All posts in category: Food & Drink

Anyone who yells “I know my rights”... invariably does not

Why...

Do people think watching episodes of Law and Order or Judge Judy qualifies them to understand all aspects of the law, when most don’t know their writs from their tits? During my last trip in the aluminium hen coop they call Air Malta, I tilted my chair back a fraction. As some of you know I have had back surgery and sitting bolt upright for three hours is painful. Immediately behind me this beached whale kicked the back of my chair and slapped the top of my head yelling, “I know my rights. Put your chair back in upright position. I have no room.” Rather than get into a huge fight, I simply pulled out a card and gave it to him, whispering, “So, do I”. He shut up. It was not my card, but a lawyer’s card from one of the UK’s top law firms I had recently visited. It read Senior Litigation Partner.

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I’m not interested in meeting my heroes, but I so want a dinner party with people I love to loathe

September 19, 2019
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Politics Sex
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Why...

Have a boring dinner party? They say you should never meet your heroes, as everyone has feet of clay. Clarke Gable’s and George Washington’s false teeth always fell out, Teddy Roosevelt had halitosis and there are countless movie stars short enough to mistake them for a table and I’d end up placing a drink on their head. For me, I would have unbridled glee if I was allowed to meet my villains. In the unlikely event they turned out to be charming it could reaffirm my faith in mankind, but I suspect Al Capone, Heather Mills (McCartney), Benito Mussolini, William Randolph Hearst, Piers Morgan, Kim Kardashian and even Putin would live up to billing and make a spectacular dinner party guest. Far more interesting and livelier than the normal wish list of Jesus, Einstein, Gandhi, Mohammed, Shakespeare and Mother Theresa (especially as some hardly drink and others have special dietary needs). What really makes the ideal dinner guest from hell is the certainty that whatever they say is right and their barely concealed contempt for anyone else. Add to that the cry that the world has misunderstood them, and they are the victims. Of course, one guest like that is a real nightmare but a collection all together would be a dynamite evening.

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Not only do most men not understand ‘female plumbing’ but we underestimate the vital importance of the ‘manny peddy’ at our peril.

September 13, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Sex
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Why...

Does nail upkeep score so high on life’s necessities for women and are just a short chore to men? During one of those lulls in a dinner party conversation after I had chatted for twenty minutes on politics, shopping, Love Island and varicose veins with the woman on my left and now waiting for a chance to break into conversation with the woman on my right, I heard the most extraordinary exchange between two women sitting opposite each other. “… Yes. Ruined it. Can you imagine?” “Oh my God. Disaster. What did you do?” “Well. I had to have a drink just to keep me from screaming and losing it. No choice. That night I had to wear closed toed shoes and came back first thing next morning before anyone could see. I mean. It was horrific.” The cause of this tale of woe was not frostbite, a malignant verruca or even an in-growing toenail. The nail varnish that had been so lovingly applied to this lady’s big toe had not dried properly before she left the salon and when she got home found her shoe had smudged the scarlet varnish and left a wave effect on her nail. With this severe handicap, open toed shoes that night were clearly not even a remote possibility. The fact the other lady expressed equal shock, drove home to me the importance to women of the upkeep of their hooves. Something men cannot comprehend. Every so often my wife remarks I could play the banjo with my toenails and I take three seconds per toe with clippers to prune them. That’s it.

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To serve you better it just means do it yourself

Why...

Has the concept of service become a lost art and rarer than a redneck with all his teeth? It is an anomaly that we live in an age with every company, from car insurance to incontinence pads, to mobile phone providers, shouting about service, yet not really giving any. Customer Service is on life support. You can experience its death throws in shop assistants who don’t look up when you approach them, people who leave you on hold for a couple of millennia, to being rebuked for misplacing a dry-cleaning ticket etc. Top of the list of people I would like to recommend a visit to the vivisectionist are restauranteurs who present you with sliding scale charges. These starting at (clearly in their opinion a mean and piffly) 15% via 20% to clearly a justifiable 25%. Add VAT at 20% and before you have so much as nibbled a grissini stick nearly half your bill has been swallowed by tax and services. I appreciate waiters are underpaid but for the life of me I cannot understand why this extra is simply not built into the bill. It’s not as if you can order a meal without a waiter. Seems as basic a requirement in a restaurant as food and a chef. If I have received spectacular service, I leave an amount at my discretion. It’s never a percentage that I have been nudged into paying because it’s printed out and therefore looks official. It’s usually a few pound notes rounded up or down as I see fit.

