#0002. EATING TAPAS WITH PEOPLE YOU DON'T LIKE.

Going out for tapas is a complicated business. What you're basically doing is ordering and sharing one giant meal. That's basically what you're doing. So it's imperative that you're able to trust your fellow diners, both to: A) make good ordering decisions, and B) not eat too much.

Ideally you'd assemble a dedicated 'Tapas Squad' for such occasions. You know, a meat specialist, a really shit-hot vegetarian, maybe a baker. And they'd all be really, really selfless, generous people. Possibly Christians. But sometimes, sometimes you've just got to work with what you're given.

And this particular time, what I was given just so happened to be a group of people I didn't much care for. I didn't know these idiots. How could I possibly trust them with my dinner?

The simple answer was, I couldn't. Within seconds of the food arriving, my chosen dish had vanished in a flurry of jabbing forks. I managed to get maybe a meatball away. Possibly two. It was like trying to pull survivors from a burning plane wreck. And then, as quickly as they'd arrived, my meatballs were no more.

That's when the red mist descended. That's when I took the only sensible course of action available to me. That's when I started eating things just to spite people.

If someone had eaten one of my lamb meatballs I ate two of their sautéed prawns. (It's like Sean Connery says in The Untouchables: "He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send two of his to the morgue.") I ate and I ate and I ate. I ate until I felt sick.

But ultimately I proved my point. Although obviously no one was big enough to admit it.