Vendetta

Recently I’ve been eating a lot of spicy food. This isn’t part of any grand strategy or culinary plan. It just seems to be that I need spicier and spicier food to satisfy my taste buds.

The last weekend was a fairly good example.

My wife and I are heading to Bodean’s. For those of you not in the know, Bodean’s is the only place in London where you can get decent American BBQ food for a good price. So I’m feeling pretty smug as we walk in the door. Apropos of nothing, I am a regular attendee at the Bodean’s in Soho, but on this occasion I find myself at the Tower Bridge one (which is not as good).

A helpful lady walks us to our seats. She is a waitress, not just a helpful stranger. She gestures towards a small table for two. I glance at my wife and see her nose twitch. We are thinking the same thing. We are not a particularly chubby couple, but it’s nice to have space to spread out. I like to place my beer in a north-westerly direction from my plate, and my water in the north-east. The small table means both drinks will both have to be crammed due east. And I don’t know what my wife’s system for drink placement is, but I’m damned sure it’s more complex than mine.

The restaurant is perhaps 40% full and there are plenty of larger tables. My wife asks the waitress if we could sit at a larger table. The waitress is not happy.

‘No, I’m afraid not. We may well be busy tonight and might need the larger tables for a bigger group.’

We don’t feel like arguing so we sit. We get the tiny table because of potential customers that may potentially need the larger tables at some potential point in a potential future. We fume a bit.

Our mood soon improves when my wife whips out her special Bodean’s Q card. This magical card gets us free stuff when we order and this makes me tremendously happy. Today we get free chicken wings. The lady offers us a choice of flavour ranging from mild to Diablo. Now, I’m as adventurous as the next guy, but Diablo sounds worrying. We opt for hot, which is one notch below Diablo, and wait expectantly.

Five minutes pass during which time we worry that we have only got one of the usual two bottles of BBQ sauce on our table.

The wings arrive. I silently thank the higher power that there are six. Odd numbers of food create awkward food sharing situations. After over thirty years of life, that is the one piece of philosophy I can claim as truly mine. So don’t nick it. Or do, but credit me.

Remember ‘Odd numbers of food create awkward food sharing situations.’ Pithy.

I digress.

We each take a wing and bite. They are unbelievably hot. Words cannot convey the searing spicy, heat of these wings. Imagine putting a small bit of the sun on your tongue and then stabbing your gums repeatedly. My lips go numb, my nose begins to run and my eyes start to water. I wonder if I will cry.

I look across the tiny table to my wife. We share a moment of complete agreement. Perhaps we will never agree on anything as much as we agree that these are particularly hot wings. I stare at the wing in my shaking hand.

‘There is no way they have hotter wings than this!’ I whisper through my pain, ‘She has given us the Diablo wings!’

My wife gulps down some water.

‘This is her revenge for our asking about a bigger table,’ she hisses, ‘she has taken spicy vengeance!’

I nod wisely and imagine the waitress peering covertly around a corner to watch our pain.

Now, when the situation requires it, I can be as small-minded and childish as anyone. I decide that this is just such a situation and that my wife and I will finish, yes finish, the entire plate of wings. That’ll show our vengeful waitress just who's boss.

I explain my plan to my wife but, if I am honest, I’m not clear if she is supportive of the plan or not. There are six wings and we have already finished one each. Leaving four. I munch bravely though my remaining two wings – speed is best. My eyes clear around 2 minutes later and I see my wife has also finished. Jubilation fades to confusion. She has left her last wing, fully untouched, in the plate. It is a thick, chunky wing and is swimming in the deepest puddle of hot sauce. I had avoided this particular wing, hoping my wife would eat it.

She obviously hasn’t.

From the way she is cleaning up with face wipes, it is clear she has no intention of proceeding any further. I point at the last wing accusingly. She sips her beverage and looks stubborn. The sort of look that says there is no chance on God’s green earth she’ll eat this or any other wing. I die a little inside. For I too am stubborn. And now the mantle has been passed to me. I peer down at the wing and prod it with my fork.

My wife tells me she feels faint. I tell her this isn’t about her. She had her chance. This is about me and the big wing. I need to focus – surely she understands that I don’t have time to worry about a fainting wife.

I grab the wing, glance around the see if the waitress is looking, and quickly scrape off as much sauce as possible. I eat it as speedily as I can and, after a minute or so of misery, am bathing in the warm glow of victory.

The waitress comes by after a short while and clears our plates. She doesn’t seem to notice that we ate all the wings. She is quick and professional. No awe, wonder, or words of congratulation. As she sweeps off, we are left pondering the possibility that the waitress did not engage in ‘spicy vengeance’ and that they weren’t Diablo wings. Just regular hot wings.

We tip well and leave Bodean’s to begin our walk home. We are in a strangely happy mood, giggly even. I’m aware that spicy food can release endorphins in your brain, but this is my first proper experience of the phenomenon. We amble across Tower Bridge chatting like giddy hippies and agree that, next time, we must order the Diablo flavour to remove any doubt.

The next day, we wander around Brick Lane and decide to go for a curry. For the first time in our collective lives, we order a vindaloo. It is great.

We are addicts.

A bit of futurology

Ok, this is a slight departure from my usual, light-hearted take on life. I've been in a bit of a Nostradamus mood recently, so thought I'd share my musings.

The whole concept of simulation has been bugging me. Like many of my fellow brethren, I enjoy the odd play on my Xbox. I don’t spend hours on the thing, but I've done my share of running around and killing baddies. I don’t buy into the idea that violent games have a harmful psychological affect on otherwise normal people. Yet. If you look at the evolution of game simulations over the last 25 years, you’ll see a change from square blobs moving jerkily across black screens, to the movie quality games available now. Advancement in quality will doubtless continue and the inevitable end point is an entirely immersive 3D environment, virtually indistinguishable from reality. Proper virtual reality. I reckon that running around in this environment shooting people in the head is likely to be a much more harrowing and damaging proposition than Grand Theft Auto. Scary even.

This leads to interesting questions for moral philosophers. Games are already developing in the direction of free roam worlds and increasing customisation. What happens when the ‘game’ player can customise the almost-real simulations of the future? What if you found out someone had created a simulation of you? How will we feel about people who do very bad things in these almost-real simulations? Will punishing or vilifying someone for engaging in distasteful simulations or customisations be the same as punishing someone for their thoughts?

I think almost-real simulation challenges the line between thought and action.

So, what does all of this mean? No idea. Smarter people than me will need to work it out. What is certainly true is that we are heading into an increasingly tricky world for the ethics leaders and law-makers to decipher.