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Why is my chocolate bar digitally challenged?

Why...

Is there a massive gap in the overcrowded chocolate market? Over the past ten years, fancy schmanzy chocolate from every corner of the globe has appeared in retail outlets. Some plain but many with a wild mix of ingredients; everything from moon dust to crushed lark tongue (well not quite, but you know what I mean). However, when it comes to simple chocolate you are offered anemic milk at around 32% chocolate content… then there is a huge gap till you get to 65, 75, 80, 85, even 99%. What the hell happened to mid-range 35%-65% content? This gap is mystifying. I want chocolate to taste of actual chocolate but not be as bitter as a fired Cabinet Minister. 50% would be perfect.

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Time travel exists... if you can splash the cash

Why...

Can’t I have my own flux capacitor in a Delorean car, like Marty McFly in Back to the Future? There are a couple of people whom I would love to revisit in the past and give them some sound investment tips; Atari, Pan Am and Bernie Madoff! However, in the real world anyone who actually wants to experience time travel simply has to go to a National Health Service A&E department at the nearest hospital to remove the saucepan stuck on their toddler’s head. By the time their infant is extricated he or she will be a teen-ager and the parent will be eligible for a pension. If however, they had shelled out for private A&E they’d be home in time for tea and the private hospital would no doubt scrub the saucepan before returning it. Same result... decades apart! Now, before you all yell at me that this is a disgrace and elitist, I fully accept there are people who have no option but to use the NHS. However it’s £100 for this service privately. The same as a family dinner, a football ticket or a couple of months of Sky TV. Plenty of people can afford those. It’s really about priorities and our sense of entitlement. It’s no different from buying a priority boarding pass on an economy airline so that they can cattle-prod you to the front of the queue. For me it’s worth it not to sit next to a gaggle of hen party revellers or be lectured by an expert on Brexit for three hours. And the same journey can feel like it’s taking twice as long if seated next to someone listening to rap music but without headphones rather than a pretty girl asking what she should do all on her own at her new destination. Well, that’s the theory of relativity explained for you. The only equaliser amongst us all is time and how we allocate it. Having spent a week bouncing around North America, then a week unpacking furniture, had I the money I would gladly have paid other people to do either.

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Legs eggs and stupid regs

April 19, 2019
Animals/Pets Food & Drink Friends Life Sex
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Why...

Is Easter so weird? In reality of course it commemorates the trial and death of Jesus Christ. Yet in a deft bit of marketing mixed with heathen tradition it has become all about birth, sex, spring and chocolate eggs. Of course to kick all this off we have all the Mardi Gras parades, the hottest of which is of course the Rio Carnival. I have the utmost respect for the Brazilian Catholic’s. They managed to turn the beginning of 40 days of fasting mixed with sackcloth and ashes into a bacchanalian extravaganza. In fact during the carnival things really do go with a bang. The amount of cocaine consumed is so vast that there are discernible traces in the air! No wonder even your grannie can samba for a week non stop.

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Eat drink and be merry ... for tomorrow you can diet!

Why...

Is every avenue of pleasure depicted as a path to Armageddon? This time of the year I must admit I cram too much food and drink into my stomach, but does this really mean the grim reaper will be sharpening his scythe? Christmas overindulgence needs to be balanced with a feeling of wellbeing, a grudging love of fellow man and slipping a few extra £,$,€ into the collection box. But happiness is not a terminal disease. Nevertheless, TV presenters wearing Elf ears or Santa hats, give out dire warnings of all the drawbacks to the holiday season. Frankly if I live a couple of years longer without ever having eaten a chocolate eclair or enjoyed (in my bachelor days) a memorable Christmas Eve in Manila in the warm embrace of a pair of Air Stewardesses and some wakky baccy, I think I would have missed out. As Hunter S. Thompson said, “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”

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?You can’t always get what you wa-ant ... ?but if you try sometimes, ?you just might find You get what you need?

