I feel like Benjamin Button. Not only do I wear shorts and sandals but I have started adding fractions to my age.
Want to know when I publish the next blog?
All posts in category: Food & Drink
Now you can only go into the bank wearing a mask
Why...
Has common sense been swept away by Covid-19? There was a time if the police stopped your car while out on a date and they found rubber gloves, a mask, duct tape and a chemical suit in the trunk they would suspect you of being right out of CSI. Now you are just a responsible citizen. I stood in line at our fabulous farmer’s market today watching a woman in a mask and gloves take both off to sniff and squeeze at least a dozen melons. Then she replaced her protective gear, happy that she was safe, but all the melons were now toxic. Every store now has a hand pump ready to spit out who knows what on your hands. After a day, my paws look like red swollen baseball mitts. Let alone the fire hazard. This stuff not only is highly inflammable but has no flame. Light up a fag and you may not realise your fist is on fire until your fingers start to go crispy! And shoe shops are utterly mad. You have to try on shoes with half your leg wrapped in an overgrown condom! You can’t see what the shoe looks like and I just don’t see how this avoids anyone catching the dreaded lurgie.
Never ask for directions and other essential tourist information...
Why...
Do I know more about where I visit than where I live? If you want to amuse yourself in a city you are visiting ask directions to a made up address. If it's slightly rude… even better. Piddle Lane, Butt Hole Road, Divorce Court or (my favourite) Camel Toe Drive. (These in fact all exist). Nine times out of ten the person you ask will point you with utter certainty in the direction of your fictitious address. Locals never, ever, can be seen to know less than a foreigner. It is a maxim that you are always better informed of the cities you visit than the ones you live in. Most foreigners know far more than I do about London....and I lived there off and on for fifty years. The last time I viewed the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London, TV was black and white and The Beatles wore suits. My most recent visit to the British Museum was with my toddler son......who is now a pilot! However I visit the Louvre every time I am in Paris and the Met every time I'm in New York. I would rather kiss a politician than go to the Opera in London but in Vienna it's a must. If you do want true culture always search out a local museum. There are only so many Botticelli's a man can see in a day but how about the Phallogical (gentleman's sausage) Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland? You can compare notes with the Condom Museum in Bangkok or Sex Museum in Amsterdam? Got the kids? No problem. There are Barbie museums in Paris, Rome and Montreal or a Cup Noodle Museum in Osaka.
Today’s blog was too good ... You can’t read it
Why...
Am I getting brain fade? I have written these little ditties for over four years now, on over 200 topics ranging from my dog’s television viewing habits to me never being around when moving house. It is getting increasingly challenging to find things to scribble about. Last week whilst driving in the shoal of Malta’s kamikaze drivers I was struck by a subject so ripe that I actually started laughing. For a moment I wondered whether I should stop and write it down or record it into my phone. Nope! No need. It was too funny. How on earth could I forget? Try as I might, I cannot remember it. I even drove down the same road listening to the same songs in the hope the Muse of blogs would reach out and jog my memory. Nothing.
If eating food is a sport, I need to start training properly
Why...
Can I not think of a single redeeming feature of eating competitions... unless of course it’s my company’s food. There are plenty of people who can argue with some justification that tug-of-war, tiddlywinks, or Morris Dancing are sports. At least they require some skill, a smidgen of technical ability. Dare I say it, there is also some teamwork or aesthetic beauty. Apart from the hand to eye coordination of being able to stuff food into your mouth like a high speed conveyor belt, I can think of nothing that needs any special requirements... except zero common sense and a stomach capable of enlarging to the size of a mid range Buick. Let’s put aside the question of if it’s a sport. Let’s start with why is it even a pastime. The basics. Gluttony. That is the skill. That attracts a very specific individual. Certainly if you shout in their ear you might get an echo. The goal. Waste as much bad food as possible and try not to vomit. Every eating competition I have found contains junk food with more additives than a years worth of Apple I-phone updates. Competitors taste buds are not exactly refined. And as the food is cheap, so it’s easy to supply in industrial size portions. From a personal point of view I would question the word Food! I mean no one ever has a caviar or truffle eating festival otherwise I might be tempted.
DIY classes and Bear Grylls never taught me how to colour my wife’s roots
Why...
Could I never join Tom Hanks on Castaway? Lockdown has demonstrated that I would never survive a week as Robinson Crusoe. The ‘manly’ ability to be able to fend for myself in the wild is limited to knowing how a tin opener works. Don’t laugh, most kids have no idea what it is. To try and light a fire I might as well rub two Boy Scouts together rather than wood. And the idea of building anything, let alone a hut, that did not come in a flat pack, is farcical. Before Covid-19, many men had this belief that in the survival stakes they had things covered. The reality is without electricity, streaming TV and the Internet mankind is as viable as a condom dispenser in the Vatican. All these clowns who ran around pretending to be GI Joe at the weekend but were Account Managers during the week, would quickly become canapés for a hungry bear in the woods. Just as everyone now is a forensic expert after watching a few seasons of CSI, two episodes of survivor and a season of Gilligan’s Island makes us castaway experts.
