I'm from Nepal - You're Italy?!

Sup blog folk. I'm on the weedy end of a super freak weekend of brilliantness. How the devil are you?

My weekend started on Thursday, technically. Well, I suppose in all honesty it sort of started back in June when I quit my job and became a professional loser but let's not haggle. Thursday night I went out for dinner with a friend of mine. Now, I've recently been trying to prove to this guy that he and I are very different people - he seems to firmly believe that I fit in fine with his crowd... I have been trying to prove to him that, when faced with a house party full of lawyers, I can produce more sweat from a single hand palm than an entire Indian monsoon season.

We were out for dinner and he accidentally challenged me to prove to him that I wouldn't fit in perfectly with a high tea with a Lord and Lady. When the results came in we were asked not to return to the restaurant again unless I was sedated.

Obviously, when someone lays down a challenge like that it's difficult to think creatively at first... so, you have to resort to learned behaviour. In my case my learned behaviour was the film When Harry Met Sally... the trick is, to not only recreate the scene perfectly, but to also hold eye contact with the nearest waiter throughout your rendition to add an extra element to your work. If you can pull it off just right you will be handed your trophy there and then. Unfortunately, I was paired with a worthy adversary.

It's very useful when you're in the middle of something like this, to have as many tools at your disposal as you can. I was lucky; we'd ordered Mezze. This meant I had an entire plate of tiny fish that were just perfectly aerodynamic and discreet. Obviously, it was a little boring to simply hide them places... what was much more fun was to explain to, a different, waiter that, despite your best efforts, the fish was just not savable and could you please have a live one and a new beer because this one now has a useless dead fish in it.

I believe we were brought water after that and the bar staff were told not to supply any more alcohol to table 18.

One of the downsides of Mezze is that there are lots of very spillable foods... this can be turned around to your advantage at this point. I won't take credit for the initial spilling of my Taboule onto my lap and napkin - that was just clumsiness - but, once it was there and I was already being frowned at I sort of thought, in for a penny... and decided the sensible option was to lick the napkin clean. It took a full 90 seconds and a very dry tongue to get the vast majority of that food off. I would have liked to have regained waiter eye contact by this point but he was not playing ball and I had to make do with rounding off this section by biting the offending messy part of the napkin clean off and then smoothing it out on the table by my glass.

The cracks were beginning to show and my dinner date asked for the third course to be put straight into boxes and we would skip straight to pudding. Yummy! Baklava! Who doesn't love baklava? Who doesn't love having their debit card neatly stored in some baklava? My ex-friend... that's who doesn't like having his debit card stored in the baklava. This was a pretty simple manoeuvre but it turned out to have a lovely echo effect on it as I was able to laugh all over again the next day when I received a text message telling the offending debit card was stuck firmly to the inside of his wallet. Brilliant.

However, I still hadn't quite sealed my fate as confined to the trash can of unsuitables. It was time to play hard ball... this required a few separate stages... firstly, the Turkish Delight had to be removed from the bill plate and put into a napkin. A lovely treat for the way home?

Or...

A wonderfully icing sugar coated delight that leaves a fantastic imprint when flung at the windows of a restaurant or passing cars?

Exactly.

I have to admit though that the final scene of the extravaganza was something not even I could have masterminded and was due entirely to that beautiful Mistress fate. Once outside and waiting for our taxi, the scene all of a sudden needed new characters, I was provided with an Extra and the scene went something like this...


Extra: Alright, would you like to buy a line of coke?

Me: No, thank you.

Pause.


Me: Would you like to buy some Turkish Delight?

Extra: No, thank you. I don't like Turkish Delight.

Me: Oh, I don't really like coke.

Extra: Oh. Probably not even worth swapping then.

Me: No. Good luck selling your coke.

Extra: Thanks, love, good luck with your Turkish Delight.

My Friend: For fuck's sake woman stop talking to that drug dealer and get in the taxi.


And, end scene. Point Proven. Game, set, match.