We ran out of salt this week. For two days in a row, dinner was bland as fuck.1 The next meal I ate after going to the shop felt like my tastebuds had been resuscitated. That’s all a pretty apt metaphor for how the first half of the week felt in general.
The only good thing to come out of the boredom is that I found this history trivia game. You’re presented with a card displaying the title and main image of a Wikipedia article and you have to decide where it should be placed on a timeline relative to the previous cards. My best streak is 15.
I met Neil for lunch on Friday. We’ve lived within walking distance for about five years and somehow never got around to seeing each other in our own area for some reason. I wanted to go to The White Hart but they weren’t serving food so we settled for the Nando’s next door.
After lunch we walked down Whitechapel Market to Ambala. I got a box of my favourites: pistachio barfi, gulab jamon, and jalebis. Neil had never tried Indian sweets before so he played it safe and got the same. Then we walked back east and stopped in to Rinkoff Bakery, just because I never had, before parting ways. The afternoon stroll was a nice reminder to explore my own neighbourhood more often.
Friday evening I met Mike in Exmouth Market. I drove a Zipcar because I try to avoid the tube whenever the COVID numbers are particularly high. In retrospect, this was silly because we spent the rest of the night in busy pubs. Driving through Farringdon and Clerkenwell at 5pm on a Friday highlighted just how big of an impact the pandemic has had on certain parts of the city that rely on office activity. There was little traffic and few people.
I’ve been out for drinks a handful of times since March 2020 (but could probably count how many on both hands). This felt like the first proper night out though. Usually we’d opt to go somewhere less busy, sit outside, and stay in one place all night. This time we moved around a lot and wandered through Clerkenwell on our whims. We went from The Exmouth Arms to Mikkeller to Pivo to The Slaughtered Lamb 2 to 1920, where we finished off the night with some pool.
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Important to note here that there were plenty of other flavours and seasonings. You just don‘t realise how much work salt is doing to bring them out until it‘s gone. ↩
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Very, very briefly. We walked in, noticed a horrible smell, and Grandpa Simpsoned our way out of there. Great pub having an off night. ↩