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Tuesday 2nd September - The Non-Burger
As I mentioned last week, we played host to some friends this weekend. I hadn't seen Jon since February, and was looking forward to catching up with him and his girlfriend Kerry. I had made grand claims about what a good time they would have, and I was damned if I was going to let them down.
Jon and I met at university, and our friendship was cemented on a mutual love of meat. We even composed poems about meat to celebrate our love for it. The following poem is called 'Beef':
Oh beefy beef Why can't you see? You cannot give me CJD.
Simple but heartfelt. The following poem is called 'Pork':
Oh porky pork If I could talk I would say 'I love you pork'. Hold on I can talk. So: 'I love you pork'.
Devastatingly truthful. The following poem is called simply 'Meat'.
Oh meaty meaty meat I like to heaty heaty heat So I can eaty eaty eat My meat.
Raw. We particularly liked Sutherland's cold meat products. They inspired the following poem, called 'Sutherland's Cold Meat Products'.
Sutherlands meat paste: Beautiful taste. Makes me high. Sutherland's savoury egg: Makes me beg. The joy of meat.
We also liked Pork Farms and Ginsters products, but we did not write poems about these. This did not mean our love for them was any less strong. It was equally strong.
So, as you can gather, we both love meat, and I was very excited about taking Jon to a place in Guildford which served the most delicious burger I had ever eaten. It was at the Ha Ha! Bar and Canteen. There may be one in your town. It is an unbelievably pretentious place, serving over-priced gastro-pub style food to privileged, tanned, urban hipsters with expensive sunglasses balanced on their heads. They don't serve egg and chips - they serve Lightly Fried Organic Egg on bed of Ha Ha! Skinny Chips With Mustard Mayonaise. And you pay £8 for it.
But, their burgers are absolutely lovely. Of course, they are not just burgers, they are Ha Ha! Chopped Steak Burgers on Foccacia Bread. But they are exquisite - big fat things, coarse and meaty to bite into, but melty on your tongue. Ahhhhh. They are both hearty for your stomach and delicate and fancy for your tastebuds. The best.
I eagerly rushed Jon, Jane and Kerry inside, and we placed our orders. Greedily, I had decided to supplement my burger with bacon and egg (hand-reared, lovingly cured baconium and organic, gently fried egg, sans shell, for my gastronomic pleasure). I am a fat pig. Jon added baconium and cheese to his, as he is also a fat pig.
We waited in silence for what seemed like a very long time, each dreaming our own private burger dreams. Our bodies tensed in anticipation every time a waiter appeared at the top of the stairs bearing food, only to unravel with disappointment as they headed elsewhere. We almost dared not believe it when a short man with glasses and badly dyed hair sauntered casually over to our table with the precious feast. He set our food down with little ceremony, and left. Everyone else had been given cutlery and condiments except us, but we didn't care. The burger was the thing.
Jon bit into his burger and expressed his satisfaction using the power of his eyebrows. I felt proud that I had brought this meat into his life. I too bit into my burger and 'mmmmmm'ed in solidarity - a beautiful moment of shared burger joy. The baconium was good and crispy, the egg just soft enough, but not too runny.
We continued to chow down in blissful silence. Jon broke the hush: "This is a really, really nice burger". I nodded in assent, and was about to say that I was finding it much easier to eat than normal, as usually it is too thick to fit all in your mouth, leading to spillage and possible wastage. At this point, I looked down at the 'burger' that I had been happily munching on.
There was no burger in the burger. It was beefless. There was bun (finest Italian foccacia bread), there was baconium, there was organic gently fried egg. But there was no chopped steak burger. Yet, I had eaten approximately a third of the egg and bacon sandwich I had paid over £8 for, without even noticing its burgerlessness.
I was incredulous and embarrassed. Incredulous because, while the service had already been bad, failure to include the beef burger - the integral component, the single indispensable ingredient of the dish - was a step too far. And embarrassed because I had spent the past couple of minutes obviously feigning my burger bliss. I had spent so long raving about what a beautiful burger it was, yet I didn't even recognise when it was not there. The burger was the essence of the feast, and by failing to notice its absence, I had fatally undermined its deliciousness.
Obviously I complained to the rude waiter that had served us, who eyed me with suspicion and contempt, subtly checking my lips and chin for telltale beef juices. There were none, so he begrudgingly, and without even making a token apology, went downstairs to get me another burger. But it was too late. The spell had been broken. If I could enjoy the burger without the burger, I wondered, can it really be as delicious as I had thought? Was I just fooling myself? Perhaps I had just wanted it to be a great burger so much that I ended up listening to my heart rather than my taste buds.
I will love again. There will be other burgers. But, you know, I just really thought this one was special….
Do not be fooled by the fact that I have not reported at length on our Three Pigeons Pub Quiz fortunes for the past couple of weeks. We are still the dominant force in the Guildford High Street pub quiz world. The past two weeks' victories have set us up for another hat-trick, and mean that we have won for five weeks out of the last seven. Bearing in mind that we set the quiz on one of those weeks, I think that is pretty good going. We were roundly, loudly booed last night as the final scores were read out. Understandably.
I would like to say that we were good sports, but we weren’t. Jane loudly disputed one of the questions, and I reckon that our quiz dominance swayed the quizmaster into backing down and accepting an answer that wasn't on his card. We are bullies.
The question was about the sitcom 'Goodnight Sweetheart'. I've only ever seen a very few episodes of this, but I gather that it is about a time-travelling bigamist, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst. What a strange idea for a TV programme.
Next week, in a patronising act of charity, Mars Attacks! will be joining forces with perennial third-from-last-placers Steven Hawking's Football Boots, to become Steven Hawking Attacks! Which, I think, is a superb team name.