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Blog Potato wine, false creamMonday, July 21, 2008 'Do you have any real cream?' I ask, as I put the tub of Elmlea on the counter.The young girl looks as me with suspicion - this is obviously a trick question. 'Um, that is cream?' she tells me, which she manages to turn into a question right at the end. 'No,' I sigh, 'it's a mix of vegetable oil and various E numbers, not cream at all. Look,' I point to it, 'it doesn't say cream anywhere on it.' 'Oh, right.' She laughs a little bit. 'No, we've just got that.' I don't know why I bought it. I never tried Elmlea faux cream before. Maybe it isn't too bad, I think to myself. Perhaps all those E numbers make it taste just like the real thing? So, it's pretty awful. The wife whips it up. We taste it and pull faces. It tastes very false. 'I'll add honey and vanilla,' she says, 'maybe it will help?' 'Hmm.' We eat it with Strawberries and crushed chocolate biscuits. It's like spooning foamy vegetable oil into your mouth. We finish, as we're distracted by TV as we eat it. Then we feel sick. Very sick. I have stomach cramps for godssake. So, remind me why this stuff is made and / or sold again? What else happened? Well, the Colonel came round and ate 11 of my pickled chillis, desite my warning that more than 10 could lead to complications. Cue much later grasping of belly and moaning. On Friday night we went to an after-party, the first that has happened in months, pretty much. Well, weeks anyway. I had been pretty restrained in the pub, apart from the unaskedfor whisky that the Colonel bought for me. So arrived pretty fresh. And probably a bit over-excited. With a bottle of home-made potato wine. Ah, 12 year old potato wine too. Yes, it *did* taste and look like Sherry, and normally, well, who would drink a load of Sherry at a party these days? You only get drunk on Sherry once in your life, usually when in your early teens, and usually it was from your parent's drinks cabinet. Once is enough. Really. Sherry drunk is not pretty. And it hurts, really hurts the next day. So, I drank the Potato sherry. My father had been keeping it in his garage for the last decade or so. Very nice of him. Due to uncontrollable forces, I was full of life until about 7am, when I was escorted home, oblivious, by two nice people. They probably stopped me from staggering into the canal, something that is not worth dwelling upon. Next day was a noon-eye-opener. Blank periods swirled around the void that was my mind. The house was empty. I made a potato rosti before I even woke up and stuffed it, at burning temperature, inside me with the coffee. Numb all day, I did little... Labels: alcohol, cream, elmlea, late, party, potato, sherry, wine Blog DrC's B-DaySaturday, July 05, 2008 Rather surprised to find that people have actually been reading my blog. People I know. Yes, I know who you are. Well, a useful Lancaster resource at last...Last night was DrC's birthday so a mob of people turned up and rearranged furniture outside the White Cross. I drank weak bitter, knowing full well that it would be a long night. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then splintered and most of us headed for Mint to drink overpriced, under-powered cocktails. Still, compared to most cocktail bars (not that we have many to choose from here) it's pretty cheap. I had a Long Island Iced tea, recklessly, but as it turned out it wasn't so foolish as it was rather tame. I mean, how can a drink with five spirits in it turn out weak? You put a mini-dash of each in, that's how. I complained and received a shrug and an offer to replace it. So I just drank it. Outside, smoking fags, talking to strangers. Felt like being in Europe somewhere, somewhere nice, I mean. Drank a mohito, which was better. Then wanted a daiquirÃ, which was only on the menu in banana format, which sounded horrific. The barmaid happily made us a strawberry one though, which the Colonel and I accepted. As we sipped our bright pink cocktails in our oversized, ornate glasses, a woman came over and said, 'I hope you don't me asking, but are you two gay?' Hmm. Another mojito. Oh dear, I'm definitely feeling reckless now. As we're kicked out, the wife drags me to the bar where DrC is ordering a massive one-for-the-road line of shots. The wife encourages me to have one, so I do, foolishly. I thought the barman was just incompetent, as he mixed a fruit and cream type of shot, which simply curdled (flashback to Japan, story for another time). So I spent the rest of the night saying this to anyone who would listen. Today though, the Colonel tells me that he must have done it on purpose, as he said, 'This'll make you vomit' as he poured them. Classy. The shot made my head whirl (yes, we all drank