Stingray-Globe Cafe, Columbia Road http://www.stringraycafe.co.uk/stringray_globe

Now that I have started on debauchery I may as well carry on– as they say go big or go home…

I often wake up on Sunday still quite drunk and have quite a fixed routine – it follows like thus:

10am– Wake up slightly shaking and dizzy

11am– Start mission to get sugar based products, Yazoo and Sunday papers
12pm– Read papers and bitch about whatever is ‘going up or going down’
2pm– Achieve hydration and get bored
3pm– Go to the pub for ‘food’
4pm– Realise everyone else has same idea, drink standing up and wait for seat
8pm– Eat hammered in different establishment
9pm- Vague

This is routinely referred to as the fabled ‘Sunday Session’or S². It has destroyed lesser people, it has caused many embarrassing Mondays in work and it has even caused the odd rave. Its unpredictability is what sets it apart from the Saturday mash up with the danger of Mondays inevitable awfulness.

Last Sunday I stuck so rigidly to the timetable above it was like I had a diary secretary. Having spent 5 hours festering we walked a whole ten yards to the Royal Oak – but as mentioned before, tables are like finding hens’ teeth (I hate this phrase) and so we proceeded to drink and hope one of the very settled tables of patrons would leave the log fire pub. They didn’t. However, in the darkest hour often springs opportunity so we skipped 20 yards down Columbia Road and went to the Stingray Globe Café.

The Globe Stingray Café is the stuff of legend – a slightly ramshackle pizza place which knocks out decent food cheaply. The legend is, pleasingly, very true. We were seated within 20 minutes, after having some v cheap red wine by the fire, and were offered free olives as an apology for the delay (BONUS). The menu boasts the standard range of pizzas, and a variety of changing dishes, such as Italian sausage with cous cous (£4). Noticing the pizzas resembled bin lids in size and the calzone looked like a rugby with tomato sauce on top, we opted for two pizzas between three. Feeling classical, we went for pepperoni and a less classical Mexicana – the pizzas were the anticipated bin lid size, very light and fresh tasting and all for the princely sum of £6. The toppings are decent but definitely not artisan – this is much more about tasty comfort food than seasonal produce sourced from the Italian wilderness. Stingray is almost always busy and the type of cheap local food place people would kill a flower shopper for.

Anyplace which does a pizza and beer for £6.50 between 5-7pm is a little bit special. It even does a crowd pleasing bannoffee pie for desert for about 3 quid. You walk away stuffed and drunk on the £12 wine (white good, red ropey) with enough change from a twenty to ensure that your Sunday session is finished with a few debrief pints somewhere else. The less said about Monday morning the better.