Chez Bruce- What's in my tummy

So then- birthday dinner at Chez Bruce last night was great. We sat right next to the cheese board and were treated to pungent cheesy whiffs every time a waiter wafted past....yummy.

This is what I consumed-

Aperitifs

X1 bottle of house champagne (shared of course)

To start

Rare roast beef, and some kind of mushroomy sauce with rocket and parmesan- extremely yummy and tender

For main

Sea bream with scallops, shrimp and teeny tiny gnocchi- very fishy indeedy

Accompanied by ½ bottle of extremely yummy Sancerre

For pudding

Warm chocolate fondant pudding with milk and honeycomb icecream- GOD DAMN!

Night cap

½ bottle of vintage port *feeling queesy now*

Morning

Horrendous hangover. Moderate humiliation as remembered I got home last night very drunk, had to get some fresh air, proceeded to sit in the garden on the funky plastic sofa chair (which must have suffered from torturous weathering and become very brittle) which promptly shattered into thousands of little pieces under the weight of my ginormous bottom. Was left on wet floor in glam silk dress with muddy bottom and dented pride surrounded by shards of white plastic. Thankfully not impaled.

Arrived in work to find massive, huge, wonderful bunch of flowers from amazing friend Dave complete with wildly inappropriate card about flossing my privates. Cheered me right up.

Have to leave work at 1pm to go to 24 club for an afternoon of champagne quaffing with new company for 'bonding' purposes.

May vomit if faced with prospect of more drinking.

Rock and roll.

The Birthday brat

Tonight is the beginning of the birthday festivities, or 'ali-day' as I call it.

There's a special song I sing to Steve on my birthday

'It's Ali, Ali-day
Do what I want
And do what I say
On Ali Ali-day
I always get my way'

You get the picture, basically, I'm a brat. It only really works on this one day of the year, the rest I'd be told very squarely to fuck right off by everyone, most of all Steve.

This year I have excelled myself in the birthday stakes. Tonight I'm being taken to my favourite restaurant Chez Bruce which you'll all have heard me bang on about a fair amount before. Tomorrow night I'm out with my housemates for a couple of drinks around Belsize and then off to see my mum for dinner out on Saturday night (much to S's disgust as he's missing football AND rugby- but, I reminded him of the poem above so he knows he's got no choice).

Then we've got the joint birthday party coming up, followed by 2 1/2 weeks in Thailand diving. And in hindsight somewhat cheekily I also asked for a present- this lovely handbag.

Sometimes when I get told I'm demanding and high maintenance I get genuinely offended. At those times I must remember to look back and re-read this post.

I am extremely lucky. And I know that what matters more than all of this is being loved, having wonderful friends, being happy and being made to laugh and in those respects I'm blessed.

I wonder if I could get away with asking for a matching wallet?

Health test- the update

Quick health update:

I was made to sit through an hour of post-health-test-analysis in the pub on Friday night with Steve.

Frickin’ BUPA had thankfully printed out a 30 page report detailing precise statistics for lung capacity, cholesterol, white blood cell count, diabetes, weight, BMI blah blah blah, each page more painstaking than the last.

Working in insurance seems to have increased Steve’s boredom threshold so he took great delight in talking me through every page. Thank goodness, because if we hadn’t had the report to pore over, we would have had nothing to discuss. Ahem.

Turns out Steve’s been given the all clear and is spot on in terms of his health (ok, ok, his fitness is above average, but you’d expect that from a marathon runner) which is really lovely, BUT I could barely hide my disappointment at the lack of prostate examination. The doctor told Steve that this wasn’t checked in men until they are over 45 so I have to wait almost 16 years til he gets the probing.

As a result of the health report examination (and the resultant need to down wine) I ended up being slaughtered by the time we sat down for dinner at the new overpriced Gaucho Grill in Butlers Wharf. I had a £31 piece of fillet steak which I promptly puked up the second we walked in the door at Clapham. What a bloody waste….when will I ever learn? In the morning it crossed my mind that if I’d have made it to the back garden the small family of urban foxes would have had quite a treat.

