Bucket List of an Idiot

by Dom Harvey

  Then something happened which took the gloss off buffets for me. Really it was a culmination of things.

  1. I hit twenty-five and my metabolism came screeching to a slowdown. All of a sudden, out of the fifteen slices of pizza I put in every Tuesday, only ten would come back out. The metabolic slowdown is a cruel side effect of ageing, made even crueller by the way it comes on without any sort of warning. The first you know about it is usually an honest aunty you have not seen since last Christmas pointing out just how unkind the year has been to you. Not usually said with that level of diplomacy, though.

  2. I started to appreciate quality over quantity. When I first left Mum and Dad’s place and started flatting, the idea of going to a restaurant where I could see some exposed white china under my food seemed outrageous. Things like ambience and quality food cooked by a chef who knew what he was up to in the kitchen seemed pretentious to my younger self. These were the days where me and my mates would go to the fish’n’chip shop and fill up our plastic containers with so much Chinese takeaway that the lid would often crack when we attempted to press it down and take it to the counter.

  3. I finally came to the realisation that the sort of girls I wanted to sleep with were not that impressed by my capacity to go back to the buffet for a second and sometimes third bowl of pudding. And if any girl I liked did happen to be on the same page as me when it came to buffets, chances are we would both be too bloated to actually perform after the meal. Instead we would lie in bed while our stomachs provided a soundtrack, a duet of those bizarre little noises your gut makes when your natural acids are forced to work overtime to break down the food you have piled in. Not sexy.

  My chequered relationship with food, and in particular the overeating of it, goes all the way back to 1983 and a big family Christmas at Nana and Granddad Williams’ house in Levin.

  These are the grandparents on my mum’s side. Mum is from a massive Catholic family—she is one of fourteen children. Because of his religious beliefs, Granddad did not believe in contraceptive devices. Evidently, he did believe in sexual intercourse, though.

  One perk of this extra-large family was amazing Christmas gatherings. Nana and Granddad’s house in Levin had this incredible basement, the ultimate man cave. It had Granddad’s bar in the corner, a dartboard on the wall, pool table, table tennis table, spa pool, and a walk-down lounge area where the TV was. For Christmas the net on the table tennis table would be taken down and the table would be covered in paper and loaded up with the various bowls and plates of food that Nana had cooked or other family members had prepared. On a year with a good turnout it would be possible to end up with over fifty family members all in the basement.

  Christmas of ’83 was a biggie. When you are dealing with a family of that size it is never possible to get absolutely everybody together at Christmas time. But this particular year, there would only be a couple of absentees.

  As a ten-year-old, this was exciting, because more people in attendance inevitably meant more presents. It also meant more cousins to play with during the day, and more food on the table tennis table (why this mattered to me I have no idea—it’s not like there was ever a shortage of food anyway).

  The day got off to a flying start. We woke up very early at home in Palmerston North and opened presents with our immediate family. Then we got dressed in our scratchy and uncomfortable church clothes and made the thirty-minute road trip to Levin, where we went to Christmas Day mass. For a ten-year-old kid, a forty-five to sixty-minute church service on the best day of the year was absolute torture. And it was important to sit quietly the whole time and resist playing or doing kid stuff with my cousins. Any silliness would result in a smack. It was the early eighties and this was a Catholic church—not only was smacking legal, it was almost applauded.

  When the church service finally finished the whole huge family would convoy back to Nana and Granddad’s for the awesomeness of a huge family Christmas to begin.

  Lunch this particular year did not disappoint. I recall there being a hilarious communication breakdown about who was in charge of making the pavlovas, resulting in us having many more than we would ever need. This was not a bad thing. I may have only been ten but I had a pretty accommodating stomach when it came to foods I liked. And because Mum and Dad were in festive moods, the usual pressure to eat vegetables and other unwanted items was non-existent. Left to my own devices I ate nothing but plates of pork crackling, garlic bread and pavlova. Lots of pav. I would have definitely smashed at least a complete pavlova single-handedly.

  When 6 pm came around, Grumpy Granddad made it known that Christmas was over for another year. A lot of the family had gone by this time anyway, but for the guests still in Nana and Granddad’s basement, the message was clear: it is time for you to leave. Granddad did not make this announcement with words—it was far more obvious than that. He would switch off his cassette player that had been playing the ‘Hooked on Christmas Classics’ tape all day. Then he would remove the decorations from his artificial Christmas tree and dismantle it for the year.

  Not long after that we loaded the car boot up with the presents we had acquired and set off back home to Palmerston North.

  It was only a couple of minutes into the journey that my best Christmas ever took a turn for the worse. It came on very suddenly and I felt some of the worst stomach pains I had ever experienced in my ten years of life. By the time we got to the small town of Shannon, twenty kilometres out of Levin, I was in tears in the back seat of the car and Dad had to pull over so I could vomit on the side of the road. The tears and emergency stops continued for the entire trip back to Palmerston North, making the thirty-minute road trip take the best part of an hour.