December 14, 2018
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Friends Kids/Family/Relations Life
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Why...

Do we let the little green-eyed monster ruin our lives?

Jealousy is a one-way emotion which if you can turn into a two way one can become a source of deep satisfaction.

No doubt at Christmas you are a little irked that Aunt Lottie saw fit to give you a pair of socks printed with reindeer’s antlers but gave her other favourite nephew a Rolex.

True, but in exchange for the Rolex would you really want to be cousin Nathaniel? No. So let it go. You can always get your own back in subtle ways; like asking Aunt Lottie for dinner and sitting her next to someone with opposing political views. Then just serve her something she hates, sit back and watch the show.

I was never a great athlete at school and was more than envious of the sporting prowess of some of my peers until time for the annual Crick race, a 19-mile run that only the very fittest were allowed to enter. It was a huge badge of honour to be selected... in my view to run until nearly dead.

My crocodile tears at being told I had not made the cut were soon dried as I watched the runners cross the finishing line with pain and exhaustion etched over their chiseled features. One up for the couch potatoes!

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Why are magazine editors and chocolate manufacturers numerically challenged?

Why...

Can’t magazine editors read a calendar or chocolate manufacturers add up? By the time you read this we will be into December but at the time of writing we are still in mid-November and yet....... I have January issues of several magazines I subscribe to. Now I can understand being two weeks ahead and jumping the gun, but nearly two months is absurd. Most magazines are vaguely topical yet if you take into account the lead time for writing articles, these ‘up to the moment publications’ are staler that last elections political manifesto. As some of you know, I am a petrolhead yet there I am reading about Evo Car of the year in the December edition complete with Santas and elves... in shirtsleeves in sunny September! Which brings me onto another point. How can you match a Christmas advertising campaign you want people to actually read in December when the magazine is dated for February?

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If God was a woman, celery would have more calories than chocolate and white wine would replace water

Why...

Has the law of natural selection seemed to have passed by foodstuffs and things I enjoy? How come a yummy, light and fluffy chocolate eclair, something every sinew in my body urges me to eat, is bad for me at every level, as opposed to a vomit inducing kilo of brussels sprouts which my nutritionist says is bursting with goodness? In everything else our natural urges ensure our survival; be it wanting to have sex to procreate, nonstop chatter thereby ensuring protection by being tribal, a natural aversion to snakes or Politicians or any of a dozen natural instincts that Mother Nature instilled in our subconscious for our own good... except consuming calories, tobacco and alcohol. What happened? Depends who I ask. The Catholic’s and Jews have a thing about guilt. It’s a guilty pleasure to consume single malt whisky or puff on a Cohiba cigar so Yahweh or God, in his infinite wisdom made these things bad for me to test my faith. But that kind of logic is as cracked as the Grand Canyon. It also explains their puritanical views re sex (I like it but cannot have it unless under very strict conditions, passed down by the Almighty, often to people who are forbidden to have sex). If you ask Tom Cruise and his Scientology friends, they may say that liking things that are bad for us is an instinct passed on from the Thetans who visited Earth and had hanky panky with a lot of us humans. So, we inherited their love of all that’s bad as clearly on their planet they all indulged heavily in narcotics, sugar, ciggies and alcohol. All I can say to that is lead me to their planet and explain to me if they are such superior beings, they left their own nirvana?

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Old Mother Hubbard

September 13, 2018
Animals/Pets Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Life
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Why...

Is my freezer always at bursting point with stuff I will never eat? When I go shopping I seem to buy not only for my wife and I but for the freezer... like it’s an actual person who needs feeding. “Ooooh, lark’s tongues. I’ll put those in the freezer. Yum, anchovy and chocolate mousse. Looks so interesting. I can freeze it.” The result of all this largesse is my fridge is crammed full with stuff that in the cold light of day I don’t want to eat. Conversely, I feel guilty about throwing out food, so this abundance just sits there.