Please stop interrupting during video lessons and eat more
Why...
Is a dear friend and teacher more frustrated than a brain surgeon with hiccups? In this new world, teachers are struggling during on-line lessons because of continuous interruption and comments from parents. It seems that when little Johnny is having a problem with algebra or the date of the Battle of Hastings, know-it-all parents cannot wait to chip in with their answer... which in the case of algebra is nearly always wrong. It’s bad enough having to deal with delusional parents during PTA meetings who believe their offspring is the love child of Einstein and Madonna - see earlier post HERE. But to have parents digitally hanging over the teacher’s shoulder is enough to have anyone mainline Clorox. In addition, in some households there is a queue to use the one decent size computer. Dad for porn, Mum for gambling, elder kids for on-line dating, games or movies. Everyone wants the youngest off the machine as quickly as possible. So instead of the rest of the household being on-line themselves, they are constantly operating the only other thing outside of the Internet they continually use; their teeth. Lockdown has turned everyone into elephants in more than one sense. We have grown huge and munch constantly. Many of the locked down are so fed up with long distance relationships, they are moving the fridge to their bedroom.
My new burglar alarm
Why...
Are some people in a mad rush to buy guns to protect themselves?
If I was a burglar, top of my list would be offices and closed shops where a smorgasbord of goodies are waiting for my light fingered touch. And no one to disturb me.
The last place I am going to want to visit is a house full of cooped up maniacs. However, if I did, I’d be brandishing enough firepower to storm Omaha beach or a riot on Black Friday.
In the remote chance that I was to choose a domestic target I would not go near a house with Covid-19. Simple.
A-Tishoo, A-Tishoo We all fall down
Why...
Does the Coronavirus remind me of a pop song? If you can remember Dexy’s Midnight Runners 1982 hit, every time I read COVID-19 it sounds like ‘Come on Eileen’. No doubt a re-release is coming. In fact, I wonder what song is going to be most associated with this virus? China’s cliche ridden “Believe Love Will Triumph” is so awful and self serving that it made my toes curl. China seems intent on giving the world gifts that keeps on giving. Avian Flu, SARS, Coronavirus I think Britney Spears “Oops I’ve done it again,” is far more appropriate. I just wonder how we can all show our gratitude? They sure knew about it when I went through China on my way back from Laos in the first week of January. I had injured my back and a lady grabbed the wheel chair with a cry of: “You sick” and wheeled me off through double doors to a quarantine room!
May I introduce a new dog food
Why...
Do my pets eschew their favourite tin of Kanga chunks and chew my furniture instead? Even if dimmer than a 5 watt bulb, any dog should get into it’s head that the only source of food and water is its owner. In return for a bit of tail wagging, face licking and barking at intruders, the pooch gets sustenance. A recent report showed that next to perish after humans, in a nuclear winter will be man’s best friend. Certainly if they are so confused after centuries of domestication between the nutritional value of a bone, squirrel or cat tail as opposed to the chosen smorgasbord of pic’n’mix delicacies like tennis racquets, running shoes or a chair, they deserve their fate.
It’s not Dr. Doolittle who talks to the animals
Why...
Is there no kind of border, post code or demarcation point for where dogs can crap without the owner having to pick it up? At what point do you say to yourself when bending down wearing a cheap smelling pooh bag as a glove “What am I doing this for? I’m nearly a time zone away from the nearest village.” I always clear up in town after my dogs have answered the call of nature (cats seem to get away scot free though). If I see people let their dogs foul a footpath or park, I march up to them and hand them my own dogs pooh in a bag saying, “I think you forgot this.” They usually are quite shocked, then embarrassed, yet accept the bag. A small victory but quite satisfying. The other day I took my two pugs out to the country. They are essentially town dogs, as metrosexual as David Beckham or P.Diddy. They think mud is what you put on your face whilst having a ‘manny/peddy’, the TV remote is for chewing not sharing and strenuous exercise is running in from the garden to eat their lunch in the kitchen. However I convinced them to go for a walk with my brother-in-law’s labrador way out in the wilds last year. As soon as the big dog got into the forest, it answered the age-old question about what a bear does in the woods. The labrador had a sh*t. After a moment he casually carried on with his walk. My two pugs started barking and ran after the labrador, twitching their noses at him. They then shot me a look. “Hey, buddy. Watch this. Each time we have a crap that idiot comes up with a bag and scoops it up.” The lab stopped, a foreleg lifted in mid-air. “You gotta’ be kidding, ” he said, raising his ears and giving me a furtive glance. My two pugs immediately squatted down and in perfect unison like a pair of synchronised swimmers did their business. I calmly walked by leaving their gift to nature in the grass, relieved at one advantage of being way out in the country. The look of shock on my dogs was palpable. “What the f…? He always picks it up, ” they pleaded looking at the lab who had been watching the non-show. “Lying Townies, ” replied the labrador and with a snort ran off. We may not talk to the animals but they sure talk to each other. And they try and talk to us.
