Originally published at: https://robwatsonmedia.net/chilli-rush-in-nottingham/
I went over to Nottingham today to have some documents checked. It’s always good to waste time in Nottingham, largely because it isn’t Leicester, and the city centre is more navigable, with a wider range of small shops. As a treat, I had a late lunch at Zapp, the Thai Cafe. I ordered Guay Tiew, which is a rice noodle soup with minced pork and roasted red pork, served with boiled egg, ground peanuts, chilli powder and lime. For some reason, I asked for it spicy, and it didn’t disappoint! Next time I will ask for a mild dish and add my own chilli to it, instead of dicing with a chilli-rush.
I’ve had the tail end of a cold this week, and my thinking was that I needed to clear it once and for all. A decent spicy meal is good for clearing the head and sinuses. A few hours later now that I’m back at home, I certainly feel that my breathing has returned to normal. I’m not certain how much MSG was added to the dish though? so for the rest of the afternoon I had a tingling around my mouth. The combined effect left me a bit distracted, which isn’t too bad when wandering around TKMaxx looking at stuff.
I didn’t do any of the usual things I do in Nottingham, such as wandering around the book and record shops, though I did manage to grab a coffee and do some reading for a short while. I read Mind Fuck by Neil Faulkner, which was mentioned by Alistair Campbell on the Rest is Politics podcast. It was a load of nonsense. Faulkner has the zeal of a proselytising religious Marxist.
Compounding Faulkner’s faith in dialectical materialism, as described in his books, is Faulkner’s wholesale incorporation of Freud, which he adopted in the most uncritical and under-informed manner. I laughed when he described Freud as a physician. He never saw a medical patient in his life. Freud was terrified of them. Avoid Mind Fuck, it’s got nothing new to say, and Faulkner likes to say things with a sense of self-defined authority that suggests a messianic self-regard for his own views.
Something I do most visits to Nottingham, is to visit the Broadway Cinema. First, to use the toilet, but also to use their Wi-Fi. It’s superfast. 500mb upload and download! Which means that I can post any photos or videos I’ve taken to the cloud in a matter of moments, rather than hanging around trying to connect to a dodgy connection that doesn’t allow me to upload a thing. So not a bad afternoon in all.