6 March: part 2

Where was I? Ah, yes, it's the afternoon of our first full day in Seville, and after a light snack we headed off to the Macarena area. Unfortunately, things went a little pear-shaped at this point, with the weather still not great and, having left the hotel without any guidebooks, something of an inability to find much in the way of interesting streets.

We decided, therefore, to regroup at a restaurant we've been to before: El Rinconcillo, which we were able to find easily enough, thanks to Red's pretty good sense of direction. I'm shit at that stuff! However, as is often the case with great eateries (often, but not always; more on that later), it was rammed. So we left there and headed instead in the general direction of the Casa de Pilatos, figuring that we could eat at somewhere that took our fancy en route.



And that's what we did, having found a cool little tapas bar called Taberna Peregil, which was showing religious processions on a loop on the small TV above the doorway (see pic, above). We ordered a grilled cheese on toast with caramelized onions to share, followed by Iberico sausage for me and salted tuna to share. Red had some water, while I drank beer, which I chased with a Manzanilla sherry. It all came to just shy of €20 -- and payment of the bill resulted in the ringing of a large bell and a "Vaya con Dios!" as we left -- excellent!

The Casa de Pilatos is just a couple of minutes' walk from the tapas bar, but since it was 4pm when we arrived, it seemed a touch late to go in, given that it closes at 6pm, so we wandered slowly back towards Santa Cruz, debating where to eat that evening and the next day. Yes, we like to eat when on holiday!

When you walk a city all day long, instead of jumping in cabs or on buses, you really see it properly. And Seville is one of those cities that is just filled with amazing sights everywhere. Even some of the entrance ways to hotels are picture-worthy! Once back in "the Cruz", as we don't call it, we visited Los Gallos, a flamenco club, to book tickets for the following night, and then we hit up the hotel for a bit of a break. It was now about 6pm, and the T-shirt I'd tried washing and drying that morning was still wet and still stinky.



We decided, after not too long in the room, that we'd take a walk to see if a certain Argentine restaurant that we had visited last time was still open. I'd eaten the most amazing burger there, and we'd got chatting to the waitress, who was Sicilian. Sadly, it seemed to have changed hands. Damn, I was really jonesing for an awesome burger. Instead we went to what might quickly be becoming our fave tapas bar, Casa Placido, with its hams hanging from the ceiling, just around the corner from the hotel. We just wanted to take the edge off the hunger a bit, rather than have dinner proper, so we had a couple of tapas of huevos a la flamenca. So good!





And then we returned once again to the hotel to get changed and ready to go out to dinner at Mesón Casa Luciano, on the other side of the river. Since this is quite a walk, we had the hotel receptionist call to make sure it was still in business and open tonight. Success! We always fear Luciano's might go out of business because it's almost always empty, and yet it serves the most incredible food, as long as you are feeling fully carnivorous. We have seen other people in there, but rarely. And when the locals do turn up, it's usually very late. And tourists rarely seem to venture there, since it's not in many guidebooks, it seems.

We got there at 9:35pm, and it was empty, just as we might have predicted. But the same two waiting staff were on hand -- an older dude and a woman -- neither of whom seem to speak any English. But this has always been part of the huge amount of fun of Luciano's: struggling to understand what each other means. This time, we'd taken some Spanish lessons for a few months in advance of our trip, and we were better prepared all round, but it was still crazy trying to communicate.

We ordered a salad to start, followed by a steak each and a portion of chips to share. I ordered a beer to start; Red, a water; and we had a half-bottle of Ramón Bilbao Tempranillo Crianza to share. I went to the butchery counter at the back of the restaurant to choose our steaks. I love that! While we were waiting, they brought us some complimentary chorizo and bread. Mmmm....

The food, as ever here, was just awesome. The steaks were cooked "a punto", I think the Spanish was, meaning "properly", and not well done or any other bastardization some folks inflict upon their steak to rid it of blood, flavour, and tenderness. This was great, melt-in-the-mouth meat.

