I am getting better at using Lou’s kitchen, but my dyed-in-the-wool habit when away from home is to pay for someone else to do the cooking and the washing up. In digs there’s always a negotiation. Even here. I choose not to cook meat with Lou’s implements. That would just feel disrespectful, but taking into account that I’m savagely carnivorous despite the fact that meat is killing humanity, it means that if I desire my bloody feast of bone and gules then I must look up the local delivery options.
I wanted hot food too. Spicy hot. Frank had a cold when I left. All of us are leaking from the temperature shift. Heat heat heat.
There’s a local sit down Thai where everything is served with vanilla and ice cream. I once asked for a dish to be extra hot and they poked it with a stick a little bit and then blew on it. Nah. I went to the rival takeout only place over the road. Kemp Thai. It is closer to what I learned to love in London in the nineties. Back then every pub in the south west had a Thai kitchen. They blew your head off for cheap. The last one, at the Rose and Crown… it finally died in lockdown. I was so regular at The White Hart opposite Fulham Broadway Station back then that I interviewed Jan and Ang in 2001 for my friend Jeanette who was vocal coach on The King and I. They got free tickets and loved it. I used to stop there for dinner and a pint after drama school, two or three times a week. I just… got used to properly hot Thai spice.
It’s possible I shot my palate to hell back then, but I can still tell the nuance in wines. I think it’s a raw palate, but it’s still pretty full of shapes in my tasteface. I really noticed it when COVID took my smell for a bit.
I remember being in Bangkok and ordering the hottest thing on the menu and being fine with it though. I still can’t do Indian spices to the same level, but Thai and I get on fine. Until the next morning which can be interesting.
But I’m happy and full of heat this evening. I’ll turn in soon and let myself be dictated to by the night. It is cold and dark. I have nothing I am supposed to be doing. I’ve raised my internal heat with food. No harm in matching it with a hot bath and an electric blanket thereafter. Joy. Tessy is fine. She has her box.
AlBarclay 