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Horsy Data

Apr 03, 2017

My ‘Chinese’ lunch arrived express delivery from Hong Kong in no time, with a fork and spoon – no chopsticks. In actual fact, I can use chopsticks, but slowly. Although rice is always an issue… Interesting how the proprietor just automatically assumes that any Western diners will not be able to manipulate chopsticks appropriately, or rather… efficiently! It’s easy – a bit like riding a bike or horse…Neigh! I wonder if he keeps any kind of record or log of this strange anomaly. Namely, the rare incidence of a Western diner displaying appropriate dexterity using chopsticks – hard to say really. The meal didn’t really arrive from Hong Kong; I just made that up to pass the time. I used to be able to play Chopsticks on the piano. I wonder how many Chinese people can play the spoons? They probably could if the chips were down. By the by…

There was a chip in my plate. No, not a potato chip; they don’t really feature much in Chinese cuisine. What I meant was, there was a tiny fracture in the outside rim of the plate. Undoubtedly caused as the result of an overzealous kitchen hand loading plates into a dishwater. Should I’ve complained? Highly unlikely because the meal was delicious. Of course, that’s just my opinion, and I’m no expert on the efficacy of the human palette. All I can say was that I didn’t die and there was a pleasant rush of endorphins in my brain. I’m reliably informed (laughs up his sleeve) by Wikipedia that endorphins are a ‘corrupted’ form of the expression – endogenous morphine. Could this also be expressed as original dope? That’s hard to say. There have been some unkind individuals who have referred to me as an original dope, but that’s surely a contradiction in terms.

Meanwhile, my partner fixed her makeup then put her concreter’s trowel away, and I surveyed the remnants of my wine glass. I was uncertain whether I wanted to finish it. Do I really want another? At this point, should I swap from the past to the present tense, just to make this story a little more conversational? Is that really necessary? Hard to say… I was drinking merlot, pronounced mer – low; the ‘t’ is silent. From personal experience, I’ve found that all tea is silent until poured from the pot into the cup. Mind you the noise increases when poured into a mug… but I digress. Why do they call it merlot anyway? ‘Mer means ‘the sea’ in French and Lot was a character from the Old Testament. Now it’s been said that Lot lay low on a li-lo with his two daughters after drinking wine. His wife, of course, was turned into a pillar of salt and they were all together by the Dead Sea. So of course – it all makes perfect sense. Have another merlot – in a mug? If you insist!

There was a small fly buzzing about; being a nuisance. If it happens to land in the wine, we’ll be able to speculate if it can swim or not. Will it make it to the far side of the glass? Quick, call Ladbrokes on your phone app and place a bet! If it does land in the wine, I’ll ask the waiter (though not in Cantonese), ‘What’s that fly doing in my wine?’ If he answers, ‘The breaststroke… I think sir,’ then smiles inscrutably; I’ll probably stab him in the eye with a chopstick! At least I would if I had any. I’d have to ask him to bring a set to the table. But that would be churlish, not to mention wasteful – I only need one. I’d have lost the bet at Ladbrokes too – I thought the fly would drown. Therefore I could’ve asked for another merlot on the house and made a profit… Come to think of it; Lot was a prophet also. But are we learning a lot? That’s hard to say.

Beyond the window, the rain falls incessantly, not incestuously! Anyway, we’ve dealt with that… The landscape is shrouded in fog, or is it mist? Is there a difference, who can tell? The defining difference, according to the bureau of meteorology, between mist and fog is visibility. If visibility is greater than 1,000 metres we call it ‘mist’ and if visibility is less we call it ‘fog’. Or as the old joke used to go, ‘I took a girl out into the fog… and mist.’ As you can see, I’m a poor speller and initially, I was spelling ‘visibility’ as visability. Visability could best be described as the ability of a shop or restaurant to accept Visa cards. Perhaps I’ll ask the waiter if they have Visability when I pay the bill. If he replies in a puzzled way, ‘No sir, the fog is too thick,’ I’ll just give him cash and assume he can’t spell either. Because if he spelt either as ether, we’d have been anaesthetised.

To be sure, life is a puzzle and who on Earth can make sense of it all. Just recently I saw a magician perform an incredible illusion with a Rubik’s box on the cube. Clearly, he must have had the right algorithm. Just as an aside, I’ve often wondered if Al Gore had rhythm as he had a lot to do with the establishment of the Internet. The truly sad thing I’ve found is, to my chagrin, that the ‘algorithm’ joke has already been done. It’s only logical I suppose. Mind you as William Butler Yeats the poet once observed, ‘People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.’ And that has to be the greatest justification for writing absolute dribble; I’ve ever read. Sorry that word should be drivel. Whilst I was writing this, I didn’t dribble out of the side of my mouth or put in a bit of practice passing a soccer ball. Indeed, just the thought of passing a soccer ball makes my eyes water! Oh dear, I think I’ll ask the waiter for a glass of water… or maybe milk. Whatever happened to the milk of human kindness anyway? That’s hard to say…

Sorry, not quite finished… In recent times, Doctors have found that the human body has no more need for cows’ milk than it does for say – dogs’, horses’, or even giraffes’ milk. Now I’ve got a very short neck, so I’ve decided to keep on drinking giraffe’s milk just to see if it makes any difference; just for the time being. I wonder if this Chinese restaurant has any fresh giraffe’s milk? Perhaps ‘giraffe’ is a speciality of the house? The Chinese seem to eat everything else. Hard to say really…