Ben Non Bar None

Who told me about the meat sweats? It was years ago, I didn’t believe a word of it, and am now paying for my hubris - after putting away more than my fair share of a Côte de bœuf last night, urban myth has become 4am trembling sheet-soaked reality. Since arriving in Paris, I have come to enjoy huge bloody chunks of cowflesh beyond what is sane and, it seems, healthy. It’s one easily observable manifestation of my all-permeating hypocrisy that I’m convinced vegetarianism is ethically and environmentally spot-on the right thing, yet I still persist in consuming the deceased flesh of pretty much any animal I can get my filthy couverts on. And above all others, beef. Beef. Beef.

Thinking back, this isn’t the first time I’ve been stung by excessive beef consumption. Last winter in Brighton, a beef fondue evening developed into a red wine frenzy and I ended up redecorating my hallway, bathroom and parts of Toby with Beaujolais Village and partially digested chunks of raw beef. I could have taken this as a warning.

I’m beginning to think my innards just aren’t cut out for this kind of raw-meat abuse. Maybe it’s an English thing. You remember last summer’s toilet-bowl-referencing barbeque safety advert? Here, they have an ad for a particular brand of steak haché (a kind of burger that looks and tastes like it’s actually made out of minced beef - strange concept, I agree), in which a young boy takes said raw-meat product out of the freezer and gives it a hearty lick before passing it over to mum to cook. For this act of mishygiene, roughly equivalent in English food-safety terms to smearing your chicken drumsticks in human faeces, he recieves the sort of gentle chiding I’d expect for dipping a finger in the pasta sauce.

All this talk is making me feel rather peculiar. Please excuse me. I may have an urgent appointment with the téléphone de porcelaine.