them anyway) and we headed to The Lounge, despite my protests. The lounge was dim but not too busy, downstairs anyway. I ordered Fosters, the weakest thing I could find, as I was a bit unsteady by this point. I took pictures of a young couple (at their request, I hasten to add), chatted to whoever sat near me. Things started to get a bit hazy. We left after an hour or two, who could say really? The Lounge only actually closes for 1 hour in every 24 to clean up. I shudder to think who stays in there that long. Outside a man was being pinned down by a bouncer. His face was pressed against the road and his arms pulled wide and held. The man with his face in the road was saying, very well spoken, 'Look, I have no problem with you. Now, why don't you let me up.' 'No chance mate.' We gawped for a minute, then walked home. Labels: alcohol, cocktail, daiquirÃ, lounge, mint, mohito Blog Saturday Night PartyTuesday, June 24, 2008The proposed shindig at Clougha was rained off, so people went to the Brit instead to drink more alcohol than is sensible and listen to one-chip-tatty play. At 8pm. I mean, these days, who goes out at 8pm? *and* the had a late license for some reason... So that's 6 hours of drinking time. *sigh*. I started quite well, in the beer garden, as the pub was jam packed and I didn't feel for that much. I sipped bitter, avoided spirits, shied away from rounds. But in the end the time gets to us all. By 1am I was sloshing them back with everyone else, but things didn't get out of control. Not really. The police came, of course, but just to investigate a noise complaint from the usual irritating neighbours. When the police arrived there were three of us sitting outside, quietly smoking our cigarettes. The police looked nonplussed. The wife and I didn't want people back to ours, the sheer amount of people and the excessive alcohol made the prospect vaguely bad. So DrC and the Colonel pimped out their house for the evening. Off we go then, I get carried away and invite more people along on the way out. It takes the Grue and I some time to get to the party as Tintin is feeling belligerent, but we manage, in the end. Things start to get a bit more hazy at at the party. I talk at people quite a lot, then simply sit in a chair and interfere with the music for a while. Then it's 5am and time to go. All manner of interesting things occur after we leave, of course... Sunday was a write-off. A non-starter. I padded around the house all day, read books, took a bath, ate, little else. Labels: alcohol, brit, Clougha, drinking, party, police Blog Tibetan nightSunday, June 15, 2008A 4am finish, or so, from a Tibetan evening round with DrC and the Colonel. We had thenthuck (my meal), momos (the wife) and 'greens' (the Colonel). DrC kept us supplied otherwise whilst we cooked. Great, simply great food, we stuffed ourselves, but not to the extent of the Thai evening last week. 18 bottles of beer, two bottles of wine, the end of some Port and a bit of vodka later (plus whatever else we could find to consume) we called it night. But not before the start-at-midnight pudding which involved boiling carrots in milk and sugar to make fudge. Simply fantastic, at 3am, when in a terrible state... Labels: alcohol, beer, food, fudge, momo, pudding, thenthuck, tibet, wine Blog DogonastringSaturday, June 14, 2008A night at the Dogonastring, as we used to call it all those years ago. The usual suspects drifted into and out of the beer garden, the heating light was pressed by numerous fingers, drinks were poured over knees, into shoes, too much alcohol was drank too quickly - the usual sort of affair. I was talked into a Jagermeister by Dnt , who said it tasted like dentist mouthwash. 'Not like Listerine, but you know, kind of antiseptic.' I relented. It is served in a test tube, and the colour is not one found in nature. Why a test tube, we wondered? So you have to drink it right away and can't put it down perhaps. I drank most of it. It tastes a bit like the absinthe I made. It's not all bad. Half an hour later, I feel drunker than I was, a kind of head-crack drunk which makes everything thick, like wading through water all the time. I blame the Jagermeister. I talk to a man who seems to take a perverse pleasure out of the fact that he's barred from most of the pubs in town, I never work out quite why, he seems so mild-mannered. There's then the usual outside-the-pub dither as people hope for an after-party, but no-one was in the mood to have a gang of drunken strangers trashing their house until 5am tonight, it seems, so we splinter and many head to the Lounge, which often refuses me entry for some reason. So I wander home instead. Labels: alcohol, drunk, jagermeister, lounge, pub |
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