50 years since Buddy Holly’s death

Born 7 September 1936
Died 3 February 1959.
22 forever.


"That Makes It Tough"

Memories will follow me forever
Though I know my dreams cannot come true.
All those precious things we shared together.
Time goes by, I’ll still remember you.

And that makes it tough, oh so tough,
When you tell me you don’t love me.
That makes it tough, oh so tough,
When you say you don’t care for me no more.

Anniversary dining, part two

So, unfortunately, the second of our intentionally posh meals turned out not to be as posh as we'd hoped, bourgeois cunts that we are.

As we arrived at the hotel, first impressions were not promising. It looked just a little ... yesteryear, shall we say?

Second impressions neither -- being told by the "hostess" that she hadn't been pre-warned of our arrival. Not that it mattered really because seemingly nobody ever comes here.

The venue was a hotel just a couple of minutes' drive from Canterbury town centre, and were it not for the presence of a large table full of people in town for the 14th Lambeth Conference, there would have been just six diners. The quite loud American and Canadian priests and pals on the big table made me feel far more comfortable and less in need of hushed tones.

I ordered the French onion soup to start, followed by the poached chicken breast in a mushroom, cream, and tarragon sauce and served with boiled vegetables. Red had the same main but prefaced it with a salad of Portobello mushrooms and Brie.

The starters were good, the main not bad, though Red couldn't finish hers. I also opted for the chef's "legendary" double-baked cheesecake. Unfortunately the menu did not mention that after being baked twice the cheesecake would then be smothered with sour cream or crème fraîche or yogurt or something equally sour and vile. I scraped all that crap off and ate as much of the pud as I could. And it was not bad, though I would hesitate to call it legendary.

So, all in all a slightly disappointing but serviceable dinner, but it was always going to be impossible to follow our lunch.

No pix from either meal, I'm afraid, cos we just wanted to chill and enjoy our food. So often, anyway, when we take a camera, we are always so eager to eat that we end up forgetting one course or the other, or indeed try reassembling after the first couple of forkfuls in order to take a snap!

Thanks for the well wishes, y'all. Laters!

Happy anniversary to me and Red!

Self-congratulatory, perhaps, but what the heck, eh?

It's 11 years today since we tied the proverbial knot, and we're dining in style, eating at not one but two posh restaurants, greedy pigs that we are.

Why?

Well, because we'd initially tried to book in at our favourite local restaurant for dinner: Read's at Faversham. They were fully booked for both lunch and dinner, so we opted for dinner elsewhere. Then we had a short-notice call to say a cancellation for lunch meant a table was now available if we wanted it. By then we'd already booked dinner and didn't really want to cancel.

Lunch was gorgeous, by the way. I had the terrine of confit chicken followed by beef on a potato rosti and spinach in a red-wine sauce. De-fucking-licious. Red had a salad to start and a main course of chicken wrapped in Parma ham, served on a bed of spinach and with a creamy mushroom sauce and a Mr Whippy-style swirl of mashed potato.

Oh, so heavenly. But given that we are dining out tonight, too, neither of us opted for dessert.

Seconds out, round two... [to be continued]

Sunday stuff

1. So, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday: six more weeks of winter, folks...

2. Also yesterday, it was 29 years since Sid Vicious died. That crazy fool.

3. Also yesterday, it was mine and the missus's ten-and-a-half-year-iversary.

4. Today, 49 years since Buddy Holly died. Next year will be the big one.

5. Tomorrow, I start my backpiece tattoo. Three-hour appointment. Estimated 25 hours' work in all.

So many anniversaries, so little time to enjoy them

Today is the 11th anniversary of the first fumbled, awkward kiss between me and the missus. Doesn't time fly? And here we are, celebrating by working all day on a Sunday. Ain't life grand?