Lockdown Lunches #2: 24 Hour Carnitas

My birthday last week was the first one for 20 years in which I haven't been to the pub.

And even in 2000 I did manage a quick birthday pint with my Sports coverage colleagues in the BBC Club at Television Centre, where I was working at the time.

I used to commute there every day - imagine that! On buses and tubes! To work in a big, doughnutty building with hundreds of people!


Anyway, as promised, here a few further thoughts on Lockdown and this whole COVID-19 thing. Some of these opinions will be controversial. If you can't handle that, skip straight to the Carnitas recipe, or fuck off back to your videos of kittens or whatever you're doing to pass the time.

So, this rather peculiar, locked-down birthday reminded me of how much I miss going to the pub. Going to the pub to socialise and drink cask beer is one of my things. Like going to church to sing in the choir, going to football matches to support the mighty CCFC, going to gigs to complain that the band isn't as good as they used to be, and so on.

All gone from my life.

Miami Rice

Some years ago, back when the internet first ceased to be the sole preserve of cybergeeks and porn-lovers, there was an invasion of 'cool stuff'.

In those days, 'cool' usually meant a dancing Jesus or a photoshopped hamster with big eyes made to look like it was saying something cute. Oh joy.

Every time we think those dark days are behind us and we've moved on, someone somewhere comes up with another tedious meme that spreads like Leukemia. Keep calm and post another fucking picture of a sunset with 'motivational' words on it. That sort of thing.

And stupid pictures of kittens with banal, anthropomorphic sentiments. The suffragette movement may have achieved a lot of advancements, but they have a lot to answer for here!

If people truly like this cacksome drivel then that's all well and good and fine and dandy'n'shit. My worry is that anything I might actually find entertaining or interesting gets lost under unfathomable piles of mindless cock.

You have to feel for all the people who never get to read Ben Viveur because the internet traffic is backed up with cunts re-tweeting Stephen Fry and asking for ploughs in Farmville.

I'm about to share a great recipe for leftover roast pork, for example, but hardly anyone will get to see it. All too busy keeping calm, I shouldn't wonder...