Hard and Fast day

Today has probably been the hardest fast day since I started doing the 5:2 diet over seven months ago.

It comes a couple of days after my birthday, so I've been drinking beer and eating cake and doing other things that I'm well entitled to do 'because it's my fucking birthday'.

But for some reason it's been particularly hard fasting today - all I've had is a little tub of flavourless cous-cous and a soup that tasted like watery mushy peas. Ugh.

It's been unsatisfying to the point of starvation, and I literally feel hollow and empty. Bad times.

I feel like beer, burgers and chilli cheese fries that burn my mouth.

Basically, I feel like another visit to Lucky Chip burger now, having belatedly discovered their full gorgeousness on Tuesday night. God, that would really hit the spot right now.

Oh yes, sit down my children, and I shall tell you a tale. A tale of aged beefy goodness. And fries.

Fajita of Contentment

Stop the world, I want to get the fuck off!

Actually, that would result in floating indefinitely through space, but the infinite-voidy stuff would probably be quite peaceful once you got used to it.

Sorta like El Chico's. I'll explain presently.

In a couple of days I shall be 36. That means I'm closer to 50 than to 20! What the aged fuck?!?

El Chico's

Another sobering thought is that a few days ago I lost another grandparent - that's three dead in the space of 18 months - and as that generation rapidly disappears from my life I feel not only a sense of enforced having-to-grow-up, but also of rapid, irreversible, tragic change.

Fortunately in this ever-changing world, there are some things that pretty much stay the same. And sometimes you just need familiar creature comforts like that.

I can cling to the fact that the denouement of the new Scooby-Doo movie will probably involve a janitor or sheriff revealed inside an apparition costume. I can enjoy listening to Queen and the Beatles knowing that I know their entire catalogue and there won't be any unpleasant surprises from here on in.

It's a hot comfortable bath of reassurance.

And on Thursday I'll be going to the Tower of London to witness the Ceremony of the Keys - and while this is a new experience for me, I take comfort from the fact that I'll be witnessing something that has been exactly the same, every single night, for about literally hundreds of years.

I think the last time they changed the format for the ceremony was round about the last time El Chico's  changed their menu!

Ah, the old ones are the oldest...

Milk Purse

I occasionally wonder if my hate affair with milk goes back to my primary school days in the early-mid 1980s.

Every morning, at about 11, right before playtime, we’d line up outside the caretakers office and wait for our milky rations.

It would be brought in in big crates by two middle-aged ladies - I guess you’d call them ‘teaching assistants’ these days – called Mrs Lovett and Mrs Sexton, which was, naturally, a source of great amusement to primary school boys.

1925 - 2013

The milk itself came in little glass bottles – a third of a pint I believe, the dwarven cousins of the bottles delivered by the milkman.

(Yep, in those nostalgic, milky days we still had proper milkmen doing the rounds, my father worked in some capacity or other for the Milk Marketing Board at some point, and there were TV ads for the stuff - 'Gotta Lotta Bottle' and  'Nice Cold Ice Cold Milk'.)

We were also given a weedy little blue straw – two if we were lucky – and we’d puncture the foil cap and drain the milk before heading out into the playground to climb frames and play ‘it’.

UNTIL THATCHER, THE EVIL MILK-SNATCHER CAME ALONG AND TOOK IT AWAY FROM US - CAUSING US TO GROW UP WEAK SO WE COULDN'T RISE UP AND FIGHT AGAINST HER HEINOUS REGIME!!!1littlebitofpoliticsthere11one1

 ...Of course, it didn’t actually happen like that at all, though some would have it thus and have predictably been banging on about it this week.

Easter Egg Hunt

The early part of Easter Saturday was a fucking nightmare. (The evening wasn't, because we went to see Steeleye Span and they rocked, but the daytime was a bit of a shitter and no mistake.)

We must've been into 20 shops in various parts of South London, looking for Easter Eggs to give to various family members. Spent about three hours solid, so we did.

There's nothing for you here!

Nothing. Absolutely fuck-all available anywhere. (Except for Cadbury Creme Eggs and bags of mini eggs). From the tiniest local shops to the big Sainsburys and Safeways (I refuse to call them Morrisons for the same reason that I refuse to call a Marathon bar anything other than a Marathon bar!) there was not a single proper egg available to purchase.

The shelves were bare, apart from the occasional solitary badly broken egg in Tesco with the cracked chocolate exposed to the elements that staff had inexplicably failed to remove, perhaps deliberately leaving it there to taunt people like me.

The twats in the shops said things like. 'Ooh, you should've come earlier', which as well as being singularly unhelpful is also indicative of the widespread acquiescence of a flawed culture.

Do they have Vanuatuan takeaways in El Salvador?

I remarked the other day that it was almost impossible to find food that identified as 'United Arab Emiratean' in Dubai. (Which is in the United Arab Emirates if you needed reminding!)

This got me thinking.

Think, think, think went my brain, like some sort of vast, organic thinking machine.

And I came to the conclusion that this criticism is possibly a bit harsh, if only because the UAE is far from alone in having a dismally flaccid presence in the World League of Food.

Want to know what I'm banging on about? Hold tight for some Gastro-geopolitical discourse.

Broken Eastern Promise

A few weeks ago I went along to Craft Beer Rising, not expecting there to be anything much for me, and came away rather pleasantly surprised.

It didn't take long, however, to find the place where there was nothing for me, and that place is Dubai.

So, what's my beef with this fantastic international city; this emerging gulf hub; this centre of Arabian Nightlife... and what is the food and drink like?

Well, it's too hot, too sandy, too crowded, too 'international', too expensive, no pubs. It really is quite a shitty place and now that I've been there I can confidently tell the next recruitment consultant who informs me about 'spectacular job opportunity in Dubai' that 'thanks, but no thanks, I'd rather work on the moon.'

Just desserts?

If the best starter I've eaten this year was the foie gras at the Gay Hussar, then the best dessert I've had must surely be...

Well, let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

This week my Royal British Legion colleagues and I celebrated the public launch of our MoneyForce programme with a post-launch lunch and were keen to try somewhere new and different, near the office in the Borough area.

The rooftop take on shabby chic?

And so we found The Rooftop Cafe @ The Exchange in London Bridge street.

Merely finding it is a challenge in itself as it's extremely well hidden.

One has to go into a fairly nondescript office building next door to 'All Bar One', up a couple of floors in a lift (or take the stairs as I did), then ascend several more flights of rather shabby, fire-escapey stairs before finally arriving in the loft space where you'll find the Rooftop Cafe - an open kitchen, a few tables and one private dining room where our table was waiting for us.

I try not to be swayed by the fickleness of first impressions, but getting into the place isn't a red carpet experience - it all feels sort of unfinished right now. By the Summer there will be a proper outdoor rooftop bit which will increase their capacity, and being so close to the Shard, you can see where they think the money is.

That does rely on people actually being able to find the place though.