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Oh, come on... what happens in Benidorm stays in Benidorm

Why...

When I went on my first solo summer holiday, was the hottest part of the day always after dark? I remember reading that in the 1980’s such was the lure of ‘a quickie in Magaluf’ that over 35% of single people had sex with a stranger within two days of starting a package holiday on the Costa Brava. I suppose if you ground out 50 weeks a year in a damp typing pool in Wigan, some rumpy pumpy in an exotic locale had a very strong appeal. I mean all those hormones, no parents and no prying phone camera from your friends to tell the world what you had been up to. My holiday snaps in the 1970s were taken on the last day to show my Aunt the sea view from my room and the plane I flew home on; taken with a camera loaded with one roll of film with 12 shots (ASA 100 - Remember those). Today’s racy photographs that cover snapchat like acne would never have been developed by my local Boots. Instead I would have found a note inside saying these pictures were unsuitable to print! I can assure you that what I was looking for on those first holidays was not a UNESCO World Heritage Site or a basket weaving co-operative. So I was somewhat staggered to learn that young people on their first solo holidays nowadays seek out exotic locations as opposed to locations where they indulge in something erotic. Cheap and cheerful holidays have been replaced with earnest young people wanting to load up on Instagram a photo of a three toed armadillo or four eared fruit bat. Students and the first time employed apparently now yearn to sample the delights of a warm oil colonic irrigation whilst eating mung beans in an Ashram. Fun seems to be a ten mile trek through some mosquito infested swamp with the reward of a tofu burger and cup of tepid fruit tea, rather than an all-night rave and enough E to fill a giant size bag of M&Ms. The kiss me quick traps of the Baby Boomers and X Generation have suddenly gone quiet. The locals in great swathes of Spain, Italy and Greece are actually nostalgic for the old days of sluicing away the vomit from the night before’s over indulgence or collecting abandoned flip flops, thongs and condoms that once littered the beach in dawn’s early glow. Wolfing down paella with chips followed by binge drinking Raki with Sharon from Skegness has faded from memory like the sepia pictures that hang in the mock rustic tavernas. Now, whilst I am the last person to deny some culture to our youth, where has fun gone? I worry today’s youth are not being misspent.

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Twinkle, twinkle, little star How I wonder... ...how the f*#k you got it!

July 20, 2018
Animals/Pets Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Work
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Why...

Are stars listed for goods and services that mean utter bullsh*t? Let’s start with the supernova of stars, the seven star hotels in the Gulf. According to the Hotel Star Registry, there is no such thing as a seven star hotel. Well guys, I hate to tell you, the Burg al-Arab boasts them. Hard to miss it. It’s the third highest building in the world. The fact no one challenges this self aggrandising nonsense is a clear example of how the rating system is abused globally. Technically I believe the star rating system was started by the Forbes Travel Guide, formerly Mobil Travel Guide, which launched its star rating system in 1958. The AAA and their affiliated bodies use diamonds instead of stars to express hotel and restaurant ratings levels. However, although many countries have legal requirements for star designation, others do not. This makes a mockery of the whole system. A four star hotel in say London or New York is in a different league to one in some islands in Southern Europe or Africa. To qualify to be five star you need to have shops on hand available to buy essentials. However there is nothing to say a vending machine would meet that requirement... and in some countries they do! In China saunas and spas are not a requirement to get five stars but a room to play cards and mahjong is! In Mongolia I assume you need somewhere to tether your Yak whereas in London it’s an underground car park.

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It’s all about service

July 13, 2018
Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Life Travel/Nature
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Why...

