The Dustbin Lid Challenge (that was its actual name)

Way back in March, before the uncertainty caused by Brexit, Trump and all that, it seemed perfectly OK to try an eating challenge as, unlike now, there was no danger of impending economic doom making food a scarce resource in the UK.
To be clear, I do find eating challenges morally dubious but we’re all hypocrites so pass the bib.
I and a couple of friends opted for a Flaming Grill pub in Reading (to give a venue where the toilet was flooded the title of a restaurant would be a stretch) and took on its Dustbin Lid Challenge.
It appears the Dustbin Lid Challenge is no longer served at Flaming Grill pubs, as far as I can see, so I cannot recall precisely what meat-based cholesterol enhancer was laid out before us. But, from memory, it was:
- a beef patty, chicken breast and a piece of gammon, each weighing some pounds, with various pieces of concessionary salad wrapped up a bun
-a set of beef ribs, presumably belonging to the cow equivalent of The Big Show
- strips of fried chicken
- onion rings
- a double portion of French fries
- a small bowl of disconcertingly cold pulled pork accompanied by cheesy nachos
- corn on the cob
- a portion of baked beans
Now, the fact it came served in a dustbin lid screamed that this was a bad idea. I mean, the only respectable individual to serve a meal on a dustbin lid was probably Top Cat, and he is a) fictional and b) would serve up something distinctly unappetising like a fish skeleton, immediately setting off imagery association issues in one’s head.
Regardless, we got underway. Now, I’ve watched enough Man Vs Food back in the day to know some consumption challenges tactics – leaves the starchy items to the end, choose a light drink to accompany your meal, keep everything moist to help force it down your oesophagus etc.
I promptly ignored all of these theories. Already I had bought  a pint of moderately-priced lager first up for the simple reason my friend had and so male ego was in play and I dived in to the chips first up (I mean, there’s nothing worse cold chips, right?).
And progress was surprisingly smooth – down went the chips, the ribs, the onion rings, the pulled pork with nachos, the corn and the beans within 20 minutes or so and all was well with the world despite knowing our fellow diners were glancing over with feelings of equal part disgust and pity, looks usually reserved for pets that eat their own vomit.
But, looming, always unnerving in the consciousness like that chronic back pain you try to ignore, was the monstrosity of a beef, chicken and gammon burger. The increasingly room-temperature mountain of meat sat on the corner of my dustbin lid.
Steely-eyed, the time came to tackle this unnatural abomination. Break through the wall.
Two mouthfuls of eating this like a conventional burger simply did not work – richness erupted on the taste buds, beyond that which is pleasurable, as three types of meat fought for supremacy. There is a now obvious a reason why you get four-bird roasts and pigs in blankets but not hybrid cow/ pig/ chicken mixtures.
How about taking the deconstructing approach? The way to eat an elephant, after all, is one mouthful at a time.
We were getting somewhere; the chicken’s gone, so has the top half of the bun and the piece of lettuce and tomato slice which was buried in the meat mountain.
Leaving the doorstops of dense beef and gammon, the densest of all the foodstuffs on this offering. Easy. Or, with a brain slowly switching itself off from over-stimulation and a distinctly unhappy set of internal organs in my midriff, perhaps not.
And it came just like that. No mas. White flag raised. Its over.
A distinct self-loathing bubbling – at an inability to finish or to even try it in the first place, who knows. Time to pay the bill and slink off.

The postscript to all this is I barely slept that evening due to meat sweats, didn’t eat for around 36 hours after the effort and my colon was more packed than a London-bound train at 8am. It probably took a couple of hours off my life expectancy too so, at the very least, the whole experience is not a one-night only kind of deal.

The strange survival of the working man's club

Even of my generation, working men’s clubs conjure up images of pipe smoke-filled rooms, warm real ale, meat raffles, bearded men with more empties in front of them than teeth in their mouths, stained billiard tables and more wonderfully English things like these.
The kind of thing which now of course has to be seen as an anachronism – if there’s no such thing as a working class anymore, why would such an entity need their own club?
Recently, I’ve been going to a working man’s club - curiously retained in quite a leafy, well-to-do village - to spend a couple of hours getting progressively more pissed off at not being able to play snooker well (the loss of dedicated snooker clubs is less mourned than the decline of much else in this country. Now so many of the (chain-owned) remaining clubs rely on booze shifted during the showings of early hours of the morning boxing title fights to bring in the revenue; it makes it feel more like a last destination of the night bar than a snooker club).
Digression over. To return to my tracks, the working man’s club has been an interesting experience.
There is still some remnants of that old school vibe; the opportunity to go home victoriously clutching some sausages or a chicken carcass which by the time you leave have been sat at room temperature for a while, pints sold for less than £3 a pop, snooker cues which pre-date Windows’ 95, the only food being pork scratchings and a few regulars whose speaking voice is completely unintelligible (there was one bloke the other night who it took four “Sorry, what?”s to realise he was saying their was an overhead light for the pool table).
But, when all is said and done, it’s more or less a pub; empty on a Wednesday night but full on a Friday, a limited selection of quality-limited drinks (Fosters and Strongbow staples), the fruity sucking down cash in the corner and worn, worn carpets.
However, unlike your average underfunded, identikit pub, it’s friendly. The volume on the TV (unusually showing VH1 or some such rather than Sky Sports News) is down low, people talk to each other across tables and at the bar, there’s no scary looking fuckers who look like they’d rabbit punch you for glancing at their tattooed faces. The young people are tolerated, knowing the older clientele are the chiefs around these parts. Bar staff interact. The books and board games littered about the place are meant to be there, not a concession to artificial character or an ironic nod.
And when a place and its people are full of character, you don’t mind the rough edges or being charged a quid for guest entry (hell, when they forget to charge you, you give them the pound as you feel like you’re cheating someone as opposed to a business).
It’s fantastic.