Too full to tackle a dessert, I was -- again, as ever -- offered a shot of pacharán to finish, which I happily accepted. Such a lovely liqueur... By this time, it was about 11:15pm, and still the place is empty. Why?! It's Saturday night -- this place should be heaving. During the course of dinner, the door did open and someone stuck a head inside. They didn't look round far enough to see us. Not that it mattered; I suspect they decided it must be shite because it was empty. Bad decision, amigo.

Walking back to the hotel, we went via the Plaza de Santa Cruz and spent 10 minutes or so in the company of one of the neighbourhood cats. We know the streets are in safe hands with this one on patrol!



And just a bit further on, we stopped in Lope de Rueda at midnight to celebrate the start of my birthday with a kiss. Of course, it's still another hour until my birthday in the UK, so on returning to the hotel (the courtyard of which is shown below), we had to stay up a bit longer just to get it right.

Friday, 5 March, and we’re off

The day of our Seville holiday to celebrate my 40th birthday finally arrived. We'd already taken Cat to the cattery the day before and had decided not to work today, in order to be able to pack and make sure we had everything we needed... including, unfortunately, a Jack In A Pack from Millets. This fold-down-into-a-small-bag raincoat is what we used to call a cagoule back in the day. They are super-sad, but those of you who remember the great wet Seville trip of 2008 will know we had to go prepared.

We left home at about 1:30pm after an early lunch, allowing plenty of time to get to Stansted airport. We were due to be there at about 4pm, and it usually takes about 90 minutes, but I wanted to leave an extra hour because the M25 on a Friday afternoon fills me with dread. As it happens, 90 mins was adequate, so arrived an hour early. Still, better early than late, I like to say. We kept as occupied as possible and finally boarded the plane at 5:45. I was the first passenger to board the plane, which I thought was fitting for my birthday trip.

On arrival, since we travelled hand luggage only, we were able to dash through customs (if one can ever really dash through customs) and grab a cab straightaway. While on the ride to the hotel I was able to practise my first bit of Spanish. "No es posible abrir la ventana?" I asked, noticing on this hot evening that I wasn't able to open the window to get some air. It seems he didn't quite understand ventana as car window, so I guess there must be a different word. Even so, he knew what I meant, flicked a switch up front, and I was able to breathe again.



We arrived at the El Rey Moro hotel, checked in, checked out the room, and headed out for food. Cerveceria Giralda, formerly a hammam, is always our first port of call in Seville. By 11:30pm we were eating our first dishes of the trip: tortilla en salsa de comino (delicious), tosta de queso de cabra (also delicious), and huevas fritas. But the huevas fritas don't look anything like the fried eggs we've had there in the past. Bit odd...



Ah, nota bene, my friends: Don't order huevas fritas if you want fried eggs. I've suddenly had the realization that it's a set of bollocks, fried. But they taste weirdly fishy, both in taste and texture. Red decided she can't eat them, but I plough on, aided by another cerveza. But even that didn't help me to finish them. As the waiter came for our plates -- only one of which was unfinished -- I asked him for clarification of what we had only half eaten. "Fish roe," he said in English, possibly embarrassed that I was pointing at my balls. "Ah, fish roe..." Phew!



As we sat there, chilling, we noticed people were starting to get turned away. It was only 11:50, so we guessed they must close at midnight. This was a surprise, but it forced us to get off our arses and have a wander around and back to the hotel. It had been a long day.





On returning, we noticed for the first time that what should have been a double bed was in fact two singles pushed together. This isn't totally unusual in hotels, but they weren't even made up as a double; they were made up as two singles pushed together. A request to reception didn't yield much success due to a lack of Spanish on my part and English on his. "Ask tomorrow," I was told. "I've not been here long."

"Okay." Hasta mañana, then...

Gallows instore at Rough Trade East

Bank holiday Monday, 4 May, and today there is a free instore set and signing to further promote the launch of Gallows' second album Grey Britain. After working until about lunchtime, eating, showering, etc, the missus and I headed off in the car, London bound.

After parking just around the corner from the Old Blue Last, venue of the second of last December's two "East End Invasion" Gallows dates, we walked for a few minutes, arriving at Rough Trade's east London store at about 6pm. I located brother Dim, secured our wristbands, then ran off for a pee and a cup of coffee.