Do hotels with four or even five stars find the basics of what is expected so hard to deliver? The Porter. When I pull up in a taxi or my car, why is carrying my bags into the hotel a spectator sport? A porter should be there. No excuses. Instead, nearly all hotels are perfectly happy for me to lug cases inside when some spotty teenager dressed like an organ grinder’s monkey then expects a hefty tip as he wheels my bag from reception to the lift. I always enjoy pulling out a note then tearing off a third and saying... “That part is my share of taking these out of the car to reception.” Internet. If I am paying a decent price for a room don’t piss me off asking to pay an additional $25 a day for Internet. It’s grossly expensive and just appalling customer relations. WiFi is now as basic a requirement as electricity, aircon and hot water. I was recently charged for internet and then given a download service of less that 1 MBPS. For those luddites reading this, it means even a simple presentation document takes so long I would need a shave and a haircut by the time it finished downloading. Unless I am actually in Africa, watching BBC News Focus on Africa is as pointless as last year’s football results. If I am in Stockholm I could not give a toss about basket weaving co-ops in Laos, but more likely a terrorist attack in London. BBC, CNN and other news agencies seem to be mostly advertising monologues for third world dictatorships. You just get endless reports from parts of the world that are as relevant to my life as Morris Pole Dancing. If you are a five star hotel with an International clientele shell out the few extra pennies to allow us to watch rolling news (Sky News for the English... and Russia Today for those who like fairy stories before bedtime). Perhaps if I should just thank Reception on check out for such interesting news channels and offer to pay in Matabele gumbo-beads when presented with the bill? Bathroom. As I wrote before (here) I don’t wear glasses in the shower so print shampoo, conditioner and shower gel in big letters and have enough lights around the mirror to let a woman do her make-up. Bedroom. One switch by the bed to turn all the lights out.

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I say, anyone for tennis?

July 7, 2018
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Politics Sport Technology
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Why...

Have some events managed to stay essentially the same in character whilst others have changed beyond recognition? Wimbledon is in many ways gloriously anachronistic and has stayed resolutely the same since 1877. My late father was on the board and I was immensely lucky to have watched every men’s final from 1969 until his death in 2004. Yes the event is old fashioned but still managed to sneak in the odd dollop of progress. It took till mid 60s before the All English Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, to give it its official name, allowed professionals to compete. In the 1970s skirts went high and in the 1980s rackets just went high tech. In the 1990s Wimbledon led the way in taking a little pressure out of the balls to stop short serve and volley rallies that threatened to ruin the game... but those two weeks in July are still rooted in Agatha Christie’s England. Pimms Number 1 cup to drink, smoked salmon sandwiches, strawberries & cream to eat, and a fearsome dress code. All men must wear jackets and ties in the members enclosure, trousers are frowned on for women and no one raises their voice (John Mcenroe in his prime, the exception that proved the rule). Even now the men’s and ladies champion pair up at the opening dance at the Gala finale ball. You almost expect to see Maggie Smith as Dowager Lady Grantham complete with lorgnette inspecting the crowds to make sure no riff-raff have gained entry. And yet Wimbledon has survived, even thrived. Unique in the tennis world as a Grand Slam on grass yet with the atmosphere of a smart village fete. It’s not the quaint atmosphere that puzzles me, but why no one else has tried to copy it.

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Whatever happened to the three martini lunch?

June 28, 2018
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends Kids/Family/Relations
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Why...

Have we let naked ambition put cordial working relationships on a strict diet? Of course I blame purple braces, red Porsches and Gordon Gekko. The first casualty from Big Bang in the 1980’s was the three martini lunch. If lunch was for wimps, then count me in (if that’s no too much trouble)! I remember my early days in the City working in Lloyd’s Insurance market on Kidnap and Ransom insurance. Twice a year I would have lunch in the Directors boardroom at Fenchurch Street Brokers with an underwriter who got deeply offended if after cocktails then wine, we did not finish off a bottle of port. Of course we were fried as owls and no work was done that afternoon, but we never had a row, always got our man back if someone was kidnapped and the world shone brightly through the gimlet of the bi-annual assault on our livers. Could this Underwriter have been a touch richer, more ruthless and generate more moohlah for his company? Possibly? But then I probably would not have wanted to spend time with him or give him my business. In 1980 everything suddenly got serious. Fun was out as the new slave drivers assured us no one could possibly get rich being a bit silly. I suppose that’s one reason why shortly after Big Bang I left the City and ended up working for a man who had made millions sticking his hand up a Frog’s bottom. Jim Henson and The Muppets were back then an Entertainment behemoth... and not that we ever overindulged in anything to the detriment of that wonderful company, but indulge we all did. And it all (like Kermit) went along swimmingly. Chalk one up to the silly people.

