bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel

Reading while drunk is one of the most annoying things you can do, as your eyes just roll around all over the page like marbles on a tray. I found myself doing this on the Northern Line recently, immediatley prior to tackling Junction Road in the uncertain but nonetheless determined manner of a gentleman who has consumed eight pints of snakebite in the George on Borough High Street. I may well have been nodding in agreement with the book as I read in order to maintain the air of quiet dignity for which I am noted among my peers.

Pinballing my way out of Archway tube, I was horried to find that Panic Kebabs – north London’s home of deluxe artery-deleting post pub snackery for the discerning but incoherent, (and for the record, actually called Planet Kebabs) – was closed for the first time since the late middle ages. I once stated before the House of Commons that I would not set foot in Archway Kebabs, on the other side of Junction Road, even if it was the only part of the world not on fire. This left me, masquerading in my late night guise as the Swaying Gourmet, with Chicken Spot, next to the Lion on the corner of Holloway Road.

[Hitting Read More will reveal north London food adventures]

I have long campaigned for Chicken Spot to be renamed Possibly Chicken, on the grounds that there is no legitimate foodstuff that can turn you from ravenous to bloated for £3.99. Sawdust or cardboard or self-expanding insulation material would probably leave you with the same sense of a job well done as you fell asleep in gorgeous recline with coat half off and a breadcrumbs in your hair, but might leave you a bit sluggish.

However though perhaps maybe there is a legitimate foodstuff, possibly. When I was on the dole in Slough during the first of my Wilderness Years phases, I kept an eighty thousand word diary, outlining in really quite grim detail pretty much everything I ever did. I was chiefly concerned with the preparation of elaborate and extremely cheap stews, which certainly would leave you feeling full after an afternoon of watching cats playing in the tree in the garden, sleeping in Slough Library for warmth when the heating was cut off, and other such knuckle-whitening fare.

Next week, I shall reveal the recipe secrets of Waster Stew, so you can sustain yourself during the winter ahead. You’re right, of course: splitting blogs does seem a bit, you know, up itself, and for this I apologise.

Photards: Top the legendary Panic Kebabs. I have always liked how it offers the claim to be ‘The Best Kebabs On The Planet’, which someone with an enormous blue pen has apparently thought about for a bit, and confirmed.

Bottom: Possibly Chicken. Ultimately, just not very nice.

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