Cheese
The entry price to any good dinner party is what you come armed with, be it good cheer or a summary understanding of the day’s world news. Not that I get invited to many dinner parties. I am categorised by friends as more beer and darts material than dinner guest. Despite clearly having a lot intellectually to give. And not really liking beer or darts.
My annual occasion of being invited to something more civilised than a quiz night left me in a muddle as to what to bring. I’d already planned to take a bottle. But planned to drink it almost exclusively myself, to the point of making a name-badge for it. So, I had to go a bit further. Cheese board, obviously. Who doesn’t like cheese? Not me for a start. Love the stuff.
I wanted good cheese. Proper stuff. So I went to a delhi in Highbury Park with a special cheese shop at the back. Manned by the most judgemental dairy salesman I have ever come across. In hindsight, starting with asking for Babybels might have got his back up. He went on to sneer at my choice of brie, demanded I get a goat’s cheese, and point-blank refused to find me any cheddar. He almost punched me when I made the golden comment about “liking a bit of blue”. I was very happy with that.
He got me back, he sold me 7 quid of swiss cheese (by the way, it is not amusing in the slightest to refer to swiss cheese as ‘fairly neutral’ - save your breath, take it from me). But this was special swiss cheese, with it’s taste on timer. He let me try it. It tasted alright. So I said “250 grammes of that please, young man” (I was on his bad side by that point so had nothing to lose). Little did I know he’d set about a 7-second delay on this cheesy beast. He’d just finished cutting me a wedge so thick it would keep a draft out, when the slither he’d stuck in my gob 8-seconds earlier nearly took my fucking head off. It was like someone had detonated a controlled fungus explosion in the back of my throat. I couldn’t speak for the taste, which was for the best because I was dreaming up all sorts of new profanities that were best left unsaid given the other clientele seemed to be happily testing shavings of nice, mild parmisan.
All in all, the dinner party went off ok. I threw in a couple of quirky (biggoted) observations about the Italian economic crisis and thoroughly ruined everyone’s meals with my funky dessert. I look forward to being invited back soon.
