Aussies, Pig’s Ears and David Attenborough.

When foreigners come to visit they often mention that they have heard about binge drinking in Britain on their international news. Male visitors and especially Australian ones are generally intrigued by this strange phenomenon and are keen find out more.

Who am I to culturally impoverish their visit? So as soon as my brother rang up to say he has a couple of Australian friends over from Melbourne the consequences were inevitable.

Cut to 4 am and 4 very very drunk people staggering down the road, having a very very drunk conversation concluding that we were in fact all very very drunk.

“I am very very drunk” someone said. We all concurred repeatedly...

My misty recollections of Friday evening mostly consist of drinking, lots of drinking - all kinds of drinks, in all kinds of drinky places. We did get some eating done at some point going to The St John’s restaurant which I hugely recommend as the best restaurant in London that has nothing on the menu you actually want to eat, all made up from parts of animals you wouldn’t want to eat. All surprising delicious.

Here are some examples:

Jellied Pig's Ear & Watercress
Roast Bone Marrow & Parsley Salad
Lambs Tongues & Butterbeans
Crispy Pigs Cheek & Dandelion
Pan Fried Veal Heart
Baked Mashed Fish Brains & Roast Garlic
Pig’s Trotters & Fennel.
Ox Tongue Pie.

.. and so on. Mmm…

We ended up in a nightclub filled with teenage chavs as no where else would let us in because we were all very very drunk.

“These are chavs” I explained to our Aussie guests pointing at the baseball capped ensemble. But I don’t think they understood.

Anyway the point is since then I having been feeling a bit ropey and my being has been sucked down a black hole in the corner of living room.

Its mild Nurofen like effects means you don’t have to think which yesterday would have been painfully unwelcome.

It is David Attenborough’s 80th birthday and to celebrate the UK Documentary channel is showing every single one of his documentaries back to back. They all have words like and “Life” and “Planet” and “Earth” in their titles.

Surprisingly such a valid, worthy and middle class TV documentaryathon was less satisfying than I thought it would be

Being paradoxical and complex when I was little when I grew up I wanted to either make Natural History documentaries and hence help save parts of endangered rain forest. Or build huge dams in the Amazon hence destroy huge parts of endangered rain forest.

Watching hour after hour of Natural History documentaries about the destruction of the rain forest made me realise that so far in my life I have miserably failed to either save or destroy any major parts of the natural world.

Oh well…

I have just about recovered from Friday now and am about to head off to a barbeque with loads of people I don't know and probably more boozing...

Bank Hoilday weekends eh?