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January 11th, 2011

Shipped

6 comments

Quite a week this. I am a lucky boy.

I say boy. I am thirty four on Thursday and I now spend longer shaving my ear lobes than I do funking up my hair. Such is my life. My shopping lists now invariably consist of Gaviscon and Marks and Spencer’s pants and I have to get up twice in the night to pee.

But, my flying monkeys, I’ve still got it. I can still turn my attention to a session, still rock the party.

No one says ‘rock the party’ do they?

Well I did and I will again Baby. At The Ship in Wandsworth last Saturday with my friends, and then tomorrow I am being taken to The Ledbury by my very beautiful, very out of my league, very much younger than me looking girlfriend.

So, The Ship. The Ship has always been part of the fabric of my London since I moved back here as an adult twelve years ago. I have three distinct Ship epochs. Number one, back in the day, it was a place to spend bank holiday weekends by the river before heading off to Embargos, Crazy Larry’s, Infernos or The Grand. It was more about the location then than about anything else. And that was just fine for me and my sex pest pals. Load up on Lager at The Ship And fill your boots with paralytic totty in the Clapham Grand. Wizard. HELLOOOOO DR GLITZ!

Number two was the mid noughties when we used to book the private room every year without fail for a big all day Christmas Lunch. This was when technically we were more mature. The Ship then was bog standard in terms of food- perfectly functional Christmas Dinner, loads of average wine and indifferent service. One year I wrapped up a raw chicken as a secret Santa present. It was funnier in theory than in execution. Another year my friend Nick met his now wife Tori by swimming across the floor of the bar and doing a Lion impression in her face. It was love at first sight. Those days were characterized by burning out by 8pm with tears, tantrums, puking and not having sex. Good times.

And NOW! It is the third coming of The Ship. I hadn’t been for a couple of years because my ex-girlfriend got custody by dint of living next door, but now I’m back and this time The Ship is becoming something of a phenomena. I don’t want to tread on anyone’s toes because I don’t know the history or inner workings, but I suspect that Oisin Rogers, The Boss, has his sticky finger prints all over its current success. Quicker than most, they have realised the power of social media and particularly Twitter to push their product. And they do it superlatively- at once accessible, informative and professional but with an underlying sense of mischief. They have also realised the importance of the food blogging community and without patronising or sucking up have won almost unanimous favour. This is quite a trick to pull.

My birthday started with an exploratory tweet to @shipwandsworth with the date and the number of people. And then everything just happened- Emma, Oisin and Phil between them were proactive and patient, barely raising an eyebrow with menu requests and fluctuating numbers. The night itself was wonderful. I was hammered. I don’t remember anything after my main course so as usual this is a terrible restaurant review. BUT! The Foie Gras and pistachio terrine was exceptional- smooth foie, contrasting crusty pistachios and tart cherries with a perfectly toasted slice of brioche. Special. Other people raved about the scallops and rosti and my, they looked pearly from where I was slumped.

I had to order the calves liver (I can’t not order calves liver) and it was dense, pink, meaty and flavourful- with wonderful bubble and squeak and gravy. I think I had something with chocolate after that. But by this stage I was being passed shot after shot of tequila with Tabasco. I’m sure it was just swell. And BY THE WAY, £20 a head for three courses! For dinner! Best value in London, friends.

So there you have it, over a decade of being ‘Shipped’, and I love it now more than I ever did. Go there eaters and drinkers of London. I’ll be in the corner, rosy of nose and ruddy of cheek- possibly being held up by Oisin and Dave A and the rest of the merry gang.

Posted in Luke's blog
November 17th, 2010

Me Man

18 comments

Deep breath. Ready?

My name is Luke Mackay and I am thirty three years old. And yesterday I bought my first ever tool. And my second. Should you be kind enough to be interested, my purchased tools of choice were a hammer and a screwdriver (Phillips).

That is at first glance, by most definitions of manliness a pretty shameful admission. I don’t have a tool kit/belt/box or anything tool related. I have never dreamt of owning a power tool and wouldn’t have the first clue what to use it on if I did.

I just spent £250 getting my bike fixed. I did not attempt to fix it myself.

I didn’t learn to drive until my late twenties and could no more fix a car than I could remove a spleen.

I have never put up a shelf, re-wired a room, plastered a wall or stripped an engine.

And I know, I KNOW, that women find this incredibly unattractive- You want Diet Coke guy, stripped to the waist, brandishing his tool willy nilly and building houses and wot not. But do you know what. You can all whistle for it.

Because do you know the last time a girlfriend of mine cooked me an amazing meal? It was never. Do you know the last time a woman ironed my shirt? Never. Darned my socks? Sewed on a button? Arranged some flowers? Never, never, never. When women start caring about historically ‘feminine stuff’. then I’ll start giving a monkeys that I don’t know how to grout a carburettor or whatever it is you do.

I am a manly man, make no mistake- I have a hairy chest and a strong rugby pedigree, I can pick you up, throw you around and defend your honour with my mighty fists of steel, should the occasion arise. But all that practical crap bores the bejesus out of me. I get no satisfaction from it, consider it a total waste of my time and energy and would much rather throw money at the problem and get it done properly. There is nothing more pathetic than a man who refuses to accept that a task is beyond him. I can do all this stuff, anyone can- you just watch the video on you tube or read a book and do it. But it BORES me and I hate it.

