The Culinary Delights of the Great Unwashed

It’s late, the shop’s are closed – not that that makes a difference. That all too familiar ache, preceded by the ominous rumbling in your stomach begins to overtake. Food is a must, lest you go to bed having feverish dreams about Philadelphia steak peices marinated in barbecue sauce and cheese on ciabatta bread. You scavenge the kitchen in a bid to find sustenance to placate this gnawing hunger. Alas, the cupboards are hollow, their vast bare canvases mock you with their naked plains.

It’s time to Ray Mears it.

Take the remainder of the pasta from the packet, don’t look at the sell by date you’ll only depress yourself.

Put it in water and bring it to the boil. DON’T ADD SALT YOU FOOL! It’s as precious a commodity as it was a few hundred years back.

Lubricant is an essential, lest the pasta expand in your gullet and your found dead in the morning with a comical blue face. That jar of Doritos mild salsa dip will do. When the pasta is ready, empty it all in.

If you can spare some cheese good for you, la-di-da Mr. Frenchman, throw it in.

I also put mayo in mine- I don’t recommend this. YOU CAN’T AFFORD TRIAL AND ERROR.

And there you have it, a veritable feast of leftovers.

Om nom nom nom nom….

‘You are number one’

One of the most infuriating things about being on job seekers allowance is the actually time you spend in the morbid building. The fortnightly visit has begun to resemble those mandatory trips to an elderly relative who smelt peculiar that you had to make when you were young, and against all your youthful inhibitions you were ordered to stay still recognize your place in the hierarchy, which was the bottom. I find myself laconically slumped in the chair waiting for my number to be called for the guts of forty minutes when the trip only really need be five to ten maximum. Forty minutes per fortnight isn’t long I’ll agree, but it is quite frustrating because your mind inevitably begins to wander; undoubtedly this is a technique set to perpetuate the wandering – The cheery people on the opposite side of the desk want you to muse on the fact you’re an economic drain on society, it helps stave off complacency.

On my most recent trip, I was there for well over an hour, a seemingly unprecedented influx of unemployed people demanding their cut of the free monies being the reason. I observed although the place was packed, out of the 30 odd desks, only 10 were being manned (or womanned).

For the purposes of rhetoric, I’m going to resort pub logic here. You know – the sort of over-simplified nonsense that overlooks factors under the guise of being common sense. I think the Sun specializes in it. Why not let the unemployed men man the unmanned desks, it reduces the queues and… instant employment! It might also help diffuse some of the tension that reverberates from one side of the desk to the other.

Imagine! The hierarchy is shattered, morale is boosted and you walk out with fresh approach to your job hunt. That is until the newly employed start getting ideas above their station and the cycle begins to emerge and repeat again. That said, when I went into the Connor Building to my JSA meeting the other day I got a nice little confidence lift: I pushed the little JSA button that gives you a little slip informing you what number you are in the queue…

‘You are Number 1′.

This porridge tastes just right…

Often people remark  to me with a disbelieving shake of the head that musicians ‘live some life of it’. If you look close enough into their innocent wide eyes, you can see the images they’ve conjured up – adoration, an unwavering libido, and a capacity for substance abuse that begins as cool, becomes a worn out predictability, then transcends all that and becomes cool again. I never have the heart to tell them that it’s an expensive past time that often seems more akin to a nuisance than a hobby. Don’t get me wrong I love it but it’s a love that is detrimental to your health, hygiene and your pocket.

This week I found myself standing at the desk of a Medical Trial Centre, trying to perpetuate an air of Bohemia rather than general fecklessness.  I deducted from a quick glimpse in a car window that my frazzled hair was on the fashionable side of unmanageable and my odour could affectionately described as quaint. So in I saunters, laconically inquiring was there any trial suitable for me, while also making some off the cuff remark about the recession within earshot of the secretary, just to appease my own insecurities. The cool figure which i struck would have been considerably more convincing if this wasn’t my third visit to the centre in a fortnight.

Each time I went I was  handed different rejections. On the first visit, I was told that due to my weight I was unsuitable for a trial that tested a weight loss pill. On my second visit, I was told that because of my history of respiratory problems I was unsuitable for the next trial they were running. I think I would have been applicable, only the brisk walk down had been kind enough to accentuate my recent bout of chesty sickness, which left me bent over the reception desk, wheezing pathetically.

On this occasion, I reasoned with myself, if childhood fairy tales are anything to base my perception of reality on (which of course they are), I should be offered a trial that’s just right: Some sort of weight gaining lung enhancing line that you snort, preferably.

I cursed Goldilock’s name that day as I walked out empty handed once again. I also cursed my ballerina like frame and my lungs for have the respiratory strength of two wet plastic bags.

 

Did I mention our CD is for sale on i-Tunes?

Electricity doesn’t grow on trees ye know!

As is well documented recently, employment is incredibly difficult to come buy in the present economic climate. In the band digs, two of the members look resolved to weather the global financial meltdown in the jobs they were employed in before things got so bleak, however menial they might be. the other half of the band have not been so fortunate and this has rendered a strange dynamic in the house – A perverse twist on the old fashioned family dynamic.

For four young men this is most disturbing, epsecially for myself as I seem to have developed into the mothering figure of the household. The fact that it’s undoubtedly a matriarchy comforts little. My day is shaped around a variety of domestic tasks, culminating in cooking for the family. Same time every night, if you’re asking. Initially cooking and cleaning were ways to keep me busy (I was resolute that the credit crunch was not to be used as a justification for lying in bed until a vulgar hour) but now I’ve grown strangely formulaic in their execution and it has become a rigid routine, one that remains unchallenged by the rest of the housemates. Can you really blame them though? It is a sad day in a young man’s life when he catches himself thinking, ‘I better make a start on the dinner, so I can have it on the table when Fergal gets home’.

Fergal, the breadwinner, the bacon bringer, superstar singer. The paradigm father in our subversive weird family. He provides money for us all when we really need it. Strangely enough he hasn’t moaned about being a one man taxi service yet, even though he has had ample opportunity were it would be completely justified. We never go out anywhere nice anymore either, always too tired after work. He resembles the passive male in Irish novels that just gets on with life beside his belligerent wife and confused children.

Those damn chillun’, if only young Philip would take after his older brother Paul and get a job. Electricity doesn’t grow on trees ye know! Listening to his rock music to all hours, I don’t know what we’re going to do with him, he’s a proper tearaway. A good few years in hard work would straighten him out. If only he was more like Paul, this family’s shining light. Everyone in the village recognizes his resolve, he’ll make an honest women out of that girlfriend of his soon enough. Then I’ll get to wear a lovely wedding hat…