Spare Ribs, Underberg and Lychee Wine
Waiting for the spare ribs to arrive
Antwerp Moustache Of The Year 2008 Report

by
Andy Lear

 

I HONESTLY THOUGHT that I would never eat again for as long as I lived. That morning I had met up with Rodders at Dame Judy’s house and the drive to Antwerp had been pretty uneventful. Rodders was his normal cool calm and collected self, generally abusing any other road users and at one stage standing on the bonnet of the car with a megaphone and demanding to know if there was anyone else in the county that wanted to get on the ferry before us.

We made pretty good time though and stopping at the hotel to freshen up met up with Jorg and Margit and off to Ronnie’s bar. Having had my version of a continental breakfast on the ferry (sausages eggs, bacon, beans, toast, chips, fried bread and, for that continental touch, a glass of merlot to go with it) I was somewhat peckish so when, after a few sherbets, it was decided that we would eat, I was all for it.

Andy prepares to re-visit the starter buffet

I forget the name of the restaurant. It was a fair way from the bar but well worth the trip. Mountains of starters as much as you can eat, shrimps, pate, ham, olives, salmon, garlic bread, potato salad more than you could fit on a plate so out of politeness I had a couple of visits to the starter buffet and was pretty full when I had managed that. You could just go and help yourself to beer as well. In fact my beer pouring technique got me the offer of a job from Ronnie, if I ever fall upon hard times I might well take him up on it. I did not have much room for a main course of any description but when a rack of spare ribs the size of a Fiat Punto arrived overhanging the plate I knew I was in trouble. That’s not the worst of it. It would have been churlish to have refused the Belgian chocolate pudding after that. The Despicable Parsons and Keri arrived at the restaurant just when it was trying to close and so they were only offered the option of the starter buffet and even then the pair of them ended up stuffed. I had to be virtually rolled out of the restaurant like a barrel.

We ended up in another bar but there was just no room in me for much more beer so I had an Underberg as well. For anyone unacquainted with Underberg it is a highly alcoholic beverage with about seventy five herbs in it that will cure anything: Terminal cancer... one-leggedness... the plague... there is nothing it can't cure so I had hoped that it would cure being overstuffed as well, and eventually it did.

The next morning due to a supreme effort of will I managed to force down a small corner of toast. Then another couple of rounds, several boiled eggs and a couple of ham and cheese rolls so clearly the Underberg had done its job.

Bad Belgians march on the Castle

The object of the trip was to support the moustache of the year event held in Antwerp every year. I do not pretend to understand half the politics involved but it seems that there are good Belgians and bad Belgians and this year it was the turn of the bad Belgians so Ronnie’s club had a sort of illegal march to the castle, carrying Jimmy Hendrix (yes that really is his name, no not THE Jimmy Hendrix), all the way on a sedan chair where he was awarded a tie, a hat, a picture and a very large plant from some fertility society that happened to be there at the time. The criteria for being awarded the moustache of the year are that you have to be a local notary with a moustache and not weigh too much.

Andy after a few beers (quite a few, actually)

The presentations over we proceeded to process into the town centre where free beer had been laid on by Koenig and Ronnie and things started to go a bit downhill from there. Having polished off a couple of kegs of Koenig we repaired to Ronnie’s bar where the lesbian disco of the previous year had been replaced by an Oompah band, who were pretty good. Rodders has volunteered to stand up next year and sing Every girl loves a fella with a bush upon his mush so that should be something to look forward to... possibly not. John and Kate turned up quite late and started making up for lost time, Kate necking a 2 litre bottle of white wine in less than a minute.

I am not sure what had happened to Rod by that time but Kate, Keri, Steve, John and I went to a Chinese restaurant in the red light district. I had had a few beers by then (quite a few) but was fairly together until I started on the lychee wine. In retrospect that was probably not the best move of the weekend. During a digestive pause Kate and Kerri decided they wanted a look at the red light district so manfully I escorted them to the end of the road and back. I regret to report that I was not offered so much as a euro for either of them.
 

No Peeing here

They have signs for everything in Belgium though it is not always immediately apparent what they mean. As far as I can tell this sign (which we found on the way back to the hotel after a few more sherbets at Ronnie’s) means no one with an oversized left leg and a small head is allowed to pee on a building site. Eventually I found myself propping up the hotel bar with Rodders and finally got to bed at some ungodly hour.


Sunday we were heading back to England so could not really take full advantage of the excellent Belgian beer. We met up at Ronnie’s bar and had a stroll into town. At about this time, for the first time all weekend, the sun came out properly. We relaxed and chatted and people started drifting off with the mandatory kissing and hand shaking. We took John and Kate to see the statue of Ruben’s willy and eventually headed back to good old Blighty ourselves.

The trip back was slightly more eventful as just as we were approaching the M25 there was an earth shattering bang and Dame Judy’s car exploded with glass flying in all directions as the passenger window (which was next to my head) shattered into a million pieces. It is a good job the weather had cleared up by then or I would have got a wet ear as well as a neck full of broken glass. Soon we were back at Dame Judy’s house, there was not a great deal I could do to help with the window so I left Rodders to fix (or explain) the carnage and headed back home where I discovered a very nice email in my inbox from Whiskers Roe suggesting that there might well be another report from your intrepid committee member with no obvious function coming up shortly. End of text moustache

 

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