DIMLY LIT MEALS FOR ONE

MEH.

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Not content with sharing their shitty opinons blue tick brain worm Twitter share their shitty food photos because fuck you, that’s why.

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Communists on Twitter aren’t going to keep me from going to Wetherspoons.

Britain didn’t win WW2 all by itself by taking advice from Eurofascists in their little cravats and berets - we kept a stiff upper lip and gave each other viruses in the London underground.

I guess the kids have been self-isolating from me for the last fifteen years.

Haha.

She turned them against me, her new fella too. Kept ‘listening to their problems’ and taking them to Alton Towers.

Someone called me gammon on the social media last night. And the night before. That’s real racism but you don’t hear Stormzy saying anything about it.

Been staying home all week. For lunch, I usually have a Coronation Chicken and salt and vinegar McCoys from the Co-Op near the office. There’s only a Nisai near where I live and I got banned for trying to buy too much toilet paper and calling the owner the ‘P’ word.

I mean paedo, of course.

I’m not a racist.

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Jesus Christ, Gavin.

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Jenny was feeling good about life.

She’d successfully pitched an article to Yahoo News exploring the politics of Tinder amongst the homeless and was looking forward to updating the ‘published works’ section of he LinkedIn.

There hadn’t been any talk of money, but she was sure a company probably valued at tens of billions of dollars would readily shell out for eight hundred words and three original photos.

Jenny needed some paid work to show her parents that paying her rent for a year was in fact a sound investment and that she would very soon be working as a professional journalist.

She had made the trip down to her parent’s home in Winchester to surprise them with laundry and her anecdotes about her unpaid internship at a fashion magazine that went online only and then closed completely the next week.

Jenny found the house empty - a friendly list of instructions for a neighbour to water the plants and feed the fish. They’d gone away somewhere nice and not told her.

After a little while contemplating how she’d never noticed the way the house smelled when she had been living there, and a little while longer enjoying a soak in the free standing bathtub she missed so much in her flat share in Dalston, Jenny rummaged through the towering American style fridge freezer that stood opposite the AGA.

She filled her rucksack with prawns and Häagen-Dazs, frozen sprouts, and an icy bottle of Waitrose Gin.

“Stopped by to say ‘hi’ but you weren’t in! Got some BIG NEWS about the career, give me a call when you’re back from wherever. P.s .Borrowed some prawns”

Jenny rewrote the post-it note several times in order to perfect the combination of cheery punctuation and suitably upbeat language so as to make the unannounced visit seem as jaunty and benign as possible.

It was a long bus ride back to the flat and the bag full of stolen food was uncomfortably cold on her lap.

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Check out my new single if you get the chance. Sound of the summer.

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Milton Keynes had just turned 50. 

Every day for the last week the rain had poured down like piss on an incumbent president.

It wasn’t wonderful wonderful Copenhagen, but Clare nonetheless tried to jolly up her studio flat with a faintly hygge blanket she’d found in the Salvation Army shop buried under a pile of James Last LPs.

Unfolding the throw to cover a stain on her sofa Clare discovered a desperate plea from a young Malaysian sweatshop worker stitched into the washing instructions.

This was certainly not hygge. 

It was killing her quirky Nordic vibes.

All the scented candles in the world could not mask the miasma of cats and burnt courgettes that engulfed her apartment.

Returning home after a long day spent in strategic content marketing for an insurance company the promise of warm cocoa and an open fire did no longer seemed as enticing as a bottle of Aldi white cider and a few hand rolled cigarettes.

Clare wondered if she should develop her own aesthetic - something more post-Brexit and less dependent on pickled fish and intimate life-affirming moments in Moomin sweaters.

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слабо освещенные питание для всех!

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The text messages exchanged after the fortieth birthday party were pleasant enough. 

Vague plans were made for everyone to meet up again at some unspecified point in the future, lots of ‘good to see you, mate’ and ‘it’s been too long, mate’.

The footage of the lad’s day out told a different story. 

It showed grown men all recently liberated from the tyranny of hair joylessly circling a Go Kart track, mouths in rictus grin, some appearing to be experiencing acute physical pain.

Clint watched the video evidence on his phone alone on his sofa.

Only away from the engine sounds of undersized vehicles and the hollow laughter of his companions was he aware of the bereft eyes that sat in the heads of the men he’d once called good friends, who he now saw two or three times a year at most.

We’ve all made terrible, terrible, decisions the eyes seemed to say.

This has gone on for far too long, we’ve had nothing in common since school.

Clint swiftly deleted the clip and browsed the other albums on his phone.

An endless stream of middle aged faces, harrowed by divorce and drink dependency, chiseled into living gargoyles by the mason’s tools of ungrateful children and an unfulfilling career

Delete.

Delete.

Delete.

Away went the sad faces.

All that remained were pictures of Clint’s dinner.

A vegan fish, bought to impress the nice young woman with the nose ring who worked in the health food shop and who sometimes smiled absently at Clint.

