I have just been for lunch. After unceremoniously sacking Carluccoi’s, I’ve been forced to seek out new feeding holes in Ealing. A Japanese restaurant I have found not only provides an affordable lunch menu, enough free green tea to keep the Imperial Japanese Army quenched, novelty sunken tables that no matter how uncomfortable they are to pry yourself out of, provide a certain charm when the waiter gets down on his knees to take your order or replenish the tea, but also has good food. No doubt I’ll do my usual and eat there day after day until a hair appears somewhere in either my food, the table, the napkin at which point I’ll develop a new neurosis and sack the place. Never to eat there again. I hope the romance lasts longer than the average lifespan of a lunch restaurant for me.

Every time I go there, which is nearly every day I ask to be seated at one of the sunken tables. The same waiter who always serves me always makes an attempt to seat me at the Sushi bar. I decline the invitation and he always responds appropriately given that I’m 6’3” and in comparison a giant with a voice that cannot be used silently. So when I mean to gently say ‘No, I’d like to sit there’, it’s boomed out over the restaurant and I’m granted my wish so as to probably avoid any further embarrassment as a result of an uncouth and possibly disrespectful Western trait.

Not today, no, today I left late for lunch and was not granted my usual sunken table. Today, despite my objections even I could see that there was no other choice but for me to sit at the Sushi bar. The waiter was most apologetic, administered a calming green tea, took my order of a Set D, Ramen soup with BBQ Pork and left me with my book.

Last night, whilst buckled in pain from either a burst appendix, a ruptured spleen, inguinal hernia, lack of alcohol or just a severe case of swollen testicles, I picked up a book that I bought some time ago on Amazon and started reading. I found it instantly readable. The book in mention is A Confederacy of Dunces. I only read about 10 pages before drifting off into an anesthetising sleep. So at lunch, when I always take whatever book I’m reading at the time, I resumed reading Confederacy. My soup arrived and I started to laugh as this was turning out to be, as far as my memory serves, the funniest book I have ever read. Well, apart from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Withnail and I or All Families are Psychotic amongst others. I was crying, with my mouth full of noodles and pork, soup sloshing everywhere and from time to time I had to use my napkin to clear soup off the pages. Laughing is healthy, however I’m sure it wouldn’t take a Japanese monk to tell you that laughing hysterically while eating can’t be that good for you.

I was breaking out into fits of laughter mid mouthful, making it very difficult to swallow so I’d hang my head over the soup bowl, tears dripping, trying to chew, swallow and stop looking at the next line in the book as it would only make me erupt into another fit of suppressed laughter. Those times where my mouth was free to laugh, I chuckled and laughed heartily. I never want this book to end, it’s one of those.

A woman was seated next to me at the Sushi bar, she placed her handbag on the chair between us and ordered. I couldn’t contain myself and considered leaving the book but I couldn’t, I even considered taking the afternoon off work to finish reading it. This book requires, deserves a dedicated sitting. As I broke out into fits of laughter, people were looking up or over at me and I couldn’t bring myself to look at them, so my face remained buried in the safety of the Ramen bowl, spluttering, tears streaming down. She began to look at me nervously and moved the chair with her bag on it away from me and closer to her. I don’t blame anyone there for thinking I was a regular nutter as no one was aware of what was making me laugh.

I managed to get through lunch without choking or being thrown out. I was even promised that I would have my sunken table back, maybe it’s better for the restaurant if I’m left alone, at the back, half buried to cry and sob into my bowl.

This book, by the way, was written in the 60’s. The author, John Kennedy Toole wrote it and committed suicide at the age of 32. His mother found it nearly 10 years later and got it published. I can’t understand how a book that could in my opinion cure manic depression, that a book that funny, or that someone responsible for such a funny book could kill himself. The book won the Pulitzer prize and is a masterpiece, John Kennedy Toole not only destroyed himself, but also destroyed any chance of us getting more. Strange.