bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel,

Yeah I had a nice chat with a bloke at Greenwich on Sunday, whose job was to teach cookery skills to people coming off crack in Kingston, Jamiaca. Ironically, I’ve been trying to get Pikey Dave back on crack for a laugh for the last two years, but decided it would be inappropriate to mention this. Anyway, it turns out that, amid all the hallucinations, cold sweats, and screaming, a person coming off crack can whip up a mean butternut squash, lemon sorbet or Spanish omelette, providing of course they are kept away from knives, guns, or drugs. Or, come to think of it, recipes involving knives, guns, or drugs. Anyway, he was a nice bloke, and bought three aprons from the stall for his shivering maniacs. The thought that there are Yardies coming off crack via choux pastry while wearing aprons with Soups Upside Your Head, How Spoon Is Now? and I See Bread People printed on them – my kitchenware tributes to the Gap Band, the Smiths and Sixth Sense respectively – will bring me lasting pleasure.

[Hitting up Read More now will reveal how many years aircraft carriers have been going, and how kicking trout can while away an afternoon]

We discussed the merits of cookery as rehabilitation for some time, while also marveling at HMS Illustrious, an aircraft carrier which had sailed up the Thames and moored outside. I had assumed, what with escalating gang crime in south London, that maybe the Circle Crew had bought it up from Camberwell to have a go at the Peckham Boys, but actually it was there for the hundredth anniversary of aircraft carrying. At seven hundred foot and twenty two thousand tons, it resembled a huge grey bastard, and in the unlikely event it ever declares war on Greenwich Market, I will immediately surrender.

Interestingly, they are able to catch fish on it to feed the crew, which makes sense. This put me in mind of a game, which I recommended to the Jamaican cookery man should the strain ever show among his smackheads. It’s called Trout About, and while I myself have never participated, a friend of mine called Richard became British and Commonwealth champion at it while working behind the fish counter at Safeways on Streatham High Road. Trout About is simple game, and therein lies it’s beauty. What you do is take a large ungutted trout, and kick it to each other. Trout are surprisingly hard wearing, and will stand up to a good shoeing. However, repeated violent trauma will cause the internal trout gases to expand, leading to an unlovely explosion which will typically occur as a kick is landed. The player who subsequently finds himself covered in trout intestines – and there are miles of them, apparently – is deemed to have lost. I once asked Richard how he had had time to discover Trout About, and his response was ‘Loads of fish all over the place – you have to give one a bit of a kicking now and again, don’t you?’, accompanied by a look which suggested genuine bafflement as to why I had asked such a ridiculous question.

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