Absolutely tasteless. 

Complete waste of money.

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Check out my new single if you get the chance. Sound of the summer.

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Jenny was feeling good about life.

She’d successfully pitched an article to Yahoo News exploring the politics of Tinder amongst the homeless and was looking forward to updating the ‘published works’ section of he LinkedIn.

There hadn’t been any talk of money, but she was sure a company probably valued at tens of billions of dollars would readily shell out for eight hundred words and three original photos.

Jenny needed some paid work to show her parents that paying her rent for a year was in fact a sound investment and that she would very soon be working as a professional journalist.

She had made the trip down to her parent’s home in Winchester to surprise them with laundry and her anecdotes about her unpaid internship at a fashion magazine that went online only and then closed completely the next week.

Jenny found the house empty - a friendly list of instructions for a neighbour to water the plants and feed the fish. They’d gone away somewhere nice and not told her.

After a little while contemplating how she’d never noticed the way the house smelled when she had been living there, and a little while longer enjoying a soak in the free standing bathtub she missed so much in her flat share in Dalston, Jenny rummaged through the towering American style fridge freezer that stood opposite the AGA.

She filled her rucksack with prawns and Häagen-Dazs, frozen sprouts, and an icy bottle of Waitrose Gin.

“Stopped by to say ‘hi’ but you weren’t in! Got some BIG NEWS about the career, give me a call when you’re back from wherever. P.s .Borrowed some prawns”

Jenny rewrote the post-it note several times in order to perfect the combination of cheery punctuation and suitably upbeat language so as to make the unannounced visit seem as jaunty and benign as possible.

It was a long bus ride back to the flat and the bag full of stolen food was uncomfortably cold on her lap.

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THE LATEST DIMLY LIT MEALS FOR IS A SEEDY TALE OF LUST, JEALOUSY, AND BAD BURGERS.

(via contemporaryfoodlab.com )

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Andy had spent fifteen minutes standing in the wine section of Co-Op trying to find a wine to pair with his Euro 2016 ham.

He'd bought it as a treat for the kids, who'd been due to stay with him on the weekend, but then his ex Linda called to say her new chap Derek was taking them all to Legoland and he'd just have to be a grown-up about it.

None of the wines mentioned anything about football meat on their labels.

The closest he could find was an organic Merlot which said it went well with roasts.

It was only 12% though.

Not really worth it.

Not when Buckfast was 15%.

Andy filled up his basket and staggered over to the self-checkout.

There he stood helplessly, smiling weakly at the attendant who wound up scanning all his bottles for him - barely able to disguise their contempt for this bald mess who stunk of ham and squashed dreams.

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KEITH STRUGGLES WITH THE AFTERMATH OF BREXIT: A DIMLY LIT MEALS FOR ONE SPECIAL FOR CONTEMPORARY FOOD LAB

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I’ve seen meals you people wouldn’t believe.

Kebab vans on fire off the hard shoulder of the M25.

I’ve watched drunks vomit in the gutter, in the dark near Chicken Cottage.

All those moments will be lost in time, like nuggets in rain.

Time to diet.

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Settling in for another evening of Instant Karma compilations on Youtube — the highest alcohol content to lowest price ratio red wine, peanut butter straight from the jar, a box of extra strength antacids because you know your own body.

You can hear your housemates having a party. If you turn all the lights off and keeping your breathing quiet they might think you’re out. 

Bottled water and a washing up bowl under the bed for emergencies means you rarely have to leave the room once you get back from the office.

Occasionally everyone watches Netflix at once and you have to wait for the router to be reset, the image of a startled bully about to receive their comeuppance momentarily frozen on your screen.

Mostly you hear them talking, discussing ants in the peanut butter jars outside your door, and the faint smell of piss that lurks underneath the liberally sprayed lavender room scent.

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I wrote about the desperate measures we go to keeping the holiday spirit alive, and the desperate spirits we consume when we get back home.

Via Contemporary Food Lab

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Frozen burgers, cheaper than fresh.

Tinned burgers, cheaper than frozen.

Beer, cheaper than therapy, and no waiting list to get it.

Going to the doctors and being shocked to the core that the person with the power to write you a prescription for that sweet sweet Zolpidem is younger than you, and sadly advocates exercise and a healthy diet rather than the wonderful oblivion of pills.

You look at their strong jaw and muscular arms and Ben Fogle face and instantly know they’re a Tory. 

Your Tory doctor doesn’t want to hear about how going to work makes you sad, they want you take up rowing and eating things you’ve shot.

Try asking for a second opinion, go on and try. They’ll look at you like you’re a pathetic junkie with onion gravy down the front of your ancient Global Hypercolor shirt.

“Please sir, please can I have some drugs to make me sleep?”

They fob you off with an online mental health questionnaire and a prescription for one vigorous walk a day in the fresh country air.

Out of desperation you take the quiz.

You get ‘Khloe Kardashian’.

It won’t even let you take it again.

This is who you are now.