  At home, Mum made me a bed on the sofa and put a sick bowl on the ground. The sick bowl in our household was also the chippie bowl whenever guests came over. We were forbidden from mentioning that family secret in the presence of guests who were eating chips, though. I cannot explain why we only had the one bowl—perhaps bowls were really, really expensive in the eighties.

  Mum and Dad then went around the corner for some Christmas drinks with friends, leaving Bridget, my twelve-year-old sister and the eldest, in charge. Before long it became apparent my health was not improving so Bridget called for Mum and Dad to come back home. Since this was pre-internet, Mum went to the bookcase in the hallway and got the Reader’s Digest Medical Dictionary out. This was a fat book—probably 800 pages—with an index at the back where you could look up your symptoms. You’d then be directed to a number of pages suggesting what you might be suffering from. My symptoms were a high temperature, vomiting and terrible stomach pains. The medical dictionary’s diagnosis was that I could have appendicitis which, if left untreated, could cause my appendix to explode inside me with fatal consequences.

  The very first symptom is abdominal pain. The pain is not contained to any particular area; it is spread around the lower right region of the abdomen. The intensity of pain may increase as the infection spreads. Another common symptom is nausea and/or vomiting as soon as the pain begins.

  Naturally, my parents’ panic rubbed off on me. So now I was vomiting profusely, in a world of pain and convinced I was probably going to die if I didn’t get help in a hurry.

  I was raced to hospital on Christmas night, turning my best Christmas ever into one of the worst days of my life.

  The accident and emergency doctor checked me out and was not convinced by Mum’s theory that it was my appendix, but decided it would be best to keep me overnight for observation anyway.

  Not wanting to leave me all alone in hospital on Christmas night, one of my parents slept on a La-Z-Boy chair next to my bed. I can’t recall which one had this chore because I was experiencing such discomfort that all I could think about was whether I was going to live or die and what would happen if my appendix exploded overnight.

  As the night progressed the vomiting subsided and eventually I drifted off to sleep. The next morning, Boxing Day, I wo
ke up and felt normal again. The unbearable pain from the evening before had completely disappeared. The doctor came in and lifted up my pyjama top and poked and prodded around my abdomen then decided it was safe to discharge me. In his professional opinion, all I had been suffering from was a serious case of overeating.

  I felt terribly embarrassed about the whole thing. It was quite humiliating sitting on the side of a hospital bed in the children’s ward while the doctor, who looked pissed off at having to work on Boxing Day, was telling my parents off for not paying more attention to my calorie intake.

  Unfortunately, overeating was not one of the possibilities raised in Mum’s stupid Reader’s Digest Medical Dictionary! What a kerfuffle.

  The worst Christmas Day ever was followed by the worst Christmas holidays ever—not only was I nicknamed Porky by my siblings and parents, but as per the doctor’s orders, every single calorie I consumed was closely monitored by Mum. If I went into the kitchen for a drink of water I would hear her in the lounge yelling out, ‘You better not be in the bloody fridge, Porky!’ I know they had my best interests in mind but it would have been nicer if the olds had resisted using the unflattering nickname.

  For my bucket list, I would rediscover my love of overeating. I would go to a buffet and ignore the warning signs my stomach would kindly send to my brain to inform me I had eaten a sufficient amount of food. I would be like the human version of a car being driven with the warning lights on. I would keep going until eventually I would break down. I would eat until I was physically sick. This time, though, the plan was to avoid ending up in the hospital’s emergency ward.

  The buffet restaurant of choice? Valentines. These places are still in existence, but nowhere near as popular as they were in the early nineties. These days their main clientele seems to be real old people who choose to dine there with their friends and family on their date of birth to take advantage of the ‘Dine free on your birthday’ offer that Valentines has become famous for.

  That is precisely the time of year I selected—my birthday. So not only would I eat more than any sensible human being should ever eat, I would do so for free.

  Yeah, I know. It was hardly the crime of the century . . . but it did all feel a little bit naughty.

  The day of dining was planned with military precision to maximise my eating potential.

  Breakfast? Check.

  Small lunch? Check.

  Bowel movement? Check.

  Nil by mouth for five hours before buffet? Check.

  By the time we pulled into the Valentines car park at 1800 hours I was in the perfect frame of mind—hungry but not starving. I was ready to go to battle with the buffet.

  Our party of nine got to the 280-capacity restaurant and found that we were one of only three groups there. Granted, it was pretty early on a Friday night but I did wonder if this place ever gets all that busy.

  One of the groups already eating was a family. I noticed one of the younger members of this party walking from the food area back to his table clutching a loaf of garlic bread, the sort that is wrapped up in tinfoil, probably a dozen slices’ worth. Wondering if he was getting it for himself or for the table to share I kept an eye on him and can confirm that:

  a) It was not for sharing.

  b) He managed to eat the whole lot.

  He didn’t bother breaking the pieces off either; he just shovelled that thing in whole. I don’t think he knew he was being watched but he definitely had a secret admirer in me over on table 27.

