RAUCOUS LUNCH

The service is okay, lah, but the kitchen is slow. And the food is passable. Slightly too salty. Which probably satisfies the clientele just fine, seeing as most of them were old, retired, slightly grumpy. And not all of them compos mentis. The two old ladies having egg tarts and milk tea at the table to the right were quite likely no where near fully witted, and at the far table the youngest woman was going into great loud detail to a young man (mid-seventies) about how the husband of the mesozoic fossil she had been conversing with had kicked the bucket, turned in his keys, expired, oh woe, left her all alone with no chances at all of ever finding a companion, destined to spend her twilight years in solitude.
Gosh darn it, life is hard, haaaaa ... ?

She was quite enthusiastic about the misery.

She and the widow, and a third woman with full mummification of the face (too much pale white foundation filling in the wrinkles) were chowing down on plates of spaghetti.
Still, they were more at their full wits than the ladies to my right.

On my way out I dawdled behind the widow. Who then complimented me on my Cantonese.
From my initial ordering through the request for Sriracha and the bill I hadn't spoken a word of English, and neither had anyone else. The place was packed with Cantonese oldsters, a welcome change from the crazed fellow with his loud boombox playing sad Taiwanese ballads from the seventies on the street outside.

From my barber to the restaurant I had done some shopping. Bittermelon, hotsauce, and a box of ear-twiddlies. My barber was driving himself insane by watching videos about food in Hong Kong. Roast duck. Roast goose. Roast pork. Noodles and yauchoi on the side. White poached chicken. Soy braised meats. The poor man is homesick. When they chopped the crispy pork you could hear the crunch of the crust and the juices of the meat underneath. When I had left his shop he was nearly in a delirium. So good. So good.

The internet is dangerous for some people.

Which is why today, instead of doom scrolling through Europeans and university students spewing effusive praise for the Middle East's most active anti-Semites, I left my apartment fairly early. It's better for the soul to visit the food-obsessed, than to read and reread about Arab hatred for everybody and how Glaswegians, being a sour and thoroughly rotten tribe, wholeheartedly endorse that.

It will be quite a while before I visit Europe again.
Besides, the bastards keep coming here.
A plague on Glasgow.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================