The joys of becoming an accidental medical tourist
Why...
Do I react like a spoiled brat when forced to visit a doctor overseas? I recently returned from a trip to Asia that had me visit four different hospitals within three weeks. With more trepidation than an actress knocking on Harvey Weinstein’s hotel door, I expected to be met in Emergency by a wild eyed shaman, a witch doctor ready to behead a chicken, or a surgeon who looked like Boris Karloff. Instead I was treated to some of the best medical service and equipment I have ever seen! One hospital in Chiang Mai was like walking onto the set of 2001 space Odyssey. In fact I half expected HAL’s voice to greet me. As for the actual medication, no ‘eye of newt, toe of frog’ but drugs even I recognised. Though of course there is always a risk of a Chinese knock off, but I guessed odds were remote at the palaces of medicine I visited. What did catch me off guard was dosage. Nothing had any effect until I rang my own Dr. Frankenstein in London. “That is what you’d give a 12 year old,” which is probably the build of most males in the country. I am a beached whale by comparison. Triple the dose and all was dandy! Now I was lucky. I have insurance and was in Thailand where private hospitals put many in certain countries in Europe to shame. Even the food was so good I put on weight. I now understand why Thailand is not only the paedophiles and perverts destination of choice but now over 2m a year for those in search of medical treatment. You never know... the nurse might be a Ladyboy. I now have got my head around this relatively new phenomenon of medical tourism. With equipment this good and prices between 80% and 50% less than in the West, it starts to make sense. In fact you can save so much money that once treatment is finished you can recuperate in a five star hotel and still be in the money. Furthermore your insurance company is going to send you a thank you letter!
I shot the TV, but I didn't shoot the tab-elet ♫
Why...
Am I supposed to watch the same TV commercial from 1st November through to December 25th without eventually hating it and the company it’s advertising? Even Manuel Noriega went mad as the US Marines continuously blasted a couple of David Bowie records at him in his palace. After a couple of days he begged for mercy. Yet I will have watched the latest two or three minute Christmas extravaganzas for a dozen major brands more than 100 times each. By mid-December I would rather put out my lighted hair with a hammer than visit any of the advertised stores. I cannot be alone. Market research must tell them such an assault is counter-productive or do they really think the production values will keep us watching.
I will get arrested if I ask a stranger to stuff my pudding in her secret little container
Why...
By a remarkable set of coincidences have I managed to get to 63 and never spent Christmas Day in the snow? On the only two times up to age 24 it snowed in the UK on Christmas Day I was out of the country. Every other year was spent there. No snow. My wonderful parents never got the ski-bug, so I actually never skied till I was 42! Once I started making a few bucks, my love of diving had me spend nearly every Christmas somewhere hot. So that was nearly 25 Christmases doused in Ambre Solaire with the odd one spent again with family and friends in snowless England. Now married to my American wife, we live in Malta where Christmas is usually around 20c/75f. Occasionally we spend it with her family in Old Town Alexandria, just outside Washington D.C. I missed a snowbound Washington Christmas, coz the planes from the UK were grounded due to bad weather or a strike or both and again when it snowed in the UK a few years ago we were in Washington enjoying a heat wave. So, I have given up.
My Eyebrows are Silky Soft and my Hair Smells of Listerine
Why...
Hotel room designers must have one thing in common (apart from calling their children Nathanial or Poppy); vision so perfect they could see a flea get a hard on. Even with all the lights on, hotel rooms at night are as dim as a village idiot. It has some very disturbing results. Instead of the bell hop pointing out the bloody obvious like opening a small door and expecting me to be hugely impressed when he says 'fridge' instead of 'hotel cash machine' why can he not explain how the inevitable mishmash of light switches all relate to each other? I am forever getting into bed and hitting some knob that instead of turning the lights out, turns on a hairdryer or activates the TV. Even once I’ve mastered how the actual switches work, the lighting is so bad that my wife insists I bring a flashlight to help with her make-up.
Welcome aboard…. is enough
Why...
"Welcome aboard flight UR OXN flying from Heathrow to Sydney. My name is Sandra and I will be assisted by Dee in First class, Ben and Jerry in business and some trainees I look down on in economy. We understand you have a choice of other airlines and appreciate your custom ........We will be cruising today at 35, 000 feet at approximately 900 kilometres, or 560 miles or 490 knots per hour. First I need you all to pay attention to the safety demonstration, even those amongst you who have flown before…..” And so it begins. Flight attendants have become nannies in the sky, ready to instruct and scold. They know best. So listen up….and just to make you are awake the speakers screech with feedback. Most of us just want to recover from a cavity search after foolishly packing a pair of nail clippers in our hand luggage and watch a movie. The only thing we may ask the cabin staff (whose name is on their badge) is to turn the heating down.
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.
Not only do most men not understand ‘female plumbing’ but we underestimate the vital importance of the ‘manny peddy’ at our peril.
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.
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.
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.