apeel

For fucks sake don’t take this the wrong way. This morning I heard the UK government donated 20 million queen heads to the Haitians. How very nice of them to use taxpayer money (well I assume it is?) to help out the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. But I’m a little angry about this. You see, when I’m out and about in the city I’m acutely aware of homeless folk, hundreds of them. When I take the bus into work I see them scattered all about, sleeping in doorways, crashed in parks, begging at tube stations, huddled by churches. In at least two of the homeless ‘hot spots’ in the Eastend a wheelchair stands by the bundle of rags sleeping in the bitter cold. I should imagine these folks would benefit from 20 million quid, as would hospitals, schools, social services… as a tax payer I would very much like 20 million quid to be spent on them, and in the meantime I’m more than happy to donate voluntarily to help out the poor sods overseas suffering from the consequences of an appalling act of nature as opposed to preventable failures in our society.

Despite this early gripe, don’t let it in any way give the impression I had an unpleasant weekend and, despite being in this bloody office, not in the most excellent cheer. My weekend started at Den’s gaff in Hackney with his missus, IC and Chas. We sat about drinking and guffawing and eating fucking crisps until it was time for home and bed, where I managed to sleep for more then 5 hours. I utterly love Fridays, I don’t even mind the day at work and the ride home is always infused with extra joy.

Saturday in Hackney, when I step onto my little bit of Mare Street I always get a peculiar thrill. This probably has a lot to do with the fading memories of that dreadful area in South London where I used to live (and STILL own a fucking flat) which was populated by Cunt and similar types with a few, very few, exceptions. In the old place there was nowhere to go, the ‘high street’ was nearly always empty and the only pub in the area was mournfully dull. There was no energy, buzz, it was dead from the waist down and retarded on the top.

I did my usual routine, got paper, had breakfast, went out. This time it was the turn of Tesco for a spot of food shopping, I bought loads of vegetables as I’m still recovering from the meat festival that took place last month. Once done we popped over to Mary’s salon for some right nice haircuts. My hair is the shortest it’s been since I was born, fat Christ it works. IC and I went back to the flat and weighed up our evening options. In the end we decided to stay in, I made the decision to give stuffed courgettes a shot based on a side dish served by IC’s Aunt at Christmas. We opened some wine and never looked back.

I served the stuffed courgettes (Zucchini Ripieni to give them their correct name) with roasted potatoes and a tomato sauce I made by mixing a can of chopped tomato, wine and seasoning and reducing in the oven. The courgettes were quite fiddly (especially as the breadcrumbs were fresh and they alone took time to prepare) but the result was bloody worth it. We even sat down to eat like civilised people before watching the second half of Mesrine that took us until 2am.

We were up at 10, had breakfast and popped off to the flower market on Columbia Road. For once the weather was nice, it was cold, yes, but sunny. I bought a bucket of plants for a fiver and four pansies for 2 quid, which I slapped in the garden when we got home. Looks right pretty so it does.

Later in the afternoon we watched The Shining on my balls out home cinema wotsit that seriously benefited from being watched in such a complimentary manner. Following this IC and I popped by to see some pals and we aimed our feet for the The Ship with the intention of eating a late dinner. But this wasn’t to be the case, the kitchen was shut and sat in the middle of the pub being waited on were most of our pals. We’d spurned an invitation earlier in the day and I have to say, despite the merry crowd, I think we made the right decision purely for the sake of the hangovers each and everyone must feel today.

After releasing ourselves from their company (it was tempting to stay but sense prevailed) IC and I had a pile of Vietnamese food up the road. Roast pork and rice for me, IC had these huge Mussels in a black bean sauce. Fantastic and cheaper, quite literally, than chips.

So that was it. Another marvellous weekend conquered and fixed.

Bugger.