Back at the venue, a line had started to form. A pretty big one, too, but I spotted a bunch of buddies, and we hello'd and chitchatted while waiting for the doors to open. The rain was not welcomed by those young punksters who had arrived in T-shirts and/or short skirts, but with my leather jacket and woolly hat, I was all good. Sensible clothing ftw!

Once they let us in, I headed, uncharacteristically, towards the stage at the back of the venue. Ish. As it happened, I didn't stay just there very long, shunting slightly outwards from the pit. These hands are key to keeping a roof over my head!

As the band takes to the tiny stage, vocalist Frank tells us that they don't have a setlist and that they will play what is asked for by the crowd. This is a nice touch, and immediately the boys are inundated with requests. This process doesn't last long; soon written suggestions are the order of the day. And indeed some song choices, unsurprisingly, are overlooked altogether.

I was expecting only half a dozen songs, maybe, but was pleased that the set was a bit longer. Indeed, in terms of number of songs, this was the same length show as the first time I saw Gallows, slightly less than a year ago, at Chatham's Tap 'n' Tin.

The exact list of songs escapes me now, but I'm pretty sure it was all of the following, though not in that order. I love hearing "Gold Dust", even though it is so short, at just under 1 minute.

The new songs are already knitting seamlessly into the gig repertoire. The hard core of fans already know most, if not all, of the words, and the question/answer parts of the songs really lend themselves to the live environment.

YouTube user shambles247 (linked below) has footage of most of the set, wherein you can see that the stage didn't hold the band for long, and all except drummer Lee were in with the crowd for a good while.

Black Eyes
Death Voices
Leeches
Misery
Crucifucks
Abandon Ship
In the Belly of a Shark (+ Happy Birthday)
Gold Dust
The Riverbed
Orchestra of Wolves.

(Unheeded went: Six Years, Rolling with the Punches [a personal fave of mine], Party Hard [a cover of the Andrew WK song, which Gallows have performed live once or twice], The Vulture, Sick of Feeling Sick, and no doubt others that I didn't catch.)

Once the set was over, an orderly queue started to form at the front of the shop, where the band would be signing stuff for those in attendance.

My super deluxe copy of the album had not yet arrived, so I was in two minds whether to buy one here in order to participate in the signing, but I had taken my sleeve of CD single "In the Belly of a Shark", just in case. The aforementioned chaps obliged, along with Lags, Stu, and Steph.

It was then time to say ta-ra to the Gallows posse and head off with Red to have some dinner on London's Brick Lane, which is famed for its hundreds of Indian restaurants. Despite having lived in London for 10 years, neither of us has ever eaten there before, and it is difficult to choose a restaurant, to be honest, given that there is so much choice. It is also unappealing to have people stood at the door trying to beckon punters in, as though you are in some dodgy Spanish-island holiday resort.

We plumped for one that had no doorman -- though it later became clear that this was just serendipity and he was probably on a toilet break. He was there a-beckoning when we left anyway! The venue of choice was Poppadom's (sic).

We ordered veggie dishes (mushroom bhaji, sag aloo, tarka daal), rice, and naan, as well as a drink each, and the missus headed off to the loo. On her return, she said: "I hope the graffiti in the ladies' is wrong. It says the food took forever to come and was cold." Oh, bugger, we thought, we've chosen the worst restaurant on Brick Lane.

In fact, our food arrived pretty quickly and was a good temperature. Certainly it was warmer than when we get takeaways delivered back home. And you know what? It was good, too. Subsequently I have found another bad review online. Maybe we got lucky, but I really enjoyed the food there, and so did the wife.

All in all, a good end to a great evening!

Bye.

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]

Should the missus and I start a YouTube cookery channel?

Feeling peckish?

Here's our first attempt at shooting a recipe on the fly. Enjoy!

Intermission over: Back to Valencia

Saturday, 24 November (still...)
So after our huge walk down to the port, we had to wait for the America's Cup store to open. And when it did, unfortunately we were unable to buy what Red had wanted for her mother. So while the walk had been for nowt, it had still been a fun one! We looked out for a cab and headed back to the hotel room.

