Friday, April 9th, 2010
Matt and I were round at Jo and Martin’s last night enjoying, along with their uni contemporary Hugo, a rather splendid meal accompanied by natural wines!
Natural wines are fun, very lively, fresh and rough round the edges. One red wine we tried had an almost sweaty tart taste, a bit like a lambic fruit beer, with a similar appeal. I’m a convert.
They served us lobster paella for starter, lobster all the way from the wild coasts of Scarborough, then roast goat, along with some steamed vegetables, including the stems of wild alexanders that Martin had gathered. Then rhubarb to finish. All very delicious.
As we got more drunk, Martin got out his family’s antique spoon collection that he’s flogging on Ebay and then he and Hugo began to reminisce about car boot sales, leading to the getting out of the one item they were never able to sell: the Playboot.
Truly a wondrous item.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
Jimmy’s birthday last night. We joined him in Tamarai, a very dark restaurant of the pan-Asian fusion variety. It’s like a cross between a subterranean night club and a restaurant! Good food though.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
Brother Josh has entered his twenties, even as I move rapidly beyond them. We went out to Joe Allen Restaurant last night for his birthday dinner with Rachel and Chas too, they were in town to see Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House, which Matt and I saw too.
Rigoletto was big and loud, with some marvellous gratuitous male nudity at the beginning, great fun. Josh and Alex joined us at Joe Allen’s and we enjoyed some late-night brick and dark wood New York style dining. The service there is always so friendly and unhurried, it’s a joy to linger till 1am or so, though I always regret it at work the next day! Josh and I had their steak, it was rare, tender and amazing, I recommend it.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Went round to Andy and Jo’s last night. We picked up some of Andy’s brewing equipment, which we’re borrowing while he’s over in Japan for the next few months. Andy made us some lovely beef with roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots and black pudding.
I’ve been really enjoying black pudding recently. It goes well with meat, especially pork. It’s almost as if it brings back the moist blood that was once in the meat and makes it complete again.
They’ve got Japanese words on little post it notes stuck all over the kitchen cupboard doors so Andy can learn some vocab before he flies off next Thursday.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, December 13th, 2008
Last night I went to spend the evening with Michal and Ema down by the Thames in the south west. We drank cava and laughed through rapid fire anecdotes and conversation, and they cooked me some amazing food, the kind that only the Poles could serve.
A whole duck, jointed and cooked in an oven dish with garlic and marjoram, allowing the fat to fill up the bowl so the pieces of meat are dripping with it! We had the meat with some lovely salad, though this hardly detracted from the sheer fatty indulgence of the duck meat and the lovely bowl of hot tasty fat which we could dip meat and bread back into when we wanted another fix. Mmmmmmmm!
Then we retired to the carpet, moved the table and candles away, and got down to introducing Michal and Ema to salvia divinorum. The first time round Michal and I smoked it, but Ema was unable to inhale any at all. She coughed it straight back out. It was interesting as she often smokes things, she said afterwards that she had never had that before, it was as if the white smoke expelled itself from her, refusing to enter.
Everything always seems pregnant with meaning when you do salvia, so perhaps the Lady in her benevolence had decided that one of us needed to be sober for the first hit. It was handy that she was, as Michal took a lot and we needed an alert sitter to make sure he didn’t hurt himself or knock things over. Michal and I both lay down on the carpet facing each other. I had a fairly mild dose, I still knew I was on salvia and was feeling glad that Ema hadn’t taken any because I could see that blank look on Michal’s face, almost like a frightened animal, as he lost awareness of who he was or what was happening. As my sensations intensified, I saw Michal’s face turn green and elven, with energy flowing out of it in every direction like roots from a tree. Meanwhile, Michal was in another world in which his side of the room represented the world of life, while the side that I was on was stretching away from him into the past and death. During the experience he made a choice not to die yet, within the experience that death was just the return to a state before birth.
After some discussion, we all took it again. This time, I took a dose as big as my first dose from Kayla, enough so I completely lost all sense of who or where I was. From a kneeling position I slowly sank forwards into the carpet, between the two chairs Michal and Ema were sitting in.
It was terrifying in the way that my first high dose was terrifying, a sudden all consuming timeless terror. Reality, which was one and the same as the terror, floated upwards around me in rods or lines, and floated through me like burning pins and needles. I thought I might be better prepared for it, but it is difficult to take any lessons with you. You are just suddenly there again, caught in the terror. Yet there was a difference this time, because although I didn’t know who or what I was I did remember this sensation and terror. I was there on the carpet, and I was on my bed again, experiencing that first high dose dose of salvia I had with Kayla. It wasn’t even that I remembered it, it was actually the case that I was experiencing both together. Both experiences were the same moment: one timeless moment that I had returned to. And I knew that this place, this sensation, this terror, is what exists outside time.
I slowly returned and talked to Michal and Ema about their experiences, after we’d shared a massive bout of good hysterical laughter together. Their experiences were much more concrete and visual in many ways, but shared my trip’s preoccupation with time. We had been talking earlier in the evening about the past, both our shared past living in London, and stories of Poland and recent Polish history. Perhaps this shaped the direction of our experiences. Ema went back in time, to a very specific time, 1984 or 1985. Michal went back to his birth, his grandfather and father were sitting by his side, and he remembered into the future the whole of his life from the perspective of his unborn self.
When I write about the “terror” of the full salvia experience I don’t mean that it was a bad trip. Words like “good” and “bad” don’t really apply. It’s just very powerful and very frightening, but also wondrous to experience and to reflect on afterwards.
It’s hard to keep in mind as you seem to transcend your body that the experiences of salvia must reflect the physical situation of how you’re feeling and where you are. I wonder whether taking it on a green hill on a warm twilight evening would create a less terrifying and more benign experience. Or I wonder if terror is just my default state when stripped of any knowledge of who or what I am.
A few lines from a poem about salvia divinorum I read on the Erowid website keep coming back to me.
I had not expected fear, but terror came with her
and tho I sought a dying moment, she showed me a dying eternity
and tho I sought to bring wisdom into the real, she tore the real from me
and I was no more, and in unbeing, I lost my fear
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Worked from home this morning, then took a bath at Phil’s flat so I could get rid of my rapidly growing beard, before an incredibly stressful attempt to organise a video conferenced carol service between Ghana and London. Then to Mant and Want’s house, with Jon, Rosemary and Charlie, deep down south on the northern line for lovely stew, chilli sauce and crumble.
We played the hat game, if there’s a random person out there reading this who doesn’t know the game, it’s where you write words on bits of paper, fold them up, then pick them out at random and describe the word to your team without saying the word itself and they have to guess what it is. But on this occasion we were playing it just with famous people. I prefer having to describe any word, but famous people has its appeal too, the game goes quicker for one thing. Right wing dictators kept coming up, we got through most of the Nazis. Interestingly, Boris Johnson cropped up three times. This was good fun when we got to the stage where you mime them, as we got to stumble around having floppy hair and knocking things over in a gaffe-prone sort of way.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
Chas and Rachel have been up in Ally Pally selling alpaca yarn the last few days. They joined me, Matt, Josh and Alex for a nice pub dinner last night in the upmarket but very welcoming Prince Albert pub in Camden. I think this place has got the gastro and pub combo well judged, partly by making sure it’s all pub downstairs, and the restaurant element is upstairs. It’s a really nice light venue anyway, as it has these magnificent windows that go all the way around, and it never seems to be too loud or crowded.
We had a great time, and Rachel and Chas had their car, so dropped us all off home afterwards. It’s funny as now all three of us brothers are in London, Josh is living at the bottom of Camden Road, I’m in the middle, and Al is living up the top. Very handy for Camden dinners anyway.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
We popped round to see Charles and Miranda for dinner last night, to drop off Charles’s wellies and chair, and to sample his homemade beer (“Old Horrible”) and ginger beer. The beer was heavy on the barley, so hard going, but good! We mixed it with the ginger beer to make shandies.
We also played Ticket to Ride, another splendid board game from the Germans, and Charles cooked us Moroccan style dinner.
It might have been the green peppers, or perhaps the ginger beer, but Matt had a fairly crazy dream last night. I had a weirdish dream involving me rescuing lots of teachers, but his was basically about the spirits of deceased couples, known as Orvals. They float around and inhabit willing living couples from time to time so they can have sex with each other through their bodies. They manifest as sparkles of light in the air, and can coalesce around broken objects and fix them, or leave piles of gold and money. And they’re called Orvals – what a great name!
Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
We had Celia, Mouse’s old owner, round for dinner last night. She was on good form, knocking back gin and tonic prepared her way: gin, with just the tiniest smidgeon of tonic. Matt cooked us delicious Portuguese food: Bacalhau con nata, or salt cod with cream, one of my favourite dishes in the world. It has a creamy warming cheesy reassurance, much like lasagne or gratin dauphinois.
We talked about gender, love, drugs, sex and animals. Celia was relating how although she knows, for example, cats are just wild killing machines who probably don’t care who their owner is, she still has this massive irrational love for animals that she can’t explain. She realised recently that it was similar to religious people who despite all the evidence that religions are historical constructs, flawed and mostly undone by science, they still have this core belief in a god that they can’t explain. This inspired her to be more forgiving of religious people: some people just have this core faith, be it in god, or animals being really rather cute, that they can’t shake.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, July 5th, 2008
Spent a lovely evening at Andy and Jo’s flat – the last days of Mostyn Lodge! – with Jim and Abbie too. It was a very enthusiastic Friday night, with lots of banter coasting along on a surge of drunkenness. We printed out pictures from Morocco to stick into our little holiday journal that we wrote together. Re-reading all the lies in it now, we didn’t know what lots of it was about, probably the effect we were hoping for at the time! Andy and Jo excelled themselves once again with some lovely Moroccan style food.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »