This is a bad week for blogs I’m afraid. After a cop out blog yesterday, it not only appears there won’t be a moment to blog tomorrow and, even worse, today’s have very little to muse over. Normally by this point in the week I’ll have been so riled up with something or other – and this week has had all the wonders of Lansley’s recorded telly message to patients on a loop unless they pay £5 for a TV service, as well as Francis Maude’s pathetic attempts to prevent the TUC strike next week – or at least enough ridiculous incidents to provide me with paragraphs of awkward woe to relay to you. Sadly – and I use sadly in the loosest term – this week has instead been filled with some lovely work possibilities that I’ve been working hard on and thus ignoring news rage, and yesterday was L’s birthday so we went to the zoo. As with previous blogs you will know I am a man who bloody loves a zoo, and its amazing that I’ve found someone to share my love of just laughing at macaques with and to relish pissing yourself gigging at the way penguins just walk for hours and hours.
I hate to fill a blog with such loveliness but in the 8 months we’ve been together myself and L have very much realised that we have a lot of similar likes and these mainly revolve around eating and watching animals be total dicks. Is there anything better in life? Something tells me should someone ever invent a restaurant where all you do is eat and watch as penguins waddle around you then fall over, then they would be a very rich person indeed. It’d have to be a veggie restaurant or it’d be all a bit macabre I think. I should probably think about opening such a place up. Zoo Chew or something like it. It’d be next door to my Hip Hop Cafe which sells Pete Rock Cakes and CL Smoothies. I haven’t really thought much paste either of those ideas but I’m sure there’s legs in both of them. Again, not literally, as they’d be veggie places. For anyone who’d like to dispute that a hip hop cafe shouldn’t be veggie, I’ll just quickly use my trump card against most meat eaters and point out that RZA from the Wu-Tang clan is a Vegan, so high fives all round.
After the zoo I took L to a restaurant I haven’t been to in years, called Cafe Pacifico in Covent Garden. It is, undoubtedly, one of the, if not the, best Mexican restaurant in London, with one of the most extensive tequila lists you will ever find. I’m not usually one to know about restaurants, especially not expensive ones, but my friend Thom used to be a bartender there many moons ago. The same many moons ago I worked at the Timberland store, running up and down stairs in heavy lumberjack boots and never being healthier in my life. I spent many a day telling customers about why they should have silicon injected leather on their feet and wondered on a day to day basis why so many Americans came in when they invented the bleedin’ things and could get them cheaper at home. Thom worked around the corner and so whilst the others would go and have a cigarette break, I’d sneak round to his bar, do two shots of nice tequila and then head back to work. Its the sort of thing that makes it sound like I did this job in the 70’s, but I’m only talking 2002 and yes, no one ever noticed my also-breath or indeed how much more quickly I zapped about the stairs after my break. One day I served Tara Reid in Timberland and she was a total rude dickhead, and then she went to Cafe Pacifico and was a total rude dickhead there. Stories were swapped post work and we’d both trundle round the other Covent Garden bars as Thom, being part of the local circle, could get us in anywhere. It was nice to have a comrade so nearby.
It became one of those places that me and friends regularly frequented, and even after Thom left, other bar staff would recognise us and hand out free drinks. Often it’d lead to a messy and very late night with few memories. Returning last night the venue hasn’t really changed. The food was still amazing and the tequila list is still there with the hallowed shields on the wall, adorned with people’s names who have had the Collecion tequila at £100 a shot. The main difference of course is that after one post meal tequila I felt a bit ill and full of food and me so consequently we were both home by 10. Luckily, we both like being in a warm flat too so it all seemed pretty perfect. It was still just funny to be visiting with a completely different energy and intent than before i.e. no I don’t want to get drunk and yes I am old and tired. To be fair though, we had spent three hours looking at new lion cubs. Pointing and ‘awwww’ing a lot can be exhausting. Which is why we should totally be able to sit, eat and point and ooooh. Zoo Chews will so totally happen.
See? Nice times are boring right? I’ll try my best to have a car accident or something tomorrow that I can write up for you on Saturday.
