Perky bloody forigners

Jesus! My head! It’s a full body hangover that is only now starting to abate thanks to paracetamol, fat coke and lots of tea - oh, and sweating what appears to be neat tequila.

Evening started well with a pint of organic bitter. Examining the murky stuff that looked not so much brewed as just hoiked up from a ditch somewhere, I knew I’d be in trouble later. Couple of pints and into the centre of town. London is at its most bearable at this time of the year, with everyone standing on the pavement drinking and chatting.

New hazards are springing up though. As well as the usual backpackers and buggies, buskers and beggers, we now have rickshaws and, the latest addition, lots and lots and lots of people trying to hand you London’s new free paper - a Muroch rag I wouldn’t spit on. It’s hard to go ten yards at the moment without somebody waving a free paper inches from your face like a chequered flag at the end of a car race. Luckily, my brutal drinking companion has no issues with saying, very loudly ‘no, I don’t want your fucking paper, now fuck off’.

Ended up in Waggamammas, where the a/c just couldn’t cope. Luckily I was able to sweat quite a lot, so that was okay. Waggamammas dining is refrectory style, with strangers sharing benches and long tables. One couple sat next to us but, obviously impressed by the way we were noisily schlurping noodles and having a conversation probably liberally sprinkled with swearing and politically incorrect remarks, swiftly moved (note to self, lacquer self in deodorant in future).

Then a young woman was shown to the seat next to us. Single diner with a book - ‘a brief history of time’. I waited until we were about five minutes from being ready to go and then, being pissed, asked her if she was enjoying what she was reading.

‘Oh, yes, it’s great’.
‘Have you heard the audio-book? It’s a bit monotonous’.
‘No, I didn’t know there was an audio book.’
‘American eh? New York?’
‘New Jersey.’

Now I only know two things about New Jersey, that it has a famous turnpike that is where Jimmy Caan gets killed in ‘the Godfather’ and that it’s where Tony Soprano lives.

‘Lovely, and are you enjoying London?’

And so on. Turns out she’s a stude studying Linguistics (‘wow, I imagine it can be daunting studying all those foreign words, do you find you have trouble getting your mouth around the long hard ones?’) and she was lovely. What she must have thought God alone knows - if it was ‘who the fuck are these two drunk sweating gits?’ she hid it well.

Bill arrived (first time I’ve been brought a bill without asking - queue at door might have had something to do with it) and we departed. I’ve dined alone many times and don’t mind talking to people, as long as it’s not for long. I think I even said ‘we’ll stop bothering you, you peobably want to eat your noodles’ but she was perkily chatting up a storm by that point.

I felt old, once upon a time I would have turned on ‘the charm’, now I just wanted to make sure she got in a cab and got home okay. My brutal friend was a little more honest ‘too bad she wasn’t better looking and had a friend’. Yes indeed, and too bad we’re a couple of old farts. ‘True.’

Rounded off the evening with a mohito and a beer and another beer and that, I suppose, is why I feel like a toasted shit baugette today. It is now time to hit M&S and buy up every egg and bacon sandwich in the place.