So yeah, last night I had lobster for the first time ever. A bunch of us went to Belgos, a Belgium restaurant in Covent Garden, for Mandy's birthday and we had such a fab time. In London it can be so hit and miss when you go out for food and although slightly pricey, this place was worth every penny. Sometimes I wonder what kind of vegetarian I am. And I don't mean as in chicken eating/fish eating/vegan/don't put meat anywhere near where it could even think (were it alive any more, poor thing) about touching my tofu, but rather- am I a hypocrite or not? I'm vegetarian for moral reasons. What exactly those morals are I don't really know any more. When I was about 14, I burst onto tears while eating a sausage and I stopped eating meat. Then an unnatural amount of hair fell out so I started again but was still conflicted and as of New Year 1996 I stopped. (This is to date the only New Year's resolution I have ever managed to keep.) In the teenage years I, in my oh-so-wannabe-rebel-but-not-actually-knowing-anything-about punk/grunge/goth/anti-establishment way, defined it as "not approving of the heartless killing of innocent masses". And I think that's essentially what it still is. I have no problem with the food chain, that's life baby, but I don't like that things are mass-bred and go through nasty living conditions to feed us- especially when there is so much waste. I worked in a supermarket for 4 years and there's a LOT of meat that gets thrown out and I'd think, "That's a whole little piggy that could have been trotting around." During this time I was on and off with eating seafood. I ate it initially because, hypocritically, I didn't feel so bad about eating fish. Then my uncle pointed out to me that if it was the whole cruelty thing I didn't like then I was a total hypocrite with fish because those things are hauled out of their home and left to suffocate to death. And he has a point. So for a while, quite a while in fact, it was no fish too but there were health 'issues' so I decided to give it another go and I feel much healthier and better for it.
Just not morally better is all. Not only do the poor little fishies die nasty deaths but they are being over-fished and although I don't like animals being bred for food, at least we're not killing off species by doing it. So as I ripped in to my lobster last night I did spare a thought for this. I did think about my poor lobster which had probably spent his final hours crammed in a tank with other poor potential victims. I did feel bad. I did think I made up to him by thinking that if I were to die and get eaten, I'd hope someone served me up in a garlic butter sauce on a bed of rocket with a side of the best frittes to be had. And I'd hope that person ate every piece of flesh there was and cracked me open to find every last piece of flesh and wasn't picky about it and had a bloody good time doing it.
I was the kind of meat eater, back in the day, who chomped off the end of my chicken drumstick and sucked out the marrow. I like meat. Well I liked it. I honestly now don't how I'd react to the texture of flesh now. Over in the UK there is a comprehensive range of meat imitation vege products and I've been working my way through them- for something to do if nothing else. The other night I had imitation burger patties and it was a bloody disconcerting experience. These things smelt like meat, tasted like meat (from what I can remember) and had the texture too. I ate it all but had a very strange expression on my face the whole time. I really don't know how I felt about it. I think that now I would have a problem with eating 'flesh'. This is a feeling you don't get from eating tuna or smoked salmon but you almost get from prawns at times. That chomping feeling. It sometimes puts me off.
So now I am the kind of vegetarian who eats seafood, wears leather shoes and would happily eat an animal that I could bring myself to kill. For that matter I'd probably happily eat someone's family cow or chicken that had had a happy life of carelessly running free. So I don't think I can call myself a 'good' vegetarian but I still call myself vegetarian none-the-less.
But enough of my vege rant. I was meant to be talking about the cool Belgium restaurant. Or more to the point, about our hilarious waiter. The rest of the girls thought he was a bit much but I thought he was a delightful breath of fresh air. As we placed our orders he would give his opinion on what we were ordering. Prawns? [Sceptical raised eyebrow] Lobster? [well done] chocolate mouse [nose wrinkled in disgust] what's wrong with the mouse? [I don't like sweet things]. The best by far though was when Kerry ordered her coffee. Cappuccino [approving nod] but just half a shot [look of confusion] I just like it weak, a whole shot is too much for me [dubiously raised eyebrow] and can you make it decaf [chaos- total look of confusion, arms flung up in the air- coffee=café=caffeine=what are you doing?!] I know just how he would have reacted to someone ordering a caffeine-free diet Coke. ;-) Tee hee hee. 
They also have an absolutely amazing range of beers and even fruit beers. Dude. I had a mango one and a raspberry one and they were both delicious. Lauren (the girl in the pic with me) had mussels and I tried one and they too were amazing. I usually like mussels but have reservations because sometimes they're chewy and that's not cool. These were incredible melt-in-your-mouth muscles and I might have them next time because them I definitely DON'T feel sorry for at all. Kerry amused us all by "feeding her chest" as she puts it. Something of everything she are seemed to squirt or drop on to her shirt. (Hence the napkin on her chest.) So it was an interactive evening of ordering and all the food we got was great and I would recommend the place to anyone. Slightly pricey but for people coming to London- we will so have to go there.the internet
Since I'm writing so much today (prepping you guys for the drought while I'm in Ireland), I've decided to get all jiggy with it and do some headings. Which means breaking out the old HTML for some fancy font sizes and colours. When I worked at Critic I often had to turn on my safe-search in Google because for some reason, the searches I would put in would lead me to the dark and dodgey corners of cyberspace. In my time at Geographical, I have had no such need. Until today. It was a perfectly innocent (or so I thought) search too: dragon pics. I was trying to track down an image library that I had been told was called Dragon Pics. So I popped that in to Google and got a whole lot of links along this line:
asian boys nude. barefoot chinese sex girls photos, amatuer nude ...
... asian girls lesbians naked latino asian longhorned beetle asian sex now ... asian girls naked grannys chinese dragon pics chinese tractors torture tiny ...
Please note the lack of actual link because I am NOT linking to that. I mean what the f***?! How do those sites come up with this shit? I mean I know how they do it, good old meta tags, but what makes them think to drop in dragons with asian lesbians and something longhorned. I'm almost scared...
So have a fab weekend you lot and Mon shall see many glorious pics of me in Ireland. Hopefully.
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