All posts in category: Food & Drink

Give up something nearly impossible for Lent

Why...

For a bunch of people who are normally about as religious as Loony Tune characters, do my friends go all peculiar at this time of the year? Some wish they could still cavort and writhe about on a float in Rio, whilst others long to don mysterious masks and wander about in Venice like the kid in the red coat from the movie Don’t Look Now. However putting aside the differences in choice of Carnival they want to romp about in, most go all ‘holier than thou’ by announcing they are giving something up for Lent’s long forty days and forty nights.

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It seemed like a good idea at the time...

January 6, 2018
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Friends Uncategorised
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Why...

Do I sometimes try so hard to make myself look stupid when so many other people would do it for free? I have recently had one of those bumps in the road when what seemed like a brilliant investment opportunity may just have become a life lesson. “Would you like some cheese to go with that whine,” my wife asked me as I moaned about possible loss of face, time and money. The fact is, if you are an entrepreneur you only have to bat 51%. I suppose I can at least smile when I remember some of the howlers Dragons Den have made... turning down TangleTease which is now worth £200m! Still the next project is looking very good.....

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Another New Year. If you want to stay alive don’t tell anyone how old you are...

December 29, 2017
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends Sex
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Why...

Tell anyone your age? Brrrrrruce, a Greenland shark was unceremoniously hoicked out of his icy home recently and duly dissected by some scientists because they thought he might be quite old. All bad news for the aquatic carnivore but good news for those who care about other people’s ages as it appears Brrrruce could have been up to 512 years old; making him by far and away the world’s oldest shark. (Sorry you lost your crown, Rupert Murdoch). However, on further investigation it appears Brrruce might only have been 272 years old. The research scientists needed some comparative analysis before they could nail down the exact number of birthday candles Brrrruce would have been entitled to, had they not caught him. “Oh no,” I hear you exclaim. “How could this be? What can we do? We must know his age. I insist we know the truth!” Simple. With a gobsmacking lack of irony, some propeller head in a wet suit said: “We really need to capture another Greenland shark (i.e.kill it) and then using comparative analysis of the eyeballs we can be sure about the age of this first one. Trouble is these sharks are very rare and difficult to find........” If I was a Greenland shark and read this during my morning coffee and herring, I’d be bloody impossible to find cos I’d be diving under that melting ice cap and heading somewhere safe, like Japanese waters where at least I won’t be harpooned as I have zero attraction to Japanese diners.

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Christmas is coming... Oy vey!

December 21, 2017
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends Kids/Family/Relations Sex
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Why...

Is Christmas so confusing? The weird thing about Christmas is we all think we have a shared vision but in fact each of us has a very specific ideal that has very little in common with anyone else... apart from over indulgence and a fat man with a beard (or thin if you are Dutch - see what I mean?). Is it a real or fake tree? If it’s fake, you need to use it for twenty years before it is ‘greener’ than a real one. In Catalan they have a guy called the Caganer in the nativity scene. This is a guy having a poop! Yup apparently it denotes fertility and good luck. In Austria Santa is accompanied by a demon called Krampus who punishes the ‘naughty’ kids in ‘naughty or nice’ and in Holland the locals black up like Al Jolson as a character called Black Pete. First thing Christmas morning is it stockings or boots? (no, not those kind of stockings and boots... though they may indeed make a very Happy Christmas for someone). Is a cracker a paper present you pull, a good looking member of the opposite sex you pull or something you put cheese on? Is the Christmas meal dinner on Christmas Eve, lunch on Christmas Day or dinner... or all three? Do you overeat Roast Turkey, Roast Goose, Roast Beef or nut cutlets? In Japan the whole country eats Kentucky Fried Chicken. So popular is it, that you must order two months in advance. I sort of get it as turkey sushi would bring salmonella as it’s Christmas present. In Greenland it’s Kiviac which is fermented sea birds wrapped in seal blubber. Yum! Outside, is it snowballs or sunscreen, football or soccer, ski-ing on snow or water? Inside it is splodging in front of the TV to watch a Christmas Story, The Great Escape, Elf or The Queen’s Speech? In Sweden everyone watches Donald Duck!

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Food fad for Fido?

December 14, 2017
Animals/Pets Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink
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Why...

Is my dog expected to be made to eat like he’s sharing a meal with Leonardo Di Caprio and Paul McCartney? Recently I was shopping for Kangaroo chunks or whatever I thought was dog food but the PC brigade have snaffled it. Instead on the doggie food shelf I counted not one, not two, but three different vegetarian options from our favourite dog food manufacturer. Needless to say my dogs took one sniff and gave me the look. “I am a dog. A carnivore. Not some open-toed sandal wearing tree hugger. I pee on a tree, I bite men’s toes in sandals and if you think I fart a lot normally wait till I start eating these mung beans.”

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Your Honour, Jingle Bells made me do it...

Why...

Does Christmas in any shop mean I have to listen to the same songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over? We have come a long way since the workhouses and child chimney sweeps of Dickensian England, but subjecting people in the retail workplace to a loop tape of the same music is worse than lemon on a herpes blister. Take the late Panamanian Dictator Manuel Noriega. When he locked himself in his Palace, the forces outside simply got out of their tanks and bought a job lot of ear muffs and speakers taller than the Jolly Green Giant. The rebels sat down, no doubt cracked open a few Cervezas and then blasted David Bowie’s Let’s Dance at Old Pineapple face... continually for five days. Without a shot being fired, Panamanian strongman surrendered. It’s bad enough for shop assistants to have to wear sparkly antlers and a red nose but to have to listen to White Christmas from November 1st to December 24th is worse than Chinese Water Torture... and I would snap. Menopausal matrons would be wearing the Welcome Egg Nog, uptight mothers would be wound up in tinsel and that irritating kid who tried to pull off Santa’s beard would be given a mince pie generously coated in Paprika.

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Slow, slow, quick quick, slow

November 3, 2017
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Travel/Nature
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Why...

Walk to the loo when you can run?

I have eaten some spectacular botulism burgers and salmonella salmon sandwiches at airports. This kind of food is fast because it goes through your digestive system in a flash.

However ‘fast food or service’ that isn’t, is a far greater sin. Today I had to run to the bathroom not because of an upset tummy but because if I walked I would have missed my flight! All because it took nearly an hour to shop and eat.

Pay attention Duty Free Shop operators!

The key reason for being at an airport is to catch a plane.

Despite every indication to the contrary, Duty Free is not solely a shopping mall but part of a conveyor belt process to shift travellers onto a waiting aircraft... with an imminent departure time. (Unless you are flying Ryan Air in which case I would spend the days waiting to take off, doing the Christmas shopping. Even get a manny-peddy).

Once on the departure side of Passport control (and post a probable full cavity search) my time is limited. If Duty Free want to charge like The Light Brigade for a cup of Java and a salad that wilts like a Guardsman in a bearskin busbee in July, have enough people around so I can both a) order and b) pay

In the shops they need less people stacking magazine racks with The Morris Dancer Gazette or Podiatrist Today and more people available to open security locks on display items and on the tills.

I can understand having locks if a computer, expensive phone, camera etc. are on a rack... but a plug adaptor? It took me longer to buy that than get through the hand baggage check. In addition the sole till operator had a ten minute banter with her colleague as to why the bar code on a bottle of Chanel No.5 never works.

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Can’t think of anything funny...

Why...

Smile? This week's blog has been tricky. It has not been a funny week. Massacre in Vegas, after effects of storms in the Caribbean, political hair-kari by the Tory Party in the UK, three major European airlines go bust and Spain hell bent on tearing itself apart. This on top of Trump rumbling about North Korea, Iran nuclear deal and the price of paper towels in Puerto Rico. And yet it's finding tidbits that make you smile amongst this smorgasbord of misery and woe that makes life worth living. I watched a video about Extreme Ironing. Yup we may be filling the sea with plastic but there are a group of people whose raisond’etre is taking their iron and ironing board out to the middle of nowhere and performing acrobatics that would make Kevin Bacon in Footloose look like a slug. I am full of admiration that someone can perform a handstand, backflip then cartwheel at the same time as steam iron a shirt….but what was the thought process? Was there a bunch of frustrated dry cleaners who danced around the back of a shop and hey presto a new sport was born……or was there a group of dancers who were unhappy at the quality of the creases in their tutus and tights and decided to take on the challenge with a little bit of help from Balanchine?

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Upselling to the downtrodden

Why...

Buy a Coke at the cinema that is so big an Olympic diver could use it for high board practice… and you will need a pee half way through the movie if you drink it all? Sucker! You were upsold something useless… and probably with a box of popcorn deep enough to hide Jimmy Hoffa. As I trundle about my everyday life it's becoming nearly impossible not to have some snake oil salesmen try and upsell me on everything I buy. Let’s start with useless upsell number 1- High Octane Performance fuel. The Octane is a flammable hydrocarbon added to petrol and is basically the optimum compression point in the piston cycle when the fuel explodes. If my car can do that with 95 Octane it is an utter waste of money to buy 98 Octane ‘High Performance’ fuel. It will do nothing, zip, nada, blobski-bloojah, f*ck all in terms of performance and just cost me a few more cents per litre. Now that I have been conned out of a few bucks filling up, it’s time for a trip to my supermarket where I am inundated with upsell offers…the result of this is the interior of the car is filled with enough loo paper and fish fingers to supply a battalion of men in Helmand Province. Unless I have amoebic dysentery and only eat fish morning noon and night for thirty years I ain’t ever using it all. Time to go home and watch something on TV? Most digital services make you stack package on top of package before you can get to pay per view movies or entire series box sets. Why? It is irrelevant now with on line services offering pay per view circumventing the need to even have packaged TV… and to add insult to injury the pay TV services then want to charge me more on pay per view than iTunes!!

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Double does not mean two of one

August 31, 2017
Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Life Travel/Nature
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Why...

Am I surrounded by nitwits who fail to understand the difference between twice and double? I recently drove 1,200 miles in a car race around Spain and this entailed my wife and I stopping every night in a different hotel... each booked with a double bed. However most of the time this meant I slept in the San Andreas Fault line as hotels seem to think a double bed is just two singles shoved together. It isn't. Their restaurants certainly know the difference in price between a magnum of champagne and two single bottles. On the other hand, a double burger is a double sized patty not two measly bits of beef the consistency and size of a beer coaster stacked one on top of the other.

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What's wrong with a stereotype?

July 27, 2017
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Work
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Why...

Is there such an outcry about gender stereotypes in advertising? Clichés in advertising either make me howl with laughter or throw things. In either case they have the opposite effect on what the advertiser wants therefore they are just bad campaigns. However a targeted market may contain a stereotype and these can be very good campaigns. And as we know, today's cutting edge is tomorrow's stereotype. Have you watched the iconic ‘I'd like to teach the world to sing’ Coke add recently? It makes your teeth itch it's so clichéd. The opposite of an advertising gender stereotype is a gender A-typical stereotype…which by definition is niche. Last time I checked, advertising either wants to reinforce its brand to its core buyer or take its competitors, not worry about niche. Yes of course there are boys who play with dolls, men who enjoy catalogue shopping or talk to strangers while having a pee; even women who hunt bears or smell their socks before throwing them in the laundry basket. Just because these groups exist why is a Marketing Executive made to feel guilty about an advertising campaign that gives him the biggest bang for his buck and does not address small groups? "I'm awfully sorry Mr. CEO for spending a zillion £,€,$ or ¥ on a campaign for washing up liquid aimed at bricklayers. But research shows 3.267549% wash dishes too you know and some are keen to have soft hands." This nonsense is spouted by people who have no common sense. They are just incensed. In the interest of being more inclusive to minorities may I suggest their views should only be reported for six months in niche periodicals like the Newt Lover's Gazette, The Macramé Times or Morris Dancer's Today to reach those people who might be interested in their message but not read national newspapers, listen to the radio or watch TV?

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When will we ever learn...

July 13, 2017
Animals/Pets Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Travel/Nature
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Why...

Is it a surprise if, four hours after ending the evening with Vodka shots and jelly babies, I have a hangover you could land a Jumbo Jet on? The one saving grace about over indulgence on holiday is you can skulk about in a dark room till midday… when even hangovers that make your hair hurt begins to subside. But it seems there is a moment on every vacation when even perfectly sane people have some sort of synapse malfunction and revert to being teenagers. My saintly in-laws last year suddenly realised they had never jumped fully clothed into a pool and to their immediate left stood such an inviting one.... splash!

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What did Europe ever do for you...

May 18, 2017
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Life Politics
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Why...

As we waive bye-bye to the EU can we not acknowledge that Europe has made some small beneficial contributions to English life? In the old days before dear old Blighty got friendly with Johnny Foreigner and joined what was then the European Economic Community, life in Britain was a tad dreary. Our European friends gave us modern bathrooms. 40 years ago English bathrooms were a place so opposed to change it would have made North Korea look like Narnia. A blindfolded Victorian would have had no trouble finding his way about. Firstly we had no mixer taps! I would run a separate hot and cold tap in a basin and wave my hands about like a magician to balance out freezing cold and burning hot. In a bath my left foot poached but my right one got chilblains. A shower cubicle was seen a waste of a linen cupboard and anyway, if I wanted a shower I could always attach what looked like a large rubber stethoscope to the bath hot and cold taps and hose myself down.....until one flew off so hot water boiled my feet and the cold froze my head till my hair crackled. A bidet was a rather quaint invention only ever found in foreign hotels. When I asked my mother what it was, she explained they were to wash your feet in or rinse a bathing suit. In my first flat my plumber had never been abroad and I asked him to fit one. He screwed it to the ceiling thinking it was a shower... I know we love our heritage but hanging onto a flushing system invented in Victorian times by Mr. Crapper (strange but true) seemed sticking to tradition in the extreme. In nearly every home in the 1970's there were loos with a chain with Pull written on the handle (as opposed to doing what)? Above a water tank frequently leaked and when activated made a noise like a concrete mixer. Four decades on the Brits still don't like electrical items in the bathroom so UK homes with hairdryers, electronic heated loos, make-up lighting or chargers for cell phones or tablets whilst having that all important post breakfast 'ablution' are rare. Certainly no radio nor TV! But dual taps only exist now in stuffy old clubs and Downton Abbey.

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The problem with a plane...

Why...

Are smells allowed free access to an aircraft cabin? There is a type of traveler that needs to be severely dealt with. Sorry, but if you have Body Odour that whips me, I ain't sitting next to you on a ten hour flight. In the same way they run those portable metal detectors round your body, they should have one of those electronic smell detectors they have on CSI. If you rate 4 noses or above on the sniffometer...unless you have a shower, you can't get on board. Then there is the 'What did you have to eat' interrogation. If you had a curry, baked beans or Brussels sprouts (with resultant imminent ass-coughs) you should also be forced to wait until you have fully digested the meal.

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A recent opinion poll listed Usain Bolt as the slowest man and Mary Poppins as a love Goddess...

March 10, 2017
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Food & Drink Sex
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Why...

Do we bother to have polls which ask meaningless questions and provide useless opinions? Opinions only matter if they are a result of a relevant set of facts given to experts to make a judgement on. Bolt of course comes bottom of the speed list if the others are Superman, The Flash, and Lewis Hamilton in a Grand Prix car. Mary Poppins trounces Mother Theresa, Medusa or Chancellor Angela Merkel on a beauty list of women with the letter M. It was budget day in the UK on Wednesday and I was listening to the results of a Sky Poll that asked the question “What should the Chancellor do with a minor windfall from a small shoot of recovery from new businesses? Should he spend it on:

A) The NHS (hurrah hurrah),

B) Social Services (yeyyyy),

C) Cut the rate of Corporation Tax (boo, hiss)?”

Giving money to Social Services is not binary to giving tax breaks. We all want to look after those less fortunate. However, to offer either giving more to welfare or granting business a tax cut, is a question of such naiveté that it makes believing in a unicorn an incontrovertible scientific fact.

Lesson 101 basic social economics. You can only afford to give more if you earn more. UK corporate taxes are too high compared to others and so act as a disincentive. Let’s encourage growth, take a short term hit by lowering current corporation tax and soon there will be an increase in tax revenue. Bingo! Then give out more money from a bigger pot.

"Would you like the Chancellor to increase the debt for your children or wait a couple of years and then spend more on hospitals etc. as well as reduce your debt?"

Put like that you might get a different opinion. Or... not as no one understands the question!

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Cornflakes, the world’s best glue…

Why...

Does the holiday season always seem to involve glue? I suppose presents littered about the floor like plastic landmines, mixed with your best china on the table, kids so hopped up on sugar they could give Usain Bolt trouble at the 100 metres and unstable guests who have spent six hours gargling your booze, means that people inevitably fall over and things get broken. Yet despite claims that new superglues can attach a hippo to a space rocket on lift off, in my experience no glue ever works. In fact the only thing glue is brilliantly good at, is unsticking my temper.

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Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will want to strangle the relatives

Why...

Do relatives take priority over anyone else at Christmas? Don't misunderstand me, I adore every branch, root and twig of my family. However I also love my dogs, a couple of classic cars, a Lalique mask, a nicely worn leather jacket, a teddy bear and some very dear friends. Yes all in different ways but it seems at Christmas family is often to the exclusion of all else. Now as a kid I used to find it fairly amusing to meet up with Uncle Tuppy (yup, swear that was his name), Great Aunt Alice, Aunty Sheila and others who now are long gone and no doubt pulling crackers and swilling port in heaven. However as we really only came together once a year the novelty value soon wore off and I thought they were all bonkers and I am sure they felt I was some snot nosed brat (none of the aforementioned had kids). A brief lunch maybe but to stay manacled together for three or four days is a recipe for Lizzie Borden-like hungering for an axe! Distant relatives are like fish. After three days they go off. Christmas is a time of good will towards all men but to achieve that maybe put a time limit on each person? My American cousins are lucky as they have a Christmas doppelgänger a month earlier in Thanksgiving. That is the big family get together, always on a Thursday (see why Click Here). They get that out of the way and have the choice at Christmas to go away, be with friends or again link up the family tree.

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Opinion Pollsters.......the world's most useless profession?

Why...

Are opinion polls as reliable as a chocolate teapot? The largest wailing sound after Donald Trump's victory did not come from Hillary Clinton's hotel suite. It came from the offices of the smuggest of all 20th Century inventions…the Official Pollster. Despite twice in the UK being proved to be as accurate as a cross-eyed tattooist (Conservative Victory and Brexit), the pollsters' Achilles heel is they seem unable to grasp so many of us fib to them. Their self-importance (only matched by their belief we are flattered by being asked our opinion), belongs to the thinking of 75 years ago; a time when the man in the street doffed his cap to a Gent in a suit with a clipboard! During an election you not only resent being asked your vote every time the wind changes direction, but also the scorn or derision your views might bring down. If the media hounds your preferred choice at an election as being the spawn of Satan, you are unlikely to say to a complete stranger that Beelzebub has got your vote, for fear of their reaction. It seemed obvious to me that 90% of the undecided in the US probably meant a vote for La Donald and a good chunk of those declared for Hillary were secret Trump kissers. My beef here is not if someone is a good candidate or not; if you want to vote for Biffo The Bear as Prime Minister, that is your entitlement. What astonishes me is Opinion Pollsters belief what we say to them nowadays is even on nodding terms with our true feelings.

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The pen is mightier than the sword... so long as it is writing gossip

Why...

Do we allow real news to be eaten up by rumour and gossip? I promised never to write about events of the moment but is pretty clear to me the battle between Hillary and Donald was fought not with facts on policy but rumour and tittle-tattle all dressed up in self righteousness. But let's be honest. The truth is we are all more interested in the activities from inside someone's underpants than what goes on between their ears. What is Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms other than a digital funnel to feed grist into the rumour mill?

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Are you a Masochist? Yes if you watch cable news and then order a Pad Thai

November 3, 2016
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Life
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Why...

Living on a small island with a terrible choice of cable channels have I developed a masochistic streak that compels me to watch mind numbingly bad commercials on International news networks like CNN? These travesties to the creative advertising community are throwbacks to the 1950's. But instead of Mom in an A-line skirt trying to persuade me to invest in some Tupperware, an earnest voice asks me to move my entire business to some unstable country or my money into a Bank I have never heard of. I can only assume the rates for the commercials are payable via Groupon as the scripts make a Hallmark Card a Pulitzer contender and the acting is as wooden as Elvis' heart. The real mystery is who on earth do they think are actually watching these? (Apart from knobby-no-mates like me who just howl with laughter.) Does someone really believe a Captain of Industry or a Titan from Wall Street is going to take a break from his next mega-billion deal to watch Focus Africa at 3 in the afternoon about a co-op making sweaters out of Matabele gumbo beads or a mime troupe re-imagining Hamlet out on the Serengeti? Worthy and important as these things may be they are not going to hold the attention of Gordon Gekko or Ritchie Rich. "Quick get me the Financial Director. We need to put all our money in this Bank of Lilliput. This commercial has won me over." Or "Let's move out of Silicon Valley and take a seaview building in Atlantis. Who cares there are land mines scattered around like confetti from the previous civil war, the locals are not even on nodding terms with the English language and the airport safety record is on a par with a Samsung Note 7." Whilst I admit a well-crafted ad might make me think twice about which supermarket to visit or perhaps try a new shampoo, major corporate decisions are not made because of these pitches.

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All posts in category: Food & Drink

Give up something nearly impossible for Lent

Why...

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Why...

Another New Year. If you want to stay alive don’t tell anyone how old you are...

Why...

Christmas is coming... Oy vey!

Why...

Food fad for Fido?

Why...

Your Honour, Jingle Bells made me do it...

Why...

Slow, slow, quick quick, slow

Why...

Can’t think of anything funny...

Why...

Upselling to the downtrodden

Why...

Double does not mean two of one

Why...

What's wrong with a stereotype?

Why...

When will we ever learn...

Why...

What did Europe ever do for you...

Why...

The problem with a plane...

Why...

A recent opinion poll listed Usain Bolt as the slowest man and Mary Poppins as a love Goddess...

Why...

Cornflakes, the world’s best glue…

Why...

Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you will want to strangle the relatives

Why...

Opinion Pollsters.......the world's most useless profession?

Why...

The pen is mightier than the sword... so long as it is writing gossip

Why...

Are you a Masochist? Yes if you watch cable news and then order a Pad Thai

Why...