Apologies for recent lack of posts - publishing was unavailable on
Blogger yesterday: here is my précis of last weekend's activities.
:: Pretentious Pluckers & Stinky Cheese ::
(Written on April 1st 2003)
The weekend kicked off in style with a concert. Not your usual location for a Friday night out as this was part of the
Alight Here art installation. This took place in the
disused Aldwych Tube Station. Bengal Bhaji was having a couple of pieces played, so I felt duty bound to turn up. It wasn't too bad, and I saw several old friends from college on stage and in the audience: Huggie Bear was less than happy with proceedings and demanded as soon as it was all over that we repair to the nearest boozery. Or rather the second nearest, the
Lyceum Tavern, which was cheap and not too busy.
Saturday's activities began with a jaunt round
Borough Market with Tigger. It soon became clear that this was to be no ordinary trip. Cheese became the major preoccupation as we sauntered passed the myriad stalls offering everything from dried mango to pickled herring. A delightful white-coated Frenchman suddenly appeared with a dripping cheese chisel. "Do you know Vacherin?" he purred. Coating our fingers with the unctuous
fromage, Tigger and I knew we had to take advantage of their special offers. I decided to buy a whole boxed
Vacherin du haut Doubs - Mont d'Or (reduced from £6 to £3.50) and Tigger and I both availed ourselves of another bargain priced cheese at under 2 pounds. This faintly reminded me of a
Pont L'Eveque, but to my shame I can't remember the name other than that it began with P... After a perfunctory search on a specialist website, I came up with the idea that it might have been a very ripe
Pierre Qui Vire, but I certainly couldn't be sure. On tasting it seemed to have the strong salty-sweet creamy taste of the Vacherin, but harder with a brine-washed edible rind, oragey-red in colour. After that I went in search of weird and wonderful booze for a party chez Cairo-Gyro and Rev Plumstead Colman. Luckily I managed to procure a bottle of
Filliers Graanjenever, before Tigger and I dashed off to
Neal's Yard Dairy (not the Covent Garden branch - there's one near Borough Market, too!) to buy some
Doddington and a bunch of chervil. Our return to mine was slightly marred by the odd looks of our fellow train passengers as they smelled our pongy cheese-haul but, undeterred, we put the stinky cheese in tupperware in the fridge and headed out for a scoot round the local shops (to buy olives and coffee beans) and a quick nibble.
Later that evening I arrived at the party laden with my goodies: the Jenever, olives and cheese. The other guests seemed charmed by the olives, bemused by the Jenever and alarmed by the oozing mass of odorousness. Backed up by Cairo-Gyro's uncle, a nutritionist, I said that cheese always smells completely different from the way it tastes and that this would be strong-tasting but delicious on an oat cake. Most people vacated the kitchen when the tub containing the still-wrapped cheese was opened. Undaunted I pulled back the cling film and dug the knife in, spreading a generous wodge on a handy biscuit. This was an intense tasting experience, close to the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth - but I kept a straight face. Various hapless others dared dip the knife in but the reaction was universal. The nutritionist uncle summed it up with the comments, "this tastes like
dog shit" and "you can tell serious
putrefaction has begun by this stage." Blushing profusely - more from the huge slug of Jenever I'd just drunk to wash away the taste than from the embarrassment - I stated the obvious: This Was Not The Same Cheese. Tigger later confirmed that hers too was practically inedible, proof that whatever your feelings in these warlorn times, beware of Frenchmen bearing cheese (especially ones with pretty eyelashes).
At this point I'm reminded of a very old but topical joke:
Two o'clock in the afternoon. A bloke walks into a bar and asks for a large scotch. He downs this immediately and asks for another. The barman raises his eyebrows and asks:
"Celebrating are you, sir?"
"I've just had my first blowjob!" the man replies.
"Oh right... Did something go wrong with it?"
"It was fine, but I needed something to get rid of the taste!"
BOOM, BOOM!
The rest of the party was fine and after a demonstration of the now-infamous "Gay Exchange Dance" (from a particularly dodgy advert of about 4 years ago) with Rev Colman and Wilverine, I collapsed in a tired heap on the sofa.
Smarting from the realisation that the clocks had gone forward, I trotted around Cairo Gyro's flat on Sunday morning clearing up wine glasses. I was mollified by a double espresso, pear juice and repeat playings of Noël Coward's I Went To A Marvellous Party ("You know people's behaviour / Away from Belgravia / Would make you aghast...") then hurried back home to prepare for a film rehearsal at 1.30. I realised that I'd left the rancid ex-cheese behind at their flat, but I'm sure they had the sense to bin it.
When I got back home after the rehearsal, I treated myself to a jacket potato smothered in Vacherin - very delicious it was too. I thanked my lucky stars I'd asked the perfidious cheesemonger to give me a "not very ripe" one as this proved to be a powerful enough example for my taste. And so to bed, nice and early, in preparation for a long day's film shoot.
I awoke at 6 o'clock on Monday with a disturbing gurgle from my abdomen. In mild distress I prepared myself for working as cameraman's assistant on the film shoot; it became increasingly clear that I felt achily feverish and rumblingly nauseous. Not willing to miss out on the opportunity to work on a film, nor to let the team down, I coughed up a few mouthfuls of suspicious phlegm and awaited my lift to the shoot location. In short it was the wrong decision: between false alarms (dashing to the loo for no reason!) I felt unable to eat and could feel my temperature going through the roof as I struggled to keep up with the tasks allotted me. Amazingly, I lasted till 4pm when the sympathetic producer drove me home for an evening of trash TV and moaning on the sofa.
Although I feel fine today, my stomach is still a bit rumbly. I certainly can't face any more of that cheese, as it's the last thing I ate before feeling squiffy. Thankfully, my prospects have been considerably brightened by the following sent to me by the ever-reliable Wilverine: it's a version of Tom Lehrer's Elements Song. Either these piano-tickling comedy songsters are coming back into fashion or I'm fast turning into an old git. Whichever is true, I suspect Flanders and Swann to be putting in an appearance soon ("Have some Madeira, M'dear!")
In Other News, I discovered the following item for sale on a US website.
I'm finding it very hard to draw the line between satire and reality these days.
