Operation Red Curry Paste.......

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!

Not in a fox hole in Iraq but rather wandering aimlessly around a Tesco's supermarket. Yes today I, Manuel T. Waiter, managed to find the missing chef whilst trying to find a decent red curry paste. There he was wandering around the supermarket surprisingly clean shaven but with piss holes for eyes. He tried to duck behind the buy one get one free Fox's Mints display when he saw me but being the size of a small shit house that really wasn't going to work. Plus I was hide-n-seek champion three years in a row. I was rubbish at hiding due to an inability to stop laughing but my seeking skills were never in doubt.

His two chums walked on but I had him cornered, no escape.

"Alrighty big fella! What's your story then?"

"We have party. Beeeeeg party!" He's Polish by the way.

" All weekend?" I asked with a huge slice of skepticism.

"It was very very beeeeeg party." The way his hands were shaking there was no doubting it had been a very beeeeeg party. He had the delirium tremours and then some, all Jazz Hands and jittery face. Undoubtably large quantities of vodka had been consumed just like they do in the old country.

"So you going back to work or what?"

He shrugged his shoulders and said, "Aaaaaahhhhhh maybe I go back tomorrow."

"You're in the shit big fella. You dropped them right in the poo at the weekend."

He shrugged his shoulders. Good defense that, shoulder shrugging. Let me tell you there are a couple of chefs who, when they come face to face with him, will be expecting more than shoulder shrugging.

"Yes I know this but the party went a bit bad."

"Eh?"

"Men came. Men with hairy faces eh you know what I mean."

"No, I have no idea what you mean. Men with beards? What are you on about?" I had a vision of a bus load of hirsute men gatecrashing his party.

"You know.....the men with hairy faces....hairy faces and baseball sticks."

"Hairy faces? D'uh! You mean wooly faces."

"Yes wooly faces. Yes many men with wool faces. They came and beat up the house and then hit my friend up his face."

The men with wooly faces are community activists paramilitaries. The wooly faces bit comes from there fondness for wearing balaclavas. Although mostly they dispense with such things these days as they pretty much carry out their work with impunity. They take a dim view towards parties that don't involve themselves even if they sold the drugs that made the party so "beeeeeg". They wrecked the house, putting and end to the party and suggested that the occupants find alternative accommodation.

"Jesus. It must have been some party."

"Yes it was very beeeeeg party." He laughed but furnished me with no further details. If he is still employed by the time I get back to work I will push him further.

"There was fighting and my friend got hurt. Now we must find new house to live in." He was surprisingly upbeat about the whole thing. I'd have been a wet mess in the corner of a darkened room somewhere. Somewhere far away at that.

His chums were keen to get on and they beckoned him to get moving. And off he toddled. I guess worrying about your job comes second to worry about the ability to walk, the men with wooly faces have a penchant for knee breaking, and finding somewhere to live.

Still, at least I found him. Never found any decent red curry paste. Story of my life really, find a chef lose a paste.