Text from a while ago

Hi, I'd like some ORGANIC tomato & basil soup for starters, some DOLPHIN-FRIENDLY tuna and SUSTAINABLE cod for my main, some chocolate cake made with FREE-RANGE eggs and FAIR TRADE cocoa beans, and a pint of endangered albino swamp hippopotamus blood packaged in a Malaysian sweatshop and flown over using high-carbon fuel.

25th July 2010

Had a fairly nasty dream - dreamt I was at a Chinese buffet with my friends. It was 10am so the selection of foods was rather limited. Worse still, there were all sorts of unpleasant table-dyanmics going on - there were two tables and people were moving between them like idiots according to crass favouritism. I decided to stay in my own initial seat and dismiss the trivialities around me.

However, the worst was to come - after I'd piled my plate fairly substantially at the buffet section the food literally disappeared off it even before I was able to sit down. Then just as I was going to get some more (this time with my hands, having learnt not to trust my plate) my alarm went off.

Had some good meetings yesterday - one with a barrister friend of the family who had come down from London, and another with my ex-tutor. I say ex-tutor, it was literally fifteen years ago.

Anyway I actually wrote this at around 9ambut Blogger is (not unusually) having problems. I'm literally trying to sign into it as a write. Had to type this in using NOTEPAD.

Off to a breakfast engagement now (not coincidentally, a 10am one), though by the time this is up and posted I will already be busy digesting it.

S

Observations

Got up at around quarter to six. I didn't have to, I just felt like it. Set out for a morning walk. As I did so, I began to realise just how dull the world is at that time of the morning. Sure everything's fresh and bright, but it's just so desperately quiet. In fact it's not even that fresh - usually the litter from the previous night is still scattered around the pavement like a slag.

It wasn't until around quarter past eight that I rolled up Preston Street, a street which boasts around 40 dining establishments, including my favourite China China. A lot of the establishments have four and five star hygiene ratings according to the Scores on the Doors programme, so I have no excuse not to check them out. Despite being fairly observant on food hygiene, I hadn't actually heard about the Scores on the Doors programme until a friend (even more observant on food hygiene than me) pointed it out. Not only is the food less likely to be poisoned, but is likely to be better anyway, he claims, as the cleaner a place is the better organised it is, and the better organised it is the better the meal-preparation is likely to be.

The restaurants are almost exclusively international, with a high proportion of Far-Eastern and Middle-Eastern establishments. There are also a few classics, like Dig in the Ribs or the Aberdeen Steakhouse. Asides from some multicuisine takeaways near the top of the street (kebabs et al.) there is, by my counting, only one Italian restaurant. I was reminded of the cheerful title of a book I had once come across called 'Pizza, Pasta & Poker', with some smiling guy in a baseball cap at the front. "Hi, I'm living the (Italian-)American Dream!" He didn't actually say that, I made up those words myself. I haven't even looked inside the book let alone read it, so I am not sure whether the book itself echoes the sentiment I have attributed to it.

Will I read it? Probably not. There are dozens of books in this house I should like to read first, and my reading of them will probably spark an interest in further reading on some select subjects - I doubt poker will be one of these subjects.

I do like pizza though. And pasta. And poker!