Monday, January 21, 2008

Lord of the Fops

Lord of the Fops

It all started on Saturday night when Gideon declared I was such a blighter I'd eat my own young like Staurn. The erudite accusation reminded me that - after all the Absynth - I was in fact hungary enough to eat a scabby child through a railing...even if it were my own. I said as much, and this prompted Barnaby to lament the fast dying tradition of eating infant beast meat in this cowardly, new, morally poxed world. Gideon subsequently proclaimed that we should, nay, must dine on some sort of young animal that eve, preferably cooked on a spit.
It was decided, nothing else would do.

Lamb was too low-brow, and veal not sufficiently gamey. We wouldn't be able to get our hands on an elk calf unless we called a hunt, and considering the state we were already in, there was little chance of slipping unnoticed into The Phoenix Park to requisition one.

'Sixty 6!' cried Sebastian. 'I seem to remember hearing about a charming 'faux-boor' style restaurant in Crumlin that time we were boar hunting there- apparently they serve a whole suckling pig.''But that's on The Northside!' I exclaimed. 'Have you gone quite mad, man? We were armed to the teeth last time we were there, plus we had Old Jim and his savage from up north - Man Goodfriday - with us for protection! You aren't seriously suggesting we go there now.'
'Yes, steady on there, Sebastian,' added Gideon.
Then Barnaby piped up. 'Yes, but that'll part of the adventure. P'pa did a tour unarmed in The Northside in '68 - said it was exhilerating - the most intriguing wildlife.'

The absynth's gone to his head, I thought...but then it started to make the other chaps brave too.
After a time they goaded me into a taxi and Gideon, who read linguistics at Oxford, ordered the cabby in Gaelic to take us to The Northside, to a place called 'Sixty 6' in Crumlin. The cabby started laughing and when Gideon protested, the blighter raised his voice. Poor Gideon took the expression of one of the characters in Goya's The Third Of May and started fumbling with the lock, trying to get away from cabby.
'Look here,' I said hoping he'd understand the firm tone of my voice. 'Just take us to restaurant Sixty 6, and be quick about it, or I shall have hanged for sedition!'He took us to King George's Street, and sure enough, there was the restaurant. How we rejoiced! No Northside. The chaps admitted they had just been trying to show off; the last thing they wanted to do was cross The Liffey.
We went in, had suckling pig-devoured every bit of it, including its liver. They allocated us our own personal carver and when there was nothing left, we demanded that he sever the pig's head and put it in a 'piggy bag' for us.
Later we got ejected from Odessa for plonking the pig's head in the middle of our table...how very un-Golding of them!
Another Crisis In Foptown

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