Shootout at the Totteridge Rd Industrial Estate

The morning starts promisingly, there’s a text from Tony, a bloke I know, and he’s offering me work.

I remember what work’s like.

Tony owns a food van. It's got "Tony's" written on the side of it, so you can tell it's his. Funny thing is, he’s been doing it for years, banging out little pots of salad with grilled chicken. Flatbreads, yoghurt, that sort of thing. It’s a sort of ersatz Mediterranean North African mix, a little bit of Greek, a little bit of Tunisian, a spot of Moroccan, a hint of Turkish, all quite vague. You’d wave your hands in the air and go “you know” if asked to describe it, and he seems to do all right out of it. Better than all right. As I say, he’s been doing this for years. Funny thing is, he’s fashionable now. He parks up and, as if by magic there’s a queue of blokes with beards and trucker hats waiting for his falafel. They take photos of their lunch.

Flat out today and I could use an extra pair of hands.

I’ve no idea why he decided to text me, but money’s money, and I haven’t written a word for what seems like years now, so I head off. I soon find out why.

“Other night, you came in to the Grapes with that posh bird.”

My heart sinks. It’s a hoary old phrase, but an accurate one. It really does feel like its starting to head south.  “And when she left you started talking about how you used to be this chef and that. In between the sobs, at any rate.”

Oh Christ, I took Hel to the Grapes, no wonder she hasn’t called me back.

Hang on, I said what?

There’s a point in any lie where you recognise that this is the chance to back out before things get out of hand. Before things tip over the edge and you keep having to lie bigger and bigger until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions. I open my mouth, and in a second I'm past that point, because I could say “ha ha, really? Must have been the booze talking” but what I actually say is “yeah, I’ve done a bit”. This has the benefit of being broadly true, if you close your eyes, put your head to one side and squint a bit. I lasted half a summer washing dishes in a pub kitchen the summer before I went to University, The chef was a loud-mouthed Manc with delusions of grandeur, he kept saying that he wouldn't be there for long. I dunked chips once or twice, so technically, yes, I’ve cooked professionally.

“Good” Tony grunts, and hands me an apron.  I wash my hands, and my new life begins.

I’ve no idea why people would eat food outside when it’s this cold. I wouldn’t have thought it was good weather for food trucks, but the second we pitch up to the industrial estate we’re swamped; they swarm, steaming out from unmarked doors. It’s an unlovely sight, this place. Corrugated iron sheds hunkering down into the chill January concrete. Someone’s even tried a bit of landscaping, they’ve cobbled together some sort of a pond, there’s a gravel path around it and a few leafless saplings. Somehow, this only serves to make it worse. It's like bunting at an office party. Christmas decorations on fibre acoustic ceiling tiles.

I thought Tony was mad, bringing us here, but I was bright enough not to say so. One thing I have managed to learn in all my years of being a professional loudmouth is that most of the time the other person knows more than you, the world would be a better place if more people remembered that. It turns out that there's a raft of tech businesses here, worked at by earnest young men with a staggering amount of tattoos which I suspect they may regret in a few years time. he told me what to do, and I did it. and, before long, realised that I was starting to enjoy myself.

I spread the hummus on the wrap with a flourish before sprinkling the lamb and roast cauliflower over it. I felt godlike. The bearded supplicants at the van were here for the beneficence which only Tony, and, by extension I, could bestow. It went, for the most part, swimmingly. I'd already convinced myself that yes, I had actually been a chef, I'd done more than dunk chips, that I was in fact vital. I was in a pleasant reverie as I worked, already seeing myself as integral to Tony's empire which was bound to expand rapidly now I was on board..

So engrossed was I that I almost missed it when I got called fucking poof.

Look. I don’t want to get into the whole Brexit thing, it gives a man a headache. But I’m prepared to venture the opinion that the bald bloke who got so angry that we weren’t selling bacon butties that he threatened to kill us was probably, on balance, a Leaver. If that makes me a sneery member of the metropolitan elite, then so be it. Though it’s hard to feel too elite when you’ve only got 43p in the bank, I can tell you.  

It quickly transpired that he took it as a personal insult that today’s menu was: grilled sardines with tabbouleh, a nice little clam pasta, lamb meatballs with hummus and a veggie tagine. The lack of bacon, in his eyes, equated to an attack not only on him, but on all the values he held dear. Worse yet, our intransigence on the matter of sausages was proof positive that here were two Woke Remoaners who probably wished to induct him into the ways of love between men and men. He took a firm position that this was not what he wished to occur. And we were probably immigrants.

It's been one of the more curious aspects of the last few years that people take offence both at what's in front of them, as well as what's not. It gets you both ways. The lack of a van selling bacon was taken by the gentleman as prima facie evidence that we were part of a global Jewish conspiracy to overrun the country with Muslims. An intriguing geopolitical stance which, I felt, had some inherent logical contradictions.

Tony, needless to say, wasn't having any of this, and he had grabbed a kebab skewer with a meaningful expression when, to my immense relief, a tiny woman in a severely cut suit issued forth from a nearby shed and shouted at the man to get back inside. It turned out that she wouldn't normally have done this but just really, really wanted some sweet potato curry. A close run thing, I'm sure we can all agree.