The following day after just 2 hours of sleep I traipsed my sorry hungover arse down to Brighton for a dinner out at Murasaki and general frolics for Jonathan’s birthday. As ever, the food was perfect, and just kept coming and coming. Thankfully I managed to keep a lid on my behaviour and apart from the usual potty mouth I didn’t disgrace myself at all (I don’t recollect….well, apart from some hideous photos).

I met Anne So’s lovely other half Richard who was very impressive with his two-pea-chopstick-challenge, and the lovely Siobhan who I fell in love with the second she finished a glass of champagne and proceeded to smash her glass on the floor nonchalantly and with more than a hint of ‘russian’ness. Hurrah.

All in all the weekend was a booze fuelled social extravaganza (hence my addled brain and sub standard posting today…..I’ll be back on form tomorrow, honest).

La cash machina

Date night last night was a roaring success in many ways and a damp squib in others. The place we went to dinner, El Rincon Latino on Clapham Manor Road was very good…we over ordered tapas, ate far too much garlic and drank too much wine which led to come inevitable bickering, the topic of which was far too disgusting to share on a blog, but Sam and Lindsey (and no doubt whoever I’m out with tonight- sorry lads) will hear about it when we meet up next week and it’ll give them a damn good laugh…..no doubt Gavin will have something to say on the matter as well.

Anyway, the obvious highlight of the evening was the fact that we didn’t actually have to pay for our dinner. Well that’s not strictly true, but we did leave without paying. Basically at the end of dinner when we asked for the bill we were told that the not very trusty Barclays machine was not working and that we’d have to pay by cheque, or we could ‘run to the nearest cash point ten minutes away’. Two problems- it’s not 1994 anymore, and I actually have never ever carried a chequebook with me in my life. Infact, even in 1997 my friend Jo used to pay with a cheque book and guarantee card when we went shopping and we’d practically be spat at everytime. 2nd problem- run to a cashpoint with a belly full of tapas and wine…I think NOT!

Anyway, Steve being Steve, one of these, ‘I know my rights people’ he told them that under no circumstances would we be getting cash out for them and that it was their issue if the machine didn’t work and we shouldn’t be put out as a result of it. They stood firm and said we would ‘Need to go and get money out if we wanted to leave’ and Steve gave them his business card (very ‘professional as the card in question had been doodled on!) and told them to phone him tomorrow and he’d pay over the phone and we left. Quickly. I ran actually, and we leapt into a cab pronto.

I wonder if we caused a revolt as at the time when we made our statement, and dash for freedom they were holding about 40 diners hostage.

Trouble in Hackney.

Last night the true extent of my recent gluttony was exposed….I am nearing double figures of weight, which is pretty impressive going seeing as last year I was a mere slip of a thing at 8 ½ stone. Steve, like a true hero waded in with the shock news that he is close to 12 ½ stone. So between us in just over a year, we’ve managed to put on almost 3 stone. Impressive weight gain which falls squarely into the ‘comfortable couple’ category. Long may it continue!

Meeting with Steve’s mum last night provided us both with a real idea of exactly what’s going on in the house of ‘addiction’ trouble, over in Hackney. It seems the new other half (and husband to be) is having no joy at all in keeping big sis on the straight and narrow, and instead after having met his future mother in law for several minutes, told her how much he’s enjoying the pub culture over in the UK and seemed genuinely shocked that big sis wasn’t able to ‘keep it together’ after a couple of drinks, and expressed concern at ‘how bad she gets, she just seems to want to drink and drink….’ No sh*t. Don't you remember where you met her?! Tsk tsk. And as if this isn't bad enough, he's fessed up to Steve's mum to having a violent streak when he drinks. And, as coincidence would have it, she spent a night in hospital having her head glued after an 'altercation', or rather, a 'nasty fall'. Ahem. It's just too sad to really put into words. And too hopeless and too everything.

Nevertheless, in the few short weeks he has been here, he’s already put plans down to buy a nice car, buy a house boat, buy a des-res in Bromley (!), become a professional chef….shame he’s got no money….oh, no, hang on a minute, he has! Hundreds of thousands of pounds at his disposal in a current account. It’s not his of course, it’s his future wifes. Brilliant. I hate to say it, but my prior assertions that maybe he did love her, and maybe he would take care of her have gone right out of the window. What I now see is someone who is prying on a vulnerable, niave and extremely desperate girl who just wants someone to love her. Unfortunately, given her current condition, the only people she attracts are those like this scumbag, who clearly doesn’t give a shit about her wellbeing, and is only in it for one thing. Let’s hope she can see that before the wedding.

In the meanwhile, despite being an athiest, I just pray that she keeps safe from harm. xxx

La Verre du Vin SVP

Paris seems a million miles away, well, at least 350 or so.

Last night we very almost missed our Eurostar home after Steve insisted on buying another bottle of Champagne from the supermarket. Unfortunately for us, with only 45 minutes to spare and a 20 minute cab drive to Gar de Nord, the old lady in front of us in the queue decided to have a mentalist attack at the checkout, and declared, piece by piece, that ‘someone has smuggled these things into my shopping basket, they are NOT mine’ (in French of course). After off-loading her entire trolley painstakingly, whilst cursing under her breath she then had a moment of clarity and realised that ‘silly me, they are my things after all’. Even though we were very likely to miss our (non-refundable ticket) train, we still found this hilarious.

Right then, Paris.

So, on Saturday night we went to the bar where Sex and the City was filmed, if you’re ever in Paris head to the massive Kenzo store go into the building, hit 5th floor on the lift (it’s not marked, it’s far too cool for that) and enter the world of Uber Parisian posing.

Don’t expect to be smiled at, or to be spoken to in English and expect to be given the once over by everyone in turn, repeatedly. Luckily, I was feeling fairly comfortable with being a chic Londoner in this Parisien haunt, so I held my head high and strutted around as best as I could muster, which as it turned out, was pretty good.

Several Bellinis later I was propped up at the bar, being well, one can only describe oneself as ‘a right f**king twat’. I don’t know what got into me, apart from the Bellinis. At about 10pm we were shown to our dinner table, an amazing glass domed affair at the top of the building and truly a stunning place to eat…if only I hadn’t have been too drunk to appreciate it. I had a yummy lobster and crab ravioli for starters and then king Gambas for my main, and we bickered throughout the entire meal. Hurrah. Totally my fault- I didn’t think the food was very good. Infact my main was downright DULL. When we left I was so drunk I can barely remember sitting in a bar called ‘Jade’, or getting home (or apparently getting lost on the way home and crying).

At some point I smashed a glass in the bedroom and cut my foot as the room and towels were covered in blood in the morning. I called Steve a c**t for no reason and was generally an embarrassment and an idiot! I'm almost 30, it's disgraceful.

Goes without saying that an almighty slice of humble pie was eaten on Sunday morning, and I trailed around feeling very sorry for myself after several encounters with Le head in le throne. What a looser. Steve delighted in the tables being turned, and took the piss constantly for the rest of our time away, which was to be fair, well deserved.

Anyway, we did the Eiffel Tower- waste of bloody time, but the ice creams at the bottom were great. It was much nicer sitting in the sun drenched park at the bottom, watching the world go buy, eating baguettes and strawberries and listening to the little quartet clarinet, violin, flute and miscellaneous instrument who were jamming under the tree for many hours.

We then went to see Mona….felt obliged really. She has her very own wall, and really is quite small, but lovely all the same. A little shopping on the Champs Elysee and then off to dinner on the Left Bank in the Latin Quarter, place called Reminnet. Absolutely fantastic snails and some very very rare Thon (tuna). If you ever go to Paris, you must go…but you also must book as it’s one of the most popular traditional restaurants and it’s very tiny.

We managed to avoid any of the political rumblings as a result of Sarkosy being elected and on the whole had a wonderful time away….the crazy granny was just the icing on a very yummy cake.

And as if I hadn’t put on about 3 stone in the past 3 days with excessive pastry consumption, Steve and I are off to our fave haunt, Chez Bruce again tonight. Not gratuitously I hasten to add, his long suffering mum is over from Spain and it’s a belated 30th bday celebration, I’m just along for the ride. Yum. I think I am becoming a proper bonafide foody

Goodness gracious me.

Yesterday I briefly outlined a small issue I had with a radio I’d ordered from Tesco’s online. Today, I realise that online shopping has not been my friend on several occasions in the last week.

As I’ve mentioned it’s my mum’s 60th this weekend, and being typically mum-like, she has been trickling through a steady list of birthday requests since about mid February. She doesn’t do it like a normal person; instead, she assigns gifts to people, based on the perceived value of the present she thinks they ought to buy.

So for example, the initial list was something like this:

Steve: Can Steve please buy me Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits (this was sent by text to me…..at the time he hadn’t even considered buying her a present!)
Alison and Stephen- I would like a light box for my SAD. Here’s a link on Amazon to a model I’m interested in (we subsequently got one from ebay for £20, as good as new, but she’s not to know that it didn’t cost £200 like the rip-off ones on Amazon)
Pete (my dad)- I would like a gold bracelet.

Then, following this list, I received additional requests such as a portable FM radio (the monster which arrived yesterday….not portable and no friend of mine- thankfully Steve can pick one up on his way back from Zurich this morning), and some ‘girly things’ like make up, clothes, etc etc. So do you see where I get it from now?

Wanting to maintain some dignity, Steve refused to go into a shop and buy Dolly Parton, so I pottered to HMV to find that it was £12.95. Seriously. Dolly Parton- premium rate. I tsk tsk’ed at this and promptly ordered it from CD-wow for £6.95. Saving me a fiver and my pride simultaneously- genius. Unfortunately, I fell at the first hurdle. I entered the wrong house number. I created a hybrid of all of my Brighton addresses and asked for it to be delivered to my old house number but my new street. Realising my error, I told the ‘help’ email, who said to me that my order had been dispatched and I’d have to knock at number 36 to ask for it. Which I’ve done, several times. I think it’s an empty flat, or they’ve seen me coming and are terrified after receiving the ‘hatemail’ (in the form of Dolly Parton) and have gone on high alert.

So now it’s going to be too late to give mum the CD and I think I’m going to have to write an excruciatingly embarrassing letter to no 36, telling them that they have received a delivery by mistake, and could they find it in their hearts to post it at no. 43.

I’m taking a break from online shopping, with the exception of ASOS which does lovely cheap shoes.

Last night I had an emotional evening at the Red Snapper. Emotional for many reasons. I was with my lovely friends (and Dave was being a chatterbox, which was awesome), I was in my spiritual home, and I was sitting back to back with a married man and his wife, with whom I happened to have a night of erm ‘passion’, well fumbling (and I know, I know, it’s despicable and disgusting and against everything I stand for and if I said he was, at the time, separated from his wife, you’d just raise your eyebrows). The worst of it was that he only bloody told his wife after it happened. So there we were, having a fab meal, and in the back of my mind I could visualise her marching over, picking me up by my ears and kneeing me in the groin. At one point I went to the toilet and once inside, heard the door open to the toilets and when I emerged, there he was. Very subtle, I’m sure his wife wasn’t paying attention and didn’t even notice him hot footing it after me. He grabbed me and gave me a hug, said I looked fabulous (in his best and most camp voice), I squirmed and blushed and excused myself. But that wasn’t the worst of it. When they left, he made a point of kissing me goodbye AND saying that my hair looked exactly like Kate (his wife who was hovering nearby)…..let the ground open up and swallow me whole.

That’s the downside of the local restaurants. The locals. Roll on the weekend. Dave can we please have more touching tales…how about one about Tina? Jonathan…I’m looking forward to seeing that gorgeous shot of me and Anita on your blog. That’ll get em’ flocking.

Smile, and the world smiles with you

I’m feeling exceedingly jolly today. Perhaps this is down to the fact that I watched my favourite programme on TV last night and it was as splendidly backstabbing as ever. Or maybe it’s because we’ve found somewhere to live and apart from a couple of minor things…like not having seen it, it’s practically a done deal. It could be down to the fact that I’m excited because tonight I’m having dinner with a whole load of my favourite Brighton folk, Jonathan, Dan, Dave, Anita and Stev…but you know what’s really sad? The reason why I’m the happiest is work.

The last year I have been waking up on a Monday morning feeling bleak and hopeless and with very little will to get out of bed or to smile. For a period of many weeks, Steve and I used to argue terribly on a Monday morning, and it never really clicked until now why. Because I dreaded getting up and going to work, and there can be no worse feeling in the world. This made me short tempered and tense and ratty and basically a massive bitch. Now I’m sleeping through the night (I sound like a small child) and waking up with a spring in my step. I might be skint as I’ve not been paid for about 7 weeks, but I’m the happiest I’ve been for probably about 3 years.

Lots of happy things seem to happen around you when you’re happy…just like when you’re miserable, you seem to be surrounded by misery. If you get dumped, ‘nothing compares to you’ gets put on loop by every radio station, if you’re feeling guilty, every song is about lying, or being found out, and every story you read is about ‘a tangled web of lies and deceit’ and ‘getting your comeuppance’. The same applies to me. I’m hearing songs like ‘Lovely day’ and ‘Love is in the air’ and ‘Celebrate good times….come on!’ and reading stories about love, and happiness against all odds. My inbox has been flooded with invites to weddings, and receptions and 30th birthday celebrations, and 60th birthday celebrations (my mum). Funny how life follows these patterns much like the seasons…come to think of it…perhaps all this is nothing to do with my work, or my friends, or my boyfriend, or finding a new place. Maybe things are good simply because the sun is shining.

Sorry to be such a nudger….actually, sod it. No I’m not sorry for being happy. I’m happy and proud of it.

How not to run a restaurant.

Forget Egon Ronay, this is the essential 'ali p' guide of how not to run a restaurant, inspired by a trip to 'The Little Buddha' the poor, unloved, second cousin of the prosperous and always packed to the rafters 'Red Snapper' at the 7dials.

I always looked in on the Little Buddha with pity when I ambled by, wondering why it was that they always appeared to be scantily populated whilst just 5 doors down, the concept of 'bring-your-own-booze-and-thai-food' was sustaining a roaring trade.

Don't get me wrong. The Snapper is hardly michelin star material, and often you have cold plates, the wrong food served at random times so that one of you might be on dessert whilst the others are waiting for starters....but it's cosy, welcoming, friendly, the food is good and great value, and it's a home from home.

The Buddha on the other hand is like a dysfunctional family member who everyone pretends they don't know.

We arrived and sat at any old table (there were plenty free) and it was at least ten-fifteen minutes before the sole member of staff noticed someone had walked in the restaurant. When he did see us, he looked shocked and rather fed up at the prospect of any waitering.

The 'waiter' (who was probably the cook aswell) took our orders then proceeded to stand looking miserable with his arms crossed the whole evening, probably because it was so cold in there. We ate, it was ok, and then we asked to see the dessert menu and for some coffees etc. There was a 10 minute gap and we were given the bill. After asking again for the menu, we were met with, 'No, we're closing'. No polite, 'I'm afraid we can't offer you dessert'. Just the bill.

To add insult to injury, the place doesn't take credit cards or infact plastic of any kind. I haven't carried cash since March 1992, so this was rather shocking to say the least. I had to peg it to the nearest cash-point. We were then practically evicted from the premises when the clock struck 11.30pm.

No wonder the place is always empty. I have no pity, they should take their lead from their neighbours, the fat cat Red Snapper. Cheap and cheerful, should be just that.

(I've got PMT)