At the time Red was looking at possible hotels, she had read that this one had, in some rooms, only a window separating the bedroom from the bathroom. This sounded like great fun, perv that I am, so we really hoped we got one of those. And we did! It was cool and wacky!

We chilled and nursed our blistered feet before heading our for some food. My tattooist Xam is from around Valencia, and so I had asked him if he could recommend any good restaurants. He had given me a couple of names, one of which is apparently frequented by Spanish stars and royalty. We had to give it a go. So we headed out into the night. We wanted to explore some of the busy streets by night before eating, and we also had to stop in at an Internet cafe to check in online for our return flight.

Once we decided it was time to eat, we got a taxi. It took us all the way back to the port area, but only when we got there did we discover that the restaurant was closed for the season. Fortunately, just a few doors away was the other restaurant that had been recommended.

We sat and ordered food, wine, and water. We were ravenous. We'd not eaten since a small bite at 1pm, and it was now about 9pm if memory serves. The chances are that it was probably later because the restaurant had quite a few people in it, and people eat late in Spain. (When we were in Seville, we found this great steak restaurant. We went there at gone 9pm one night and were the only people there. It started getting busier as we were about to leave. Can you imagine eating a steak at 11pm?! Amazing...)

We ordered paella -- what else, since Valencia is the home of the dish? I must say, I enjoyed mine. Red was a little less convinced. We have an ongoing beef about paella since her birthday in Seville. I won't go into it, save to say that perhaps I made a mistake that we both ended up paying for. Sorry, pet. Kisses!

After dinner, we looked for a cab and headed back to the hotel, I think. We were shattered, and I was probably a bit tipsy, so my memory is unclear now!

---------------------

Sunday, 25 November
Next day we breakfasted fairly early so we could get out and pound the streets some more. We both love getting away from our desks, of course, and we love both beach and city breaks. But when we do city breaks, fuck do we do 'em! I mean, we walk our motherfucking feet off. You've got to, though, right? It might be the only time you go to a particular city, so you need to have no regrets about missing anything.

We headed into the old town area and walked the squares and looked at fountains and stuff. Just walking fairly directionless, letting the city be our guide. Well, letting the city and the guide book be our guides. And the map.

We found some crazy dogs playing in the streets. And then some men and women in "traditional" Spanish dress. By traditional, I mean, old-school, dancey, traditional, cos at the end of the day, traditional dress for everyone these days is jeans, T-shirts, jumpers, of course.

Then we stumbled upon a street where everyone was congregating. It was mayhem. Old and young, male and female. What was going on? we wondered. You know what it was...? Trading cards. Everyone was going crazy buying and swapping football cards. Incredible...

Here's the video of this leg of our journey.

Holiday stories, part 5: Some miscellaneous great things

You may be right to be growing bored of this. I'm dragging it out a bit, but what with one thing and another, it's just taking me a long time. Soz.

Ten random things that were great about Sicily:

1. I cannot say enough good things about the Hotel Villa Carlotta in Taormina. Look at this cool lizard, too, which I snapped at the side of their pool. He rocked. I called him Eddie Lizzard. I called all the lizards that. It never stopped being funny. For me.



2. The breakfasts at the aforementioned hotel, and the great treatment we received from the breakfast staff, including Maria and Loredana. This was the view.



3. The loveliness from everyone there, including also Riccardo and Alfio.

4. The great vibe, day or night, wherever you walked or sat. The people-watching was hugely enjoyable.




5. The statue of Emperor Sideshow Bob in Catania.



6. The water. The water. The water. My God, the water.

7. The views, almost everywhere you went, were simply breathtaking. And I don't mean in the Seinfeld way.



8. This pimped-up satellite dish, which is being used here to represent delicious food, even from cheap takeaway joints.



9. Going somewhere that Phil Keoghan has been for The Amazing Race, the Roman Amphitheatre in Catania.



10. The ceramics. We knew we couldn't come away without buying some ceramics as a reminder of our wonderful holiday. We ended up buying just over £200 worth, safe in the knowledge that we could get them shipped over very cheaply (they quoted us just £35 for shipping including insurance) so we wouldn't have to worry about carrying them ourselves or any damage incurred. Plus they threw in a 10 per cent discount on the ceramics, too. Here are the two pieces I chose outright: a trinacria, the symbol of Sicily; and a Sacred Heart acquasantiera, a holy-water dispenser, which we kind of collect as and when we find nice ones.

