Quarter to 3 in the morning is dinner time

It glows!!
That can't be good for you can it?

One of the results of working the peculiar hours/shifts that I, and anyone who works shifts, is that it fucks something shocking with your eating schedule. People assume that because you work in a restaurant you spend your time eating steak stuffed with lobster wrapped in chicken. Well I don't. I wish I could but I don't. And by "people" I mean taxi drivers. Tonight was another tremendous ride home. "Here mate, you must get til eat lats of steak all the time eh steak all the time wah." said tonight's Travis Bickle. He continued with, "If I worked der I'd be stuffing me bake wi big sirloins and chicken and.....more steaks. I love food." As long as it's chicken or beef eh big fella.

He just wouldn't believe me when I told him we get less than dick all for food at work. Well ok that's not exactly true, we get burger and chips, chicken goujons and chips, chips with your choice of sauce added, naked chips (vegetarian option), or a bowl of soup. I'm not complaining but steak wrapped in chicken and stuffed with truffles it ain't! Head chefs are accountants with aprons, nothing goes for nothing.

I usually forego the sensory delights that are staff "meals". I swear, you piss a chef off once he will get his own back 50 fold with your staff meal. You can be handed a burger that by all appearances is delicious looking and tempting but if you look closer you find it contains added ingredients. Added ingredients such as "fur" from behind the fridge, crap from beside the fryer, and what is best described only as male DNA are all regular special add-on's for me. Those guys and their mischievous ways, oh how we laugh at the various ways they try to kill me.

But foregoing food on a 12 hour shift leads to grumpiness. Grumpiness leads to fighting with chefs which leads to bad staff meals which leads to the foregoing of staff meals which, well you get the point. It's a vicious circle of food denial and grumpiness. I'm not proud of it but sometimes, just sometimes, I have been known to sample some of the food returned by customers. Not the food from their plate but from their side dish. Don't judge me, you don't know the hunger. I'm a chap that enjoys his food, and occasionally yours too.

All this leads to me eating late at night. I like to sit down and enjoy my food without interruptions. There is nothing worse than some being asked a stream of ridiculous questions as you try to shovel your food down your neck before the chef discovers that you have had it away with a rib eye steak. No I like my food free from Nazi Chefs, phone calls, and customers, and most importantly free from "added extras". But this leads to late night eating and that isn't good for an already rotund chap. Why can't you get a healthy salad with a light dressing and granary bread delivered at 2 in the morning? Why?

I end up eating kebabs, curries both Indian and Chinese, pizza, burgers, fish and chips, sausage and chips, bacon sandwiches and well all sorts of crap. I go through phases of trying not to order takeaway after work. I make fresh soup and curries that I can heat up when I get home. I ensure that the fridge is teaming with quality food stuffs but sometimes I have no energy for late night culinary challenges. I knew I was ordering too frequently from my local Chinese takeaway when they named their third son after me.

Take today for example. I had a buttered bagel for breakfast (or was it lunch, I didn't get up until 12pm) and didn't eat again until half eleven tonight. I had a large doner kebab with chilli chips and a Tandoori chicken side dish. I call it the Monday marvel, mmmmmmmmmarvellous. I had no appetite for the rest of the day after my breakfast bagel. I couldn't have eaten even if I had wanted to. And it's been like this for as long as I can remember.

But what am I to do? I am all at one with my rotund/cuddly physique. It's what I am, I'm cuddly and I'm proud. But when does one stop becoming cuddly and just become a fat fuck? It's a fine line between pleasantly plump and morbidly obese. I'm getting worried, there world doesn't need/want a second fat Manuel......

Another Manuel
not this Manuel.....