Lunch at Giulio's yesterday. There were twelve of us. A new face at the table (for me) was one Mammo. I found out after lunch that he had undergone a quadruple bypass about a year ago. He is quite, er, robust. He smoked incessantly, leaving his dog ends smouldering foully in the brimming ashtray. I couldn't understand much of what he was talking about because (a) he spoke in local dialect and (b) he expertly kept the lit fag in his mouth even whilst eating and talking (which he did at the same time).
At the beginning of the lunch, and in a weak effort at making conversation, I asked him if he preferred red or white wine. "Well now there's an easy question" he coughed, wiping the fallen ash off a napkin that didn't make too much of an impression in covering his ample belly. "It's white wine for me everytime. No problem. I don't know what it is but three or four glasses of red and I'm all over the place. Just want to go to sleep. Nope. I'm strictly a white man, hah hah." I then watched open mouthed as, wreathed in smoke, he drank a single glass of Prosecco followed by one and a half litres of cheap Chianti and a bottle of Barbera d'Asti, everything rounded off with five large grappas and a token limoncello to (as he put it) keep the women company.
Good man. Straight into the Ron Combo Hall of Fame.
11 comments:
I suppose something was just lost in translation!
My lunch yesterday was two crumpets, two deep-filled mince pies and the dregs of a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream. Oh and a can of Cobra whilst I put together Eldest Son's new double bed. One bolt was just not long enough to go through the two bits of Meccano that support the mattress, so I'm now waiting to here that's he's crashed through it all down into his new sitting room.
Good man. Sclerosis has been banned here, by government decree. We need people like your new best mate to keep us in touch.
I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday; probably some thin, watery gruel bulked up with mulched newspaper. It certainly bore no resemblance to the bacchanalian feast Giulio has prepared in the photo. Pass me another pea dear; I appear to have eaten this one.
Manners maketh the man.
Interesting yellow sauce smothering the carcass. Lemons? I've worked out that if I start smoking heavily now, it will all dovetail in neatly at the end. My pure as driven snow lungs could cope with 40 years of heavy addiction.
At least we now know where the wine train was headed. A Mammo!
What, Toby, smoked nothing?....at all? How amazing.
Well, Ron, you seem to have stumbled into the ideal playmate here. I rather like his dismissive comments about the consumption of red wine, positively demonstrated by ignoring that which had already been swallowed as if it didn't really count. Marvelous.
Okay Jon. I did once smoke some dope, three up in my Isetta Bubble Car, parked up in a car park in Burton on Trent in 1969 listening to Radio Luxembourg. I particularly recall the song from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid- Raindrops keep falling on my head. They played it a lot!
How appropriate Toby. A bubble car in Burton-On-Trent. Were you seen by the girls coming off the shift at the Marmite factory?
I just knew there was more to it! You were more likely to be stoned in a bubble car than anything else...in more than one sense of the word.
Buon Natale Ron!
Post a Comment