Wiesenhof, Killarney

Monday, July 21, 2003

Service: * * *
Food: * * * 1/2
Ambience: * * 1/2
Babe Count: * *

Ah! The taste of victory! I've just thrashed Jonathan 21--14 in my first game in the new cycle of our backgammon club. I've made the cut into the B-division, and life smells like organically grown roses. And my beard smells like chicken breasts with peppadew and sweet-onion topping, served with Greek salad. Which just happens to be the dish on special tonight here in Killarney.

It's definitely a recommendable light supper. For only R22, this is enough to fill the gap caused by a long Monday at work, and it's tasty enough to be called a victor's meal.

"Roy," says Matt, looking up from the pounding he's giving Doc Pete. "How's your relationship with Jacqui progressing?" He throws his dice, shrieks a fist-pumper, slaps Doc Pete's lone blot onto the bar, and says, non-sotto-voce: "Please please please... give us the sordid details. All of them!"

Well, it's gotten to the stage where Jacqui and I are trying to work out pet names for each other.

I've rejected 'Boy Roy', which is what I was called by Stan Katz back in the days I was the sound controller on his afternoon show on 702. I've rejected 'Royco', cos I don't really want to be associated with a brand of instant soup, even though it's hot and steamy and likes being stirred vigorously, whereupon it foams lightly. And I'm uncomfortable with 'Enormous Boy', cos it's untrue. Mostly.

Jacqui has rejected 'Lust Bucket'. I don't really know why. 'Honey Bunny' is just too mundane for both of us. I don't really feel that calling her 'Jax' is appropriate, cos all of her friends call her that, and it seems to me to be too reminiscent of an incident involving a headmaster and a cane when I was in primary school. (I don't know what they called the administration of corporal punishment in your school, but in mine it was called 'Jacks'.) She's given a provisional 'yes' to 'Jacquilicious', but only in private.

"Excuse me," I say to the Wiesenhof waiter in the privacy of Jacqui being in a different part of the world from me, a waiter who I haven't seen for forty-minutes. "I seem to have drooled all over my beard. I've been talking about my girlfriend and she's so Jacquilicious I can't control myself."

He doesn't seem to know what the hell I'm talking about. Which just proves that Jacquilicious could be obscure enough to be uttered in public.

"Please can I have a serviette?" I ask the waiter.

"Ah," he says, handing me one. "Are you Boy Roy from the Four-to-Six-Afternoon-Fix with Stan Katz in 1989?"