I have started writing a book and to do this I need an office, or at the very least a desk. So I bought one on eBay and yesterday it arrived in a very heavy, very flat, very un-desk shaped box. There were three pages of diagrammatic instructions and a little table of things, in picture form  that you would need to assemble said desk. The things were as follows: One man, one hammer, one screwdriver, four square metres and forty minutes.

It took this one man four and a half hours not including finding a hardware shop and buying tools. I hated every single minute of it. The instructions were shit, the bits of wood were heavy and unwieldy and I ended up sweating, bleeding, shouting and swearing and now, to show for my labours have only a crappy broken desk and an immoveable splinter.

You should have heard the disappointment in my new girlfriend’s (We’ll call her SV)  voice…. ‘Oh don’t tell me that’ she said as if I had punched her nephew and slapped her Mum. And that my friends has prompted this post. That barely disguised dissappointment.

YOU CAN’T HAVE IT ALL LADIES!  You can either have my Grandfather who could whittle you a boiler out of one piece of oak but who had the emotional intelligence of Goebbels or you can have me and my kind who will tell you that we love you, be great Dads, knock up a dinner party for your friends. But who, in return will pay a Polish bloke to plaster the nursery. I don’t expect all the feminine crap- I want a strong women with a great career, who earns their own money and can change a plug. I couldn’t give a fig if you can’t cook, knit or crochet.  But lets make a deal. I’ll iron my own shirts and say you look beautiful if you don’t treat me with contempt when I don’t want to spend my Sunday afternoon with a chisel in my hand and splinters up my bum.

Posted in Luke's blog
November 10th, 2010

London

12 comments

This London is mine. This London is where I was born, where I grazed my first knee, chased my first girl, whittled my first branch and later, lost my first job. It is where I have cried and where I have laughed and laughed. It’s not just a home, a city or a lifestyle. It is a relationship. Sometimes I hate it; sometimes it lets me down and breaks my heart. I am frustrated daily and infuriated as often but I never go to bed on an argument, we always kiss and we always make up. Sometimes we have a trial separation, I shack up somewhere else and I flirt and maybe I’ll fool around. But it doesn’t mean anything, London. Just some harmless fun and we both know I’ll be Home soon.

A few months ago I saw something horrible. A girl of about my age, climbed up onto the wall of Putney Bridge and she jumped off. Through the mist and the rain into the swirling dark water below. How do you get there? How do you get to that place, that juncture in your tragic life? What pain must she have felt? What despair? How did her London differ so monstrously from mine?

Because my London is vital, alive and in the main optimistic. Hers was dead and empty, a dry husk that offered no protection, no joy and no comfort. Her London killed her.

I am like the Christians who say that earthquakes, cancer and tsunami are all part of God’s plan. You have to take the rough with the smooth in London- the joy and exhilaration with the sheer terror and despair. One begets the other. Without both, London falls, is nothing. So I don’t blame my London for killing that girl, I can’t because if I lose my London faith, I become that dry empty husk. Where you might have God in your heart, I have my city- it is my inheritance, my playground and my life.

You know all the places. Borough Market, Waterloo Bridge at balmy dusk, Richmond Park on a cold, crisp Sunday morning- Soho with its inherent wondrous weirdness. We all know by now about the food scene, so improved, so vibrant and exciting. We have known for centuries about the art, the opera, the theatre and the ballet, but these are not the things that make my London mine. You can read a million blogs about London, about what to do, where to eat and what to see and of course you should. But for me it is something else, something intangible that I can only try to explain with my mere words.

It is a shiver. A tremor of joy that happens infrequently, but is born of security and experience, of knowing that you belong somewhere. And it’s not about St Paul’s or Big Ben, it can hit you on a tube platform or piss-stinking underpass. It is when you catch a glimpse of a cab light at 2 am or proffer directions to a Japanese student. It is enjoying the clichés- embracing the braying sloanes and the be-hijabbed Muslim women, banker wankers and the barrow boy geezers. It’s the kebab shops and the markets, the graffiti, the buskers on the tubes, the evening light and the driving rain. I love the grumpiness and I love the warmth. I love the windows and the lives behind them- a grimy bed sit or a Boltons town house. The stories are what I love. How did they get there? What twists and turns of fate in some far flung country led to that guy, living right there at this moment. Who does he call? Where does he go? And why the hell did that girl jump off that bridge.

Why did she not aspire? Why did she not hope? What happened in her childhood to prevent her from forming the kind of relationships that should have saved her life? We are meat and water in a bag of skin but some of us walk, some of us run and some of us. Just. Stop. Some of us achieve, some of us get by. And then there are those who don’t suck the marrow from this city, who cry in pain, confusion, panic and angst. And my London blocks out the noise and I go on my merry way. And poor young girls who have nothing left to give or take, jump off Putney Bridge because their London hurt them, hated them and ultimately ended them. Right in front of my own very sheltered and very pampered eyes.

Posted in Luke's blog
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