Still finding excuses to use up the vegan block I have a boiled egg on toast and another bit with Juno General Store apricot, lime and cardamom jam. I feel like I see these jars sitting cute in all the hipster Southside shops at the moment, but they actually don’t have that many stockists. Says something about me. The flavour combos are labelled in typical minimalist style, full of punchy promise, but not everything is made equal. I really like the jams, and will no doubt try all the other flavours, but I find them subtle in a softly rounded way, not really living up to the expectations I have when picking one off the shelf. Still interesting enough though. I’ve had the plum & miso one. I’m aware that miso is dead trendy right now, but I feel it is done injustice when a product doesn’t really have that signature bold umami flavour. It's like name dropping someone you barely know. However, the overall sharpness in this apricot one melds nicely with the glorified margarine this morning, where the overt sweetness of most jams might not have. A rare moment of margarine’s lightness belonging, outshining the place of butter.
When eating breakfast alone I satisfy my latest addiction by grabbing Tik Tok fixes, propping the phone up against the candle holder on the table whilst I munch and awake. That Tik Tok of Julia Fox making the towel dress pops up. It’s literally a towel with some holes in it draped on her. She could make anything chic. I watch another one of her talking about the fragile masculinity of straight men in touching their own anus and realise that I like her. She’s about my age. Relatable. I cave in and join the Julia Fox bandwagon, tapping follow.
Irn-Bru Xtra. By the very nature of being Scottish I’ve always loved Irn-Bru. Did your granny call it ginger? Like many people, I call it juice, which gets a lot of clapback from non-Scots. Normally I only drink Irn-Bru on bad hangovers. Of course it’s different since the sugar tax. That’s old news. I started drinking the Xtra kind when I was on a bit of a diet earlier this year, in the evenings to stop me from wanting a calorific alcoholic drink. Today I crave it because of the two martinis I had last night. The sweetness and bubbles charge me back up. Sometimes I just get it when I’m extra tired. Already exhausted from 9-5 capitalist forms of labour I totally see how fizzy juice becomes a vice for the office worker. I notice a few colleagues on Diet Coke everyday. It’s the most common barter I see on Facebook bartering pages, desired in ‘slabs’. It can get sort of frightening. There’s a really good Netflix Explained episode on sugar and sweetners. No more than once a week for me, I’m pretty certain I’ll never get this bad. There’s a certain Scottish shamelessness to Irn-Bru that you can hide behind. It’s the national mascot. Despite all of Diet Coke’s marketing, everyone knows it will rot your brain.
Banana. Leftovers. Rice cake. Another rice cake. Coffee.
After work I get a beard trim at the barbers nearby as a rare pre-wedding attendance treat. Waiting 20 minutes, I’m surprised that I still find these spaces incredibly intimidating. Too many men. I acknowledge this can be complete paranoia scars, especially in fancy barbers like this one. At home, Ale is back and stressed because someone in Sainsbury’s was horrible to him. I often think about the unwritten rapport that’s built with supermarket staff and other frequented stores, as a place that demands you and you demand its essentials. What opinions do they have on the regular faces? I felt this so profoundly in my home village when still staying at my Dads, insecure that I was too queer to be shopping in a nuclear family zone Co-op. But they probably didn’t care. I’m not that special!
Me and Ale drink some wine and I attempt the classic oil drenched roast potatoes – something quite pernickety in my opinion. Should I have really started with the water cold? Did I not get the oil hot enough? Should I have taken the skins off? They end up not crispy enough. Still pretty satisfying though, eating seconds straight from the tray, hovering over the cooker. I impulse bought veggie haggis last week and tonight’s the night. I promise I’m not trying to exude Scottishness at every turn! Cringe. To go with I dress some beansprouts in pepper, lemon, olive oil and tamari. If you’re not dressing your salads in soy sauce yet, you must start. It makes salt seem dull. All of this goes really well together, the veggie haggis really fulfilling its true form potential. Yum. No leftovers produced tonight, as we get ready to leave early morning, going up north for two nights. I expect a mixture of quick on the go trash and eating out at local places. All shared in joy with friends.
Find Conor on substack at ‘Mud Tracks’, on instagram @lifeisthefarce, and on his website here.