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Do you wanna be in my gang?

June 22, 2018
Finance/Law Food & Drink Life Politics Sex Technology
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Why...

Do we seek solace mixing with people who on joining a group or club revert to stereotype? “I never want to be a member of a club which would let me in,” may be a classic Groucho Marx line and a cliché but for good reason... It’s true. I have been very lucky to have been invited as a guest to several clubs and they break down into the following seven categories. Back to school There are a handful of Gentlemen’s Clubs in London holding a male only policy. They are all in Pall Mall and St. James and distinctly different to other Gentleman's clubs that can only operate by having scantily club members of the opposite sex. The London Gentleman’s club is really just public school (private school in the US) for boys who never grew up and miss nanny. The place runs on old fashioned rules. The Nanny organises the social desk and membership fees but that’s the only woman you will see. You better turn up in a tie, shoes polished, nails clipped and hair brushed. Yes, you can drink, but do not get rowdy. Most of the food is what I call nursery menu. A perfect lunch would be: Windsor soup, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Jam Roly-Poly, & Welsh Rarebit. Conversation through the meal with other members sharing your refectory style table equally as stodgy and bland. This is followed with a port and a snooze reading yesterday’s The Times. These throw-back establishments work on handed down privilege, who you know and how you behave. I am sorry to delude new members who have fought their way up in society through hard work and brains to join but… Old Biffo and Squiffy in the corner still look down on you as nouveau riche; the same way they dismissed Johnny Foreigner as a new boy at Rugby or that boy with the flash watch as parents “working in trade”. Back to Basics Health clubs. No frills. Over sophisticated gym equipment and eye wateringly expensive juices, drinks and rabbit food. Staff preachy and superior with bodies buffed to within an inch of their lives. Off peak these caverns of sweat are filled with the bored and rich. These poor souls have nothing else to do except cheat on their partner and sneak off for plastic surgery to show the results of all the dieting and training they pretend to follow. Peak time it’s just an overcrowded dating agency. Back to the Future The Lovie playroom. Media based haunts are filled with overloud voices recalling their last meeting with Brad and Angelina, how genuine the Spielberg’s are and what a shame about Amy’s drug abuse. Always in slightly seedy parts of town set up by failed media wannabes who see this as their entree into the glitterati. The propeller head equivalent of techy clubs are full of earnest members trying to convince you to invest in some crypto crapto currency or hint they might get you into an angel start up fund with guaranteed returns. “So, you’ve invested yourself,” is a sure-fire way of getting rid of them... and leaving you with absolutely no one to talk to. Pointless. Back to the Wall The exclusive nightclub. Exclusive because there are only so many people willing to spend £10k a year for membership to an overcrowded noisy hell-hole that charges prices that are an insult and a door policy that admits only good-looking people with an IQ quota the same as their shoe size. To make it worse should you be insecure enough to have to order a five litre bottle of vodka or a jeroboam of champagne for £1,000, the staff bring attention to your vulgarity by having sparklers light up the bottles as they bring them to you and alert everyone else in the place who is tonight’s soft touch. If you have to go to one for a night of drug fueled fun, you never want them to have your real name anyway. Always make sure someone else is the member. Back in the saddle The Horsey Club. Filled with overweight florid faced men and woman who bray when they laugh. If you ask for the bridal suite it’s a large room full of saddles, riding crops and Gucci buckles and the last place you’d want to spend your honeymoon. If you can separate the bullshit from real horse manure you might get a good tip on a horse. The Back Nine What can I say about a golf club except I don’t want to join one. Ever. It’s a chance for you to dress up like an extra from a Blaxploitation movie, though ethnic minority representation still remains low. Members may slice their tee shots to the left or right, but politics is invariably to the right. I speak with some experience here when in Myrtle Beach a club member made the mistake of asking me my opinion on abortion. “The obvious answer is it is not really a man’s decision; though if it were men who got pregnant, I suspect termination would be so easy it would come from an ATM machine. “No religion recognises a miscarriage or the trauma that causes. So, until they do they cannot go on about the rights of a foetus.” He pulled a gun on me and called security to eject the “limey liberal pinko”! Back Inside There is a great line in the TV series set in a woman’s prison Orange is the New Black with a character greeting a new inmate saying… “Welcome to the 1950s”. The speaker is not referring to the building or facilities. But to the clubs. The Narco Mexicans stick to one group, The Neo-Nazis another, right down to the Nepalese Horse thieves or Belgian child molesters. Everyone has a group. It’s basic. It’s for protection. So, on that note console yourself that Bernie Madoff is not the wife of some 6’6” ex Cripps member but closely closeted with some other fraudster both cheating at monopoly but a least paying protection money to keep their balls.