  The centre of attention of one of the other groups was a lady having her seventy-sixth birthday in the company of her children and grandchildren. I know this because the youngest members of this table sang the happy birthday song and then started clapping and counting from one all the way through to seventy-six. It took these kids the best part of a minute to get all the way to their nana’s age. Somehow, I don’t think they’ll bother doing that next year and, if the look on Nana’s face was anything to go by, I don’t think she’ll be too upset if this chanting of the numbers doesn’t become a tradition. The poor old thing looked overwhelmed by it all.

  The near emptiness of the restaurant was convenient, though; it meant there were no lines for the buffet.

  I walked around the food islands trying to formulate some sort of a strategy. In the end I decided to eat the food in appropriate groups, starting with the seafood.

  This could potentially have been an unwise place to begin. When I told people my intentions, they were all a bit wary. It seems everybody has a story about someone who got sick from eating dodgy seafood at a buffet.

  Helping #1

  bowl of seafood chowder

  smoked hoki

  crab-flavoured surimi

  shrimp cocktail

  2 green-lipped mussels

  I had survived the seafood leg of the day, phew. I took my empty plate back up to start again. A staff member dumped some fresh French fries into the metal tray under the heat lamp so I went for them.

  Helping #2

  chips

  battered fish (2)

  garlic bread (2)

  marinated chicken wings

  By now I had eaten enough. I felt full. Not full, full.

  But full enough. Under usual dining circumstances, if I ate anything more beyond this it would just be because I enjoyed the taste. But I had to get back up there. I still had so much more to get through. I drew inspiration from my young mate who had earlier made a loaf of garlic bread disappear.

  Helping #3

  pasta

  butter chicken

  rice

  It was after the Indian favourite that my body’s warning light came on. My arms felt heavy. I was burping. I stood up to stretch and twist my torso from side to side, as if that would somehow allow the food I had consumed to wriggle down further and create some more space, like a food version of that Tetris game. I still didn’t feel even close to being sick, though, which was a daunting prospect. I now had the meat section to tackle and, if I made it that far, the puddings to come.

  Helping #4

  meatballs

  roast pork

  champagne ham

  I left the meatballs till last, which turned out to be a blessing. The meatballs were almost the tipping point. I’m unsure if that was because I was full already or if every diner feels that queasy after eating them.

  It was during this fourth helping that I started to develop a terrible headache. I can’t recall the last time I got a sore head from overeating but I can tell you it was not a nice feeling. Then the meat sweats came on.

  I don’t know if this is a real condition or just some old wives’ tale—it certainly doesn’t get a mention in the old Reader’s Digest Medical Dictionary—but I find when I eat a substantial amount of meat products I start perspiring. Never a good look that, when you’re sitting at a restaurant with a glistening forehead and a damp shirt sticking to your back.

  Incredibly, I was still not sick. I went to the men’s room and splashed a bit of cold water on my face, and while I was leaning over the basin I tried to tighten my stomach muscles in the hope this would bring on the regurgitation. Unfortunately it didn’t. Now I was relying on the dessert bar to get me over the line.

  Helping #5

  raspberry jelly

  lemon tart

  sliced peaches

  fresh cream

  pavlova

  marshmallow

  white chocolate mousse

  Fortunately for me, where some people have a sweet tooth I have a mouth full of sweet teeth, which made this fifth (and what would be the final) helping a bit more bearable. I was well over halfway through it when, with very little warning, I suddenly felt the urge to purge. Finally, my body had reached the absolute limit. Hunched over, I scurried back to the toilets and sat down in a cubicle, where I experienced a poo–spew combo. The relief was indescribable.

  The vomit was very colourful and seemed to be largely pudding based. Last in first out, I suppose. Pink
and red with definite traces of chewed meatballs.

  I still felt like absolute crap and had these bizarre shakes. But I had done it. I had conquered the buffet and it had not cost me a cent.

  Then something happened after we left the restaurant that was, I think, even more embarrassing than my premeditated overindulgence. When we got back into the car my mum opened her handbag to reveal a plastic click-clack container she had smuggled in with her. It was empty when we arrived; now it was filled to the brim with pasta, broccoli and chicken wings.

  ‘This will do me for my lunch and dinner tomorrow night!’ she explained as the rest of the car looked at her with absolute disbelief. ‘What? Most people would do this, you know!’

  I don’t know where Mum conducted her research but I highly doubt anybody apart from the occasional hard-up pensioner would ever do it. I didn’t bother to argue, though. I was the one person in the car who had just eaten enough to make myself sick on my thirty-ninth birthday. I didn’t feel it was my place to give anyone else a lecture on restaurant etiquette.

  STICK IT ALL ON BLACK

  The plan was simple—get $1000 of my hard-earned money and chuck it all on black. All Black. The Rugby World Cup final. Sunday 23 October 2011.

  My little brother Daniel is two years younger than me and is a passionate gambler. Well, a reformed passionate gambler. The day he had to take his golf clubs into Cash Converters to get some money to cover a bad bet was, I think, the last straw, and he gave up his dream of getting rich through being a professional punter. I don’t think Dan wanted me to lose money when he came up with this suggestion for my bucket list—I think he saw an opportunity for me to have a pretty good pay day if I was prepared to ‘grow some balls’ (his words).