Shorewitch H∆use

For those who don’t know, Shoreditch House is this multi-story members club in Croydon Shoreditch that has a whole bunch of bars, a restaurant, spas – like health spas, not the chain of convenience stores, (although, if you’re reading (you’re not), Shoreditch House bigwigs, maybe that could be something to think about), a gym, sofas and an outdoor swimming pool that steams when it’s cold. It’s the kind of place that, were I a young, troubled heir to an eight-figure fortune, I’d spend my days there, marching around, shirt open, mumbling about Faulkner, drunk on £200 scotch at 3pm on a Tuesday. I would think I knew all the staff by their first name but would be wrong and mildly racist about 80% of the time. They’d all hate me, largely due to the time I grabbed a waitresses thigh, asked her if she “liked to pogo” and then fell asleep, perhaps pissing myself and ruining a velvet sofa cushion. I wouldn’t apologise, mention or possibly even remember the incident. However they’d tolerate me because I’d constantly overtip due to not really having any sense of money or value or anything and my Dad would be a pretty big deal and had asked the owners to “For God’s sake, keep an eye on him”/me. 

The only thing standing between me and making this dream a reality is a really big, unclimable wall made out of money. Also I never read The Sound and the Fury even though it was on my reading list at university because rules, like promises to myself to stop watching fail compilations on Youtube for literally three hours and just go to bed already, are made to be broken.

Anyway, they do pizza at Shoreditch House and surprising hopefully no-one, I ate it. It had salami on and I’m no salami expert, or as I desperately hope they say in the industry, ‘salami barmy’, but I think a good way to determine the quality of salami is whether it’s in a circular ‘log’ (gross) or a slightly oval one. I don’t know why this is. Perhaps no one except God and the pigs that poop out salami do.

7 out of 10

Pompeii-back.

What was cool about this pizza was that when I asked for no jalepenos, instead of being spineless, subservient wimps and complying to my outrageous demands, Vesuvio went ahead and, as you can see in the photo above, totally ignored me. I like that. That shows a real strength and belief in your vision. The unwillingness to compromise or waver in your certainty that you know what's best for your customer. That level of artistic integrity is rare, and the fact that it exists in a little pizza restaurant just off Clapton roundabout is a testament to the spirit and resilience of the human desire to create. It brings to mind inspirational figures like Ai Weiwei and Salman Rushdie, standing fast in the face of public opinion, refusing to budge no matter what. People and government are telling them what to do and they simply ignore them because they have a higher calling. Congratulations Vesuvio Pizza Takeaway, your legacy and example of fearless defiance will live on in the countless people who's requests you totally ignore, regardless of how much it disrupts their poop cycle.

This was pretty good even though I had to pick off all the jalepenos myself. I stupidly did this with my fingers and before I took out my contact lenses. If you've ever man handled chili and then given your eyeball a big old poke you'll know how fun it is. My eyes frazzled up like bacon bits in a deep-fat fryer and I am now completely blind. I've just been randomly bashing away at the keyboard for the last ten minutes like an ADHD five year old at a piano. If what I've written so far actually makes any sense then it's a miracle and I am that one monkey  with a typewriter, out of an infinite number, that managed to hammer out Shakespeare. My mum's watching and crying because of what's happened to her family. It's pretty sad.

On the plus side the hospital gave me these sick new sunglasses. In my head I look like James Dean.

6 out of 10