quick handful of paragraphs on an interaction I had with food or drink that day.
Here they all are – I hope they’re as fun to read as they were to write.
Baked with real cheese – Sun 2 Mar
The first time I opened a 48-pack box of mini cheddars, proudly hunted-gathered from the Croydon Costco, I expected the mass of baggies to pop out jack-in-the-box style, heaping like gold out of a pirate chest. Instead, I found eight neatly arranged six-packs, lanky and (sigh) appropriately sized for a cardboard box covered in sexy, alluring messages such as “Store in a cool dry place, away from odours”. The very same ones I get from Sainos.
So as soon as I get home, I sit down on the floor, open each sleeve and pour its littles parcels back out into the box, giggling quietly to myself. I fluff them up, I grab them by the fistful and let them fall back down. I sink my hands into them until I touch the bottom and think of the 48 blissful moments I’ll have in the near future.
🌝
The ideal amount of beer for an improv show – Mon 3 Mar
Usually I’m on the job – I’ve been co-hosting this improv comedy jam for 6 years, herding 30 people every Monday into having a good time in spite of themselves. But I’m on the bill tonight and so I’m allowed a pint.
My teammate Jonny and I tacitly agree to nurse our drinks (I picture myself swaying a baby-sized glass swaddled in blankets in my arms, trying to soothe it without spilling any of the beer). I’m a slow drinker and a slow eater – a sordid story of developing phagophobia overnight as a teenager and never quite coming back from it –, but half our favourite bands seem to have conspired to release new music today and as the conversation flows so does the beer. I take tiny sips throughout the first half and the interval, and I make it to the set with about a third of my pint left.
The ideal amount. I play characters big and small, I try some accents out. I rib the audience. Repartie! I corpse a million times, because I’m playing with my friend and he’s very funny. We accidentally run over by a minute because we’re both playing with a friend who’s very funny. Once we’re done, we have a third of a pint to sip at while we trade compliments with everyone else in the room.
🍻
Soho-on-Sea – Tue 4 Mar
It’s been sunny for four straight days now, and all over the city there’s a shared sense of this-is-what-heroin-must-feel-like. Every café, every bar, every restaurant in Soho has found square inches of pavement to annex, and terraces have sprung out from the ground like snowpiercers. The souvlaki joint in Bateman Street is practically glittering. All that’s missing is the shadow of a big plane tree.
For the first time, I start to believe that the fish being prepared at the seafood bar next to the theatre where I work was caught right on their doorstep this morning. If I take off my glasses, the BT tower could almost pass for Brighton’s doughnut on a stick. Forget Cornwall – hell, forget the South Bank’s low-tide beaches! I have Soho Square’s still muddy lawn to let my feet sink into during my lunch break while I read in the sunlight. When the afternoon rolls in and I walk back to my desk, I take a deep sniff of the smell emanating from Hobson’s and make believe I’m in Hastings.
🐟
Swimming pool ravenous – Wed 5 Mar
I’m trying to go to the swimming pool a couple nights a week, swim a kilometre, go home. Just like I did back in high school, when I thought it would make me skinny. Mostly, it would make me hungry, and I’d get cardboard-looking and -tasting cereal bars from the vending machine in the pool lobby.
Now, I’m on a mission to get ripped. Well, develop core and shoulder muscles to slow down the hypermobility-induced decay of my upper body – same thing. It makes me hungry just the same, but the vending machines in the leisure centre’s lobby only stock candy bars.
It’s a mild, almost spring evening; I walk home. Through every crack in the pavement, on the tip of every branch, at the foot of every wall, tender leaves and buds are sprouting, demanding to be picked. I fantasise about kneeling down to graze on chickweed right out of the ground, climbing on trees to bite their leaves off before they’ve even come out, grabbing fistfuls of onion grass as I sit on a public lawn.
Instead I make a pit stop at the Sainsbury’s Local and get biltong, for the gainz.
🌱
11.11am – Thu 6 Mar
Ruby and Other Lou come back from the bar downstairs suspiciously quick, their mugs empty: the espresso machine has only just been turned on, and there’s already a backlog of clients to get to before staff can get their morning coffee. It takes approximately 10 seconds for Conor and I to decide to put our sunglasses and one (one!) layer on and treat ourselves to outside coffee.
It’s a sunny walk to Flat White on Berwick Street. I get my first iced latte of the year. We reminisce on nine years of friendship; how the London improv scene has changed since I first started attending his gigs; how we’ve changed, too.
We’re a few sips in and back at our desks when Conor nudges me and says, make a wish! It’s 11.11am. To make sure I get it in before the minute is over, I ask for the first thing that crosses my mind: more good coffee. Good in its taste, its surroundings, and its company.
☕️
That’s the floor – Fri 7 Mar
When we hear Lola come out of the green room on the floor below, then the sound of a plate falling to the ground, then a faint “ooooooh noooooooo”, the stairs become Schrödinger’s spiral staircase. Is she okay? Yeah, she says. What happened? Give me a sec, she says.
All eyes on her sheepish face when she emerges a few minutes later. “I dropped the plate of apples I had just spent so much time lovingly cutting up.” On request, she mimes what lovingly cutting up apples looks like. “And then they all fell through the gaps in the stairs all the way to the bottom.” She agrees the slapstick of it all is kind of hilarious. “I almost considered eating them anyway for a second, but like, that really is the floor.” And to be fair, as far as floors go, it sure is one of them.
We’re all already digging through our bags for replacement snacks. Would you like a tangerine; I have a Pink Lady, clean and wrapped in kitchen roll; I have peanut butter M&M’s; I’ve left chips from lunch in the fridge.
🪜
Ambulatory recipe development – Sat 8 Mar
When I leave for the farmers market, I don’t yet know that my whole morning will be dedicated to one salad.
I’m walking in the sun, foraging my own brain for lunch ideas, producing recipe steps one by one out of thin air. I have rare, cold steak on my mind; the lettuce and spring onions at the veggie stall look great; the pantry section of my butcher stocks buckwheat; there’s a yellow sticker on a pack of chestnut mushrooms. I think of these all and feel something bright on my tongue – herbs, a ginger marinade, sesame oil in the dressing. If I make rice powder, I can make it even nuttier.
By the time I make it back to my flat, I have a game plan and spend two hours chopping, toasting, grinding, marinating, emulsifying, simmering, frying, mixing.
I proudly fill the largest bowl I own with my 15-goddamn-ingredient salad. I am the healthiest, wholesomest, most optimally nourished person this side of the Thames. I scarf it all down before running to the pub to spend the afternoon necking pints in front of the rugby.
🥩