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In the old days we cooked real food and made our own entertainment

June 8, 2018
Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Life Sex
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Why...

Do some people in their sixties plus go all starry-eyed when harking back to the days before the microwave and streamed entertainment?

“When we were young, we played cards,” they moan.

So giving your kid a regular gambling fix is better than subliminal history via Vikings and The Tudors or world class fantasy literature of Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings?

“The family stuck together and entertained each other,” they pontificate, sniffing at Netflix, Amazon, Sky, etc...

“Which is why in some remote regions your husband, your brother, your cousin and your uncle were all the same people,” I reply. This is even an argument to allow easy access of porn to occupy Uncle Ernie rather than him insisting on a game of doctors and nurses with his niece and nephew.

However, I do accept that building a tree house, riding a bike without a helmet, a game of conkers or walking unaccompanied to school did generate a dollop of risk. No one I grew up with got away without a broken limb... if not two.

“And we had such innovative games. So much more involving than just a video screen.” True but...

I remember being given an Atomic Energy Lab from a toy company called Gilbert that had a small sample of polonium and uranium! At seven I had fuel driven planes whose propellers regularly tried to sever my fingertips, steam engine trains with boilers heated by methylated spirits (so you were stoned before your fingers got third degree burns) all jumbled up with catapults and a wicked gun called a Johnny 7. This little darling had seven different missile firing guns each capable or poking out an eye or pissing off the next door neighbour’s cat.

I never wore a seatbelt and quite often steered the car sitting on my father’s lap. (Please note we never had an accident... we saw dozens).

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♫ I hear somethin' sayin'♪ Yumm, Yumm ♫That's the sound of the men eating in the chain ga-a-ang♪

May 17, 2018
Animals/Pets Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Travel/Nature
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Why...

Does anyone bother to be a chef in some parts of the USA? Last month my wife and I went to visit my son in Florida where he teaches people to become Commercial Airline Pilots. Yup, I know the tallest mountain is Thunder Mountain in Disneyworld and in Daytona Beach where my son is working, there is more culture in a yoghurt but… one night we decided to go out for dinner and tried to find a local restaurant. On one three mile stretch of road we counted 51 different food franchise restaurants and spotted only one real bistro where somebody actually cooked a meal rather than follow the franchise instruction manual. This leads to the ludicrous situation where you ask for the teensiest change in a meal and you are met with a blank look from the waitress; “We cannot possibly hold the tomatoes/not use garlic/add extra turmeric… It would take away from the taste experience we have so carefully crafted.” Translation: “We can’t change anything because none of the people in the kitchen can actually cook anything. We just assemble pre-packed gloop and wouldn’t know turmeric if it came up and bit us in the ass.” The exception of course is anything that can get an allergic reaction (and then a law suit) so nuts are kept in separate radioactive bags only to be added to a dish at the last minute using two-foot-long tongs and industrial grade gloves.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

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