Caffeine and Curries

Following my usual plan for adjusting to the British time zone, I stayed awake on the flight, stayed up until 10 or 11 last night, andthen slept for 12 or 13 hours, waking at midday today. Knowing me
as you do, where I normally average 4 or 5 hours sleep a night, 12+ hours will give you some idea as to just how tired my body was, after 4 hours sleep in the preceding 55 hours.

Click to enlarge any images

My rental car.

Early afternoon, I drove over to Bristol to see my friend John. We sauntered over to his favourite café, The Naffeteria. For those of you unfamiliar with British colloquialisms, "naff" means unfashionable, outdated, awful. Combine that with 'cafeteria' and there you have it. It's all about us Brits doing ourselves down.



The Naffeteria

The coffee - which by the way was excellent - comes in three sizes, plus one unlisted size. Small, medium or large is on the menu, and then there 'bowl'. The bowl size is just that, a bowl of coffee. It's the same bowl they serve the very large helpings of freshly made soup in, to give you an idea of just how big it was.


A bowl of latté

I had the soup - curried parsnip - and it was good, although it was very filling, which left almost no room for my bacon sandwich. This sandwich came with the Naffeteria's own homemade tomato ketchup (which was also yummy).

The afternoon was then spent putting the world to rights, and me doing email, whilst John attempted to do his tax return.

This evening, true to our nationality, we headed down to The Star Of India, and engaged in that traditional old English custom of eating life-threateningly hot Indian curries. For the record, I had a Tandoori Chicken starter, followed by a Chicken Balti.

The Balti curry, named after the Balti dish it's cooked and served in, is unique to Britain, invented by British Indians, and very popular over here. There's an incredibly rich flavour to it, which is quite indescribable, but trust me, it's damn good!

Not wanting to break from tradition, this was all washed down with, what else? Pints of Kingfisher. It's an Indian lager, and a mainstay of the millions of Indian restaurants in Britain.

OK, so this entry has been a little "Dear Diary", and whilst I normally try to avoid that, it's too damned late (4.30am) to dress it up as some sort of eloquent masterpiece.

Tomorrow is largely unplanned so far, except there's a fair chance of my battling the forces of heartburn, in my old Saturday morning haunt, Café Retro. The evening will be spent with my partner in grime, the boy-wonder to my Gadgetman, Tim. It will involve Tim re-acquainting me with exact trans-dimensional co-ordinates to the almost mythical place from which we draw our super-human powers, namely (drum roll) ... The Porterbutt.

Posted by Max at November 28, 2002 09:50 PM