All posts in category: Food & Drink

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!

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

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.

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

It’s not Dr. Doolittle who talks to the animals

January 24, 2020
Animals/Pets Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Love
View all 7 Comments

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.

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

The joys of becoming an accidental medical tourist

January 18, 2020
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Technology Travel/Nature
View all 0 Comments

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!

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

I shot the TV, but I didn't shoot the tab-elet ♫

Why...

Am I supposed to watch the same TV commercial from 1^st 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.

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

I will get arrested if I ask a stranger to stuff my pudding in her secret little container

December 20, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Friends Kids/Family/Relations Travel/Nature
View all 1 Comment

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.

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

My Eyebrows are Silky Soft and my Hair Smells of Listerine

December 5, 2019
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Travel/Nature
View all 9 Comments

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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
View all 1 Comment

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.

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

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
View all 2 Comments

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Legs eggs and stupid regs

April 19, 2019
Animals/Pets Food & Drink Friends Life Sex
View all 0 Comments

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.

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

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!”

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

?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
View all 0 Comments

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!

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

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?

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

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?

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

Old Mother Hubbard

September 13, 2018
Animals/Pets Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Life
View all 0 Comments

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.

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

Archives

Recent Posts

Categories

What drives you crazy?

Want to know when I publish the next blog?

All posts in category: Food & Drink

A-Tishoo, A-Tishoo We all fall down

Why...

May I introduce a new dog food

Why...

It’s not Dr. Doolittle who talks to the animals

Why...

The joys of becoming an accidental medical tourist

Why...

I shot the TV, but I didn't shoot the tab-elet ♫

Why...

I will get arrested if I ask a stranger to stuff my pudding in her secret little container

Why...

My Eyebrows are Silky Soft and my Hair Smells of Listerine

Why...

Welcome aboard…. is enough

Why...

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

Why...

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

Why...

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

Why...

To serve you better it just means do it yourself

Why...

Why is my chocolate bar digitally challenged?

Why...

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

Why...

Legs eggs and stupid regs

Why...

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

Why...

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

Why...

Why are magazine editors and chocolate manufacturers numerically challenged?

Why...

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

Why...

Old Mother Hubbard

Why...