Rodent curries 
November 23rd, 2009 | Published in Attualità, Columns by Hackney bird
I woke up on Saturday morning dreaming of my weekly hit of Weasel turd coffee. Sadly however, I looked out the window and was confronted by a dark and tempestuous sky. Oh well, Broadway market was just going to have to wait this week. Anyway, I’m sure I’ve already given the owner of Ca Phe Zgoz, the Vietnamese coffee stall that produces the aforementioned drink, more than enough money already. The coffee, at a fiver a pop, does not go for a song.
Instead, I moseyed on down to the highly recommended Mess Café on Amhurst road. They say the hamburgers and milkshakes there are to die for, although so far I’ve only had the American breakfast, which was decent and nothing like anything I’d ever had in the States before. Unfortunately the rain seemed not have deterred the eager café enthusiasts and after about three minutes standing in line (patience has never really been my virtue), I gave up, bought a Saturday Guardian and some free-range bacon and eggs at Marks and Sparks. I know, shopping at such a controversial supermarket was highly politically incorrect of me. Yet where else am I to get free-range in this neck of the woods if not at Tescos, which is arguably much worse than M&S? It’s hard to balance the need to be virtuous and buy free-range and organic, with the need to not shop at evil corporations that are ruining our society, potentially backing the oppression of Palestinians and squeezing out small-businesses across the world.
Oh, so while I’m reviewing my culinary week, Friday lunchtime saw me head down to Brick Lane to indulge in one of the only decent curries in a hurry that I have found there. Shalimar does not outwardly seem any different from the other multitude of Bangladeshi eateries in the area but don’t be fooled: for well under a tenner, you can indulge in some pretty high quality spice-tastic concoctions. I had the lamb and spinach curry and apart from spending the rest of the day worrying I had green stuff stuck in my teeth, it was well worth the cycle.
Later, while lazily pedalling home, my eye did catch a sight of a little junk shop that stood out from the rest of the high-priced, crappy old furniture establishments, simply because it did not appear to be trying at all. I ended up bargaining for a rudimentary mini-coffee table and mirror that had been haphazardly banged together by the owner of the shop from random bits of wood he had picked up. After considering for a couple of minutes if it might not be worth just doing the same thing myself, I decided that at £20 for both items, I couldn’t really go far wrong. The mini-coffee table (which looks more like a miniature bench) and the mirror have now been painted white and I’m still umming and ahhing over whether I should take some sand paper to them to create that “distressed” look that I so hankered after a month ago but which I am beginning to tire of already.
I’ve made a monumental decision about the flooring in the flat. Enough with all this reclaimed floorboards business. From what I can make out “reclaimed” has simply become a catchphrase for “old and yukky but with a 1000% mark-up for you silly twats who want your flat to look ’shabby chic’!” Instead I’ve decided to go down the sustainable road and invest in a serious bamboo floor. My online research has so far thrown up the company Simply Bamboo as one of my prime candidates. After having received some samples from them, I am now pretty convinced to go for their strand woven coffee boards which, at around £22 per square metre, is well less than half the price of anything I have seen until now.
Beyond that, I now attend a response from the freeholders of the building to whom I have submitted a plan of what I intend to do to the flat. I sent them a printed out letter by mail on Thursday, so hopefully they’ll get back to me some time this week.
I do hope everything will be ready for our January “begin to build” deadline…
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