Lowlife 59 – Every Curry has a Silver Lining

Every Curry has a Silver Lining

By Dominic Horton

In my view plants hold hidden evil and I sense this keenly every time I undertake the diabolical act of having to stunt the garden’s growth; I hesitate to use the word gardening as the sum total of my efforts is to mow, cut down, trim and weed, simply to keep the advancing foliage at bay.  In many ways I find plants more threatening than people and I generally steer clear of both if I can help it.  I don’t do anything proactive to plant flowers etc. as to my mind there is too much vegetation in the garden in the first place and I have no desire to swell the number of the plant army.  If you are not careful the rampant force of greenery can attack the house and actually overpower it, as happened to an unfortunate dwelling in Blackheath that I spotted the other day which was enveloped in a wild leafy growth.  I imagine that the poor inhabitants of the house have the stark choice of risking being devoured by the plant leviathan on leaving the building or starving to death inside the property: a Hobson’s choice if ever there was one.

I do not know if my trepidation of plants and the like is rooted, so to speak, in my being exposed to the terrifying 1981 BBC television adaptation of John Wyndham’s book The Day of the Triffids or whether there is another explanation.   Either way, I am of the unshakable belief that one day things that sprout forth green will take over the world and extinguish all human and animal existence.   There is no greater example of the determination of herbage than the fact that a humble, seemingly feeble weed can wilfully use all of its powers to actually grow through tarmac: on the face of it, it is impossible for a tiny flaccid weed to penetrate such solid matter and the only possible explanation is that the plant is driven by pure evil.   Before you write my theories off as the ramblings of a raving madman take time to think about it, ideally over a pint in a quiet corner of the Barbara Cartland Suite of the Flagon & Gorses.  You might start to realise that my premise is not so crackpot after all.  

One thing that is crackpot is the consumption of takeaway food stuffs, which are generally foul and make you feel dreadful once you have consumed them, such feeling often stretching well into the following day.   And yet, despite all reason I continue to eat them even thought I know full well that home cooked rations are far more healthy, nutritious and tasty.    I am not a takeaway fiend by any means but one a week is one too many so I need to address the situation at hand.   I covenanted not to have any take away bile on Sunday but I ended up with a curry despite my best endeavours.  The usual routine in the Flagon on the Sabbath is that Philly the Gent rings Mamas just after 2200 hours to get the kebabs in but on Sunday Philly said, “Olivia [his wife] has told me not to have a kebab tonight as she doesn’t like the smell of it in the house.  So I am going to have a curry instead.”   When Philly asked if I wanted anything my mind thought “no” but my mouth said, “chicken Jalfrezi please”.

These things tend to by cyclical; I can go weeks without a takeaway then all of a sudden they appear on the Codger Mansions menu, calling like unwanted Jehovah’s Witnesses.   Buying a takeaway is now ludicrously easy, far too easy, as you can order one over the internet without having to speak to another human being, which appeals to me given my general aversion to other people.   Half an hour after your order (which gives you enough time to take your pub clothes off and slip into the Burlington Bertie equivalent of Hugh Heffner gear) a bloke knocks your door and hands over a white plastic bag and that’s that.  Transaction complete.  You don’t even have to bung the fella any money as you have already paid by card over the internet, which is like not paying at all.  If I had a porch I could ask the meal to be dropped in there so there would be no human contact whatsoever, which would be idyllic. 

When you order takeaway food via the internet they should at least make you read an attestation to warn you about what you are doing: “PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that the food stuffs that you are about to order will most likely be unfulfilling and they will make you feel bloated, lethargic and more full of salt than the North Sea.  Please think carefully before proceeding.  Click to continue.”  At least ordering takeaways over the internet means that I can thankfully dispense with the services of the Baby Faced Assassin and Mr Ping at the Rhareli Peking Chinese takeway, so every curry has a silver lining.

Contactless transactions are more than welcome to me and although I originally resisted self-service check out machines in shops I now use them with relish.   When self-service check outs were first installed I viewed them with disdain given that they would inevitably mean that supermarkets and shops would need to employ less staff.  Although I retain this view the benefits of not having to speak to a shop assistant or look them in the eye when I am suffering from the booze terrors far outweighs any moralistic standpoint and it now means that trips to Tesco Express down the road from Codger Mansions are not fraught with awkwardness, meaning that I can especially avoid breathing booze fumes over the Muslim shop assistant whilst buying bacon. 

After their introduction I would shun the self-service scanners and insist on being served by a member of the human race and it used to amaze me that in the busy Sainsburys Local on Colmore Row, Birmingham that people used to queue to use the scanners when it was far quicker to get served by a shop assistant; it was almost as if the scanner fiends were desperate to get a fix of the new gadgetry.   On a visit to the aforementioned Tesco Express a while ago a suit clad manager from Head Office was explaining to the shop assistant how the self-service till works and I quipped to the assistant, half seriously, “You’d better watch it mate, that machine will have you out of a job.”  The suit was clearly unimpressed with my comment, as indicated by the accusing stare that he gave me. 

There was also an element of Luddite fear in me about using the scanners but one day when we were in a rush and there was a queue my dear son Kenteke suggested I use self-service and he said, “Come on Dad I’ll show you how to do it.”  Since then I have never looked back and if one particularly chatty shop assistant is working I enact a mad scramble to the self-service till to avoid her before she can get to her station to serve me.  I thought I had honed my plans to perfection to avoid the loquacious assistant until one day when I found to my horror that when you buy alcohol a Tesco humanoid has to get involved in the transaction.   Since that fateful day all of my booze purchases have been in the Flagon & Gorses or via online grocery shopping, which is another spellbindingly miraculous invention.

I have had a spellbindingly miraculous acquisition this week (due to the sterling work of Toby In-Tents) in the form of my new car Helen, so called because of her number plate’s resemblance to the name in question.  Helen is a Chevvy which conjures up images of me sitting in a grand American gas guzzler, with a throaty throttle, cruising down long, straight freeways in the deserts of Nevada with country and western music emitting from the stereo.  The reality of the car is another matter as Helen is a Chevrolet Matiz and of the same small size and minute power as my decrepit old car, Pat, but in comparison she exudes opulent luxury as unlike Pat she has a working heater, radio and windscreen wipers and her wing mirrors are not held on by sticky tape. 

Now that I have a decent motor Barty Hook, from Lowlife’s London office, suggested that I spin down to see him but driving to London scares me more than the thought of using self-service scanners ever did, so it is unlikely I will undertake such a journey in a hurry.   The host of the Flagon & Gorses, the Pirate, has cordially invited me to the Smoke this Thursday on a rambling beer junket with Windy McDisco, Aldente McCheffrey and The Bantam Raspberry Blower but after our tiring trip to Derby Beer Festival last week I had better give the excursion a miss in order to protect my bodily organs and the pennies in my wallet, which are dwindling after purchasing Helen and attending the sumptuous eight course French dinner at the Flagon on Monday, expertly cooked by Chilli Willy himself and the moonlighting  McCheffrey.   Given the tight space in the Flagon’s kitchen, which is like a ship’s galley, I hope the bearded Willy and Aldente didn’t bump into each other as they would have stuck together like a pair of stickle bricks and I would have had to cart them off in Helen to the hospital to get them parted in what would merely have been another of life’s little adventures.

© Dominic Horton, February 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.