Sunday lunch....

Had an interesting day on Sunday, one of those liquid diet days as it happens. What's more it happened without trying! Most people know me for not drinking that much - u-hum -ed. With the best will in the world this Sunday it was my intention to have a to have a pleasant brunchette at the aptly named ODD BAR in Manchester northern quarter but it ended up a bit of a binge!

The day started doing LAUNDRY enough for a principality in fact. Ok Laundry admittedly started at 11am with Auntie S Artoir - she's great at taking the edge off the day and moreover a superb antidote to the chunterings of Parky [Parkinson, Chat show dinosaur] on radio two and the wailing of the Chinese Christian church opposite as thy sing all things bright and beautiful in mandarin, then in simplified Chinese so every one else doesn't feel left out?!?

I drift a little from the story here but... I am imagining, that they don't have in the Chinese Christian church a hymn board with numbers proudly announcing the order of service - number 113 "The Old rugged cross" would end up being "sweet and sour duck" or "cream of sum yng guy" hmmmm chopsticks!


Back to the important story here.... So needless to say after a couple of small sherry’s and a reasonable dusting of Daz doing ones best 360 threads per inch one was ready for the short hop by executive car (CHORTLON CABS) to Odd. Mike, Colin, Kris and I arrived shortly before 1; I was starving having had no breakfast on account of such and early lunch. We ordered our grub from the hippy behind the bar who dutifully took our hard earned and then promptly forgot to do anything with it. Now another thing that my closest know about me is I am not one to commit a fuss. So after an HOUR AND A HALF, 4 pints of the old "Auntie" and still no food, one was pressed into bringing it to the attention of the beardy youth behind the bar. His reply

"Erm... you ordered food? Food? Food from me? Today?"

Having looked at the receipt in my hand I was delighted to find that I was not imagining that I had parted with some considerable dough only 95 minutes earlier to the beardy bloke who turned out to be called Richard according to the binding literature in my hand! Being slightly bemused, half cut, f**ing starving and having a sense of humour failure one noted the name on the receipt and I chirped up.

"Yes young man, it say's here I was served by Dick - you are a Dick are you not?"

He didn’t laugh.

Moments later (about 25 minutes actually) Dick took it upon himself to open the heated food elevator that had been flashing for attention for best part of the day and produced our gourmet dinner. Well almost. Minus my starter plus Kris's starter to the power of 2 et al and all the mains together. Trouble was the starters had been baking in the HOT part of the lift for hours and hours and hours so no one was able to eat it, well not unless they had a diamond tipped bit and stamina of a Russian lesbian shot putter. The Mains on the other hand were put on the cold shelf of the lift, and well frankly were well passed saving, hypothermic and frost bitten.

Mike courageously tucked into his baked vegetable (his favourite), Kris, recently ex student is used to worse so seemed to enjoy, Colin’s Kedgeree on the other hand seemed to miss any of the expected qualities one would expect of such a dish... like haddock... like dry rice... like flavour and even a hardened Glaswegian like him couldn’t stomach this dish. After coughing up the last bit of rice via his nose the complaints to the bar manager could begin in earnest.


Now 30 watt is one way to describe her, another way is a little bit dim. Pleasant enough though, her immediate answer was to bring us immediately another round of drinks gratis which usually would have appeased me but not today for I needed grub quick. So while Colin negotiated our meals for free also and angled his way towards a written apology printed in every national newspaper from the CEO himself offering his resignation for indignation we’d suffered under the hands of one of his franchises, I slipped out the door round to the chip shop.

I was already day dreaming about the Chip Barm, Jumbo Sausage, Curry and Chips when I arrived at the Chippy only to find the owner (lets say he’s a man who enjoys his products) pulling down his shutters.

“NO! NO! Wait” I shouted “I gotta have a jumbo sausage in me”

He didn’t laugh either.

Clank! The steel shutters down I was forced to beg through the letter opening for him to post me a food parcel - it after all was an emergency! He was stood behind the fish bar next to a sign that exclaimed “unaccompanied children will be sold to slavery” so I wasn’t hopeful in any Chippy aid from this guy. This was shortly confirmed when he blarted out

“F**k off mate I’m shut”

He then continued to tuck in the Chip mountain remaining from a hard days work

Sadly I head back to ODD to find Colin having got the food and drink for free and a voucher to come and try Odd again as their quests was insisting that the chef out of politeness should at least commit Hari Kari.

“It’d be better all round don’t you think?”

At this point we leave….

"Lets go to Burger King" suggests Kris, who even after his cremated starter and permafrost main can find room in his belly for more.

Now, I like a burger now and then like the best of them but not when you have had your heart set on ‘Mini Yorkshire Puds stuffed with Beef and covered in red onion gravy’ followed by ‘Chicken smothered lovingly with mozzarella on a bed of chick peas accompanied by a fruity jus’ it just doesn’t seem to float your boat any more.

We arrived at Burger King to discover half of Salford had braved the trams – it seems – to visit this very BK. Bollocks. The queue was enormous proving that “fast food” is in fact a contradiction on both words its neither fast and its most certainly ain’t food.

“Let’s go and get a drink on ‘Anal Treet’” chirps the well fed Mike (after all mike is a small man and any decent size roasted Veg is enough to satisfy his needs!)


So I end up in velvet bar at 3 pm until 4.30 pm forced to endure a larger diet until our afternoon meet with a Hypnotherapist friend of mine met us.

Now usually when we meet Ian he instantly put Kris into a trance and does various amusing parlour tricks which suits my humour. Today it wasn’t so funny. So we quickly left velvet and headed across to CHURCHILLS. Now for those who don’t know Churchill’s I’d like you to imagine the bar in Star Wars, you know the one with all the weird looking people in it, you got it? Well now you close to how this place is.

So I guess I’m about 10 pints into my diet, having had zilcho to eat and getting more and more wound up by the moment. In this moment of emotional weakness I was strangely drawn like a pisshead to curry to the Karaoke machine where Mike and I decided it would be a good idea to punish the world for the day we’d had.

Big mistake on two counts in fact. When they called James and the Muffettes up (Ian and Kris we too busy playing Bullseye) it ended being Muffette singular - myself and Mike. The first mistake was I had assumed walking to the stage that Mike could sing or at very least hum, this is not the case and the second mistake was, neither of us had chosen the song originally so had absolutely no idea what we were singing.

To my great surprise we were singing 4 non blondes (with only 2 of us ;) What’s up.

I’ll tell you What’s up – we were so f**king bad that beyond the laughter, cries for us to get off we could see a stampede to the door! We managed to empty that place quicker than Ming in a Liberal Party conference.

Crushed by my humiliation of such a poor performance compounded by the fact it was some sort pro/amateur karaoke competition on that day and EVERYONE else was amazing I headed off home to write the day off.

Anyway, I wake up Monday morning one boot on, trousers half off in the spare bed. Thinking next time, I might try and eat on Sunday’s! Seems like a sensible idea in hindsight.