Block Chop 34: More rubbish

After last night’s inexcusably rubbish blog post, I have a duty to redeem myself.  I haven’t had a particularly interesting thought or experience today; it’s been a slow one.  The most exciting thing was going to the dentist for an appointment only to discover I was 24 hours early.  Oh and I rode a motorbike 360 degrees inside a spherical cage.  No wait that was Homer Simpson.  Nevermind.

To top off the exciting day I watched John McCririck on TV walking around in what appeared to all to be a giant nappy.  Yes I watched Big Brother Xtreme, or whatever it’s called.  As Robbie would put it, I am not cool, I am a bumder.  Anyway, bear with me; I’m sure this is going somewhere, and isn’t just another space-filling digression.  John McCrickrick, the smelly-looking man who makes a living shouting near horses, was televised getting out of bed at 2.45am, wandering nearly naked into the kitchen and gorging on some mysterious nosh.  Maybe it was pate, maybe it was horse bile or fox foetus; who knows.  But whatever it was he didn’t seem to be enjoying it too much.  He was on autopilot.  He wasn’t having this midnight snack because of hunger, merely from bad habit.

And it made me hungry.  I immediately ran to the kitchen, dove into the freezer and returned missing a few fingers to frostbite, but clutching a bag of Co-op salt and pepper chicken wings in my bloodied fist.  These anorexic, industrially farmed chickens gave their lives (or at least their arms) so that I might have an un-needed nibble at a quarter to midnight.  Poor things; forced to grow up too soon by concentration camp farmers administering regular doses of hormone, antibiotic and mysterious marvellous growing medicine.  And am I, the benefactor of their unwilling and unwitting sacrifice, a little bit grateful.  Yes.  And am I consumed with guilt.  No.  No, I’m not.  Even when I am eating for no reason other than late night peckishing, or plain boredom, I want to enjoy my food.

As I ate my cheapo midnight snack, I slurped and nyom-nyom-nyomed, as though audibly involved in an altogether other kind of eating.  Not like John McCrisrock and his fat, grumpy, bald, bored face.  He seemed to hate his food as much as he hates every other thing he sees or thinks about.

Where am I going with this?  Nowhere really.  I like food.  John McCriririck is a twat.  Or at least pretends to be.

It’s times like this when I miss Japan.  Back in the land of the rising sun, which as the months tick by seems more and more like a dream, I could nip out at 2.45am to one of many 24-hour restaurants.  A minutes walk in any direction and I could get a big bowl of meaty, ricey, raw-eggy delight and a beer for a couple of quid.  I suppose I could walk fifteen minutes in Fallowfield and get a steaming soggy kebab puke, but it’s just not the same.  Sleep.