Holiday stories, part 3

So, yeah, we were at Isola Bella, and it was wicked. Then this happened:



Can you imagine? Shoes. Washing away. Talk about drama!

Then we went for a boat ride around Isola Bella. I've got some cool footage of that too, and I'll upload it soon. I haven't even taken it off the tape and on to my hard drive yet, but maybe over the weekend I'll get around to it.

It was totally awesome. I wore my bandana and looked just like a pirate, specifically I looked just like Johnny Depp. Proper gorgeous I was. We got to this amazing patch of still, clear water (which all of it is) and the skipper turned off the engine and said, in Italian: "Have a swim if you like." There was an older English couple who didn't understand what he said and they were concerned about what was going on.

"I think he said we could have a swim," said the man to his wife.
"Is he joking?" asked the wife of her man.

But I guess they found that he wasn't when people started jumping in. Several people had a go. The water, he told us, was about 30m (100ft) deep. But it was soooo clear that Red could see her feet as she trod water. Insania!

I'm not a great swimmer, and by the time I'd plucked up the balls to have a splash around -- after Red had told me how salty it was, and so how it would be impossible to drown! -- the skip turned the engine back on. Oh well.

After the trip was over we headed for a bite to eat at an unassuming little beachside restaurant. We both ordered seafood dishes, and while we were eating, the waiter came over to the table next to us with three or four fish in his hands. "Which one would you like?" he asked them. "They were caught ten minutes ago by that guy over there," he added, pointing to a fisherman fiddling around with his boat. The fish was that fucking fresh it was alive just minutes earlier! Man... Sicily is rockin' it old school, no doubt.

Miss Milla, nooo! We will not let you go!

So, Saturday was the big day. The day of the MIRL between me and Red, and Milla and Zorro. We threw caution to the wind when arranging our meet, and it was decided to get together not in public or on neutral ground; rather, the venue was Milla's house, which is about 42 miles (67 km) away from us. It's funny, when we lived in London, it would take us about 75 minutes to drive 12 miles across London to see friends. These days we can do 42 miles in less than an hour when traffic conditions are favourable.

We arrived at 1.15pm to be greeted by Milla walking down her front path towards us. We met at the gate. The two girls kissed and hugged hello. Then I, too, had my turn. Red and Zorro kissed hello; he and I shook hands in a manly fashion. We entered their home and went straight through into the back garden.

It was a glorious day. You could even say it was a touch too glorious: although we stood and sat in it chatting and drinking for a while, when it came to sitting down to eat, we moved to the shade. I felt bad for Zorro, who loves being in the sun, but it was just too hot for the rest of us. It was hot for Pisko the cat, too, who spent much of the time trying to cool his belly in the shade.

Milla had cooked lasagne, and Zorro barbecued a trout for each of us. With the salads and giant mushrooms and the rest of the food, there was enough for a truly long and sociable lunch. Everything was delicious, but I can't remember the last time I ate so much! There were even two tiramisus: one that we brought with us and one that Milla made!


Don't you just hate self-timer pictures?
Someone always gets cut out of the shot...

We ate and drank and chatted. We talked about work and tattoos and chavs and blogs and travel and home and family and cats and how we met our partners -- essentially, all the most important things in life. And the next thing we knew it was 8pm. Where had the day gone? We chatted some more, but knew that the evening would soon have to come to an end. About 9pm we headed to the front door for the 10-minute goodbyes. It's nice when goodbyes take a wee while; it's like you're delaying the inevitable.

It was a great day we had for our first MIRL. Within minutes we were comfortable with each other, which came as no real surprise. What was a surprise, though, was the fact that we have mutual friends/acquaintances. Milla and Zorro know some photographers that I used to work with quite regularly a few years back. That was bizarre. London is a big city, and yet it's a small world, right?

One of the strangest things was what to call one another. I think everyone was called at least two names and possibly three in some cases. When you get accustomed to someone being a certain name, it can be strange to have to change that thought process!

Thanks, guys, for a great day. Here's to the next time! I keep thinking of other things that I should add to this post. I feel like there's so much to say. But I have to stop somewhere, right. So I'll stop here. Now. End. Fin.

Thought for food

Regulars here know that I like to turn my hand to movie reviews once in a while, so much so that I have made my own movie-review blog: Such As They Are. The latest film over there is Jean de Florette, which I added this morning.

But films are just one topic on which I feel qualified to give an opinion. And why not? If we partake, we are therefore at liberty to form an opinion. Another area for me is food.

The wife and I don't really have that many vices, to be honest. We work hard and earn quite good money, but we often find ourselves with very little time to ourselves, working as many as 80 hours each some weeks. Where we do tend to spend most of our consumerist pound is at eateries. Once every couple of months we will spend what could frankly be considered a stupid amount of money on a meal out together: a recent special-occasion dinner for two cost us a pretty penny, for example, but we enjoyed it very much, so where's the harm?

The harm comes when you are recommended a restaurant by what should be a fairly reliable source -- in this case, the BBC Good Food Magazine said good things about a place called The Barn in Rainham, Kent.

At a loss for Sunday lunch, and in the mood to eat something nice, we booked a table and arrived. It was a little posher inside than I'd expected, to be fair, though I don't really let these things bother me. On the odd occasion that I do, it's because I feel the poshness is a pretence -- when something is working a bit too hard with those aspirations, y'know?

We were seated and ordered our starters and mains: figs stuffed with mozzarella and dressed with pancetta, followed by the roast chicken for Red; and chicken-and-crayfish sausages on sweet-potato mash, followed by the roast beef for me. Jusqu'ici tout va bien, right?

The starters arrived and were pretty quickly devoured. So quickly, in fact, that we forgot to take pictures! They were both really delicious. Things are looking good.

The problems began with the main courses. Forgiving the fact that initially they brought Red the wrong meal, it all looked like good, wholesome Sunday-lunch fare. But I was soon unhappy. Beneath my beef (see pic at top) was a tiny amount of sweet-potato mash. Now, I tell you this, I like sweet potato. I don't even mind sweet-potato mash -- in the right places. For me (and this is just my opinion), it just doesn't work with a roast dinner. There were roast (normal) potatoes already on the plate, as well as broccoli, Yorkshire pudding, fennel, carrots, and cabbage, so I could have done without the sweetness of the sweet potato.

But the more I ate, the more I realized that the sweetness was everywhere. It was all pervading. It was in the meat, the Yorkshire pudding. It was as though there was some sort of caramelization vibe going on. I don't mind caramelization in small doses, but I wonder if maybe it's the vogue all of a sudden to throw some sugar into your veggies (like RefPo adds it to her baked beans!), but for me it just ain't right.


Red experienced the exact same sensation with her chicken dish (above). She didn't mention it until I did, and then she responded with a kind of "Yes! That's exactly what it is!" I left more on my plate than I would normally do, because I was feeling, frankly, a bit gagged out by now, though I am a sucker for cheesecake and there was one on the menu.

I ordered; Red, as usual, refrained. But it was off to a bad start. Even the way it looked. I'm an old-fashioned boy and I like my cheesecake to be a slice. But I'll overlook that if all the other elements are right. For instance, the ratio of cheese mix to biscuit must be right. And if fruits are to be included, they have to be good; ditto any fruity sauce. The ratio here was most definitely wrong, as you can see from the picture. (And check out the gang signs I'm throwin', cos there's nothin' more gangsta than a posh cheesecake.) This is a shame, because the cheese mix and the biscuit base were absolutely delicious. I don't know about the raspberries cos I didn't eat the motherfuckers. But the sauce was grim and wholly unnecessary, as was the stupid sprig of mint stuck in the top. (I really hate garnish!)

It's odd, isn't it, when you leave a restaurant thinking that they ought to serve LESS food for the price? It's not something I think often, but it becomes particularly apparent when the food is flawed in a handful of ways. So, that was The Barn restaurant. (Lovely building, by the way.) I won't be going back again.

Marks out of 25
Service: 18
Food: 11
Ambience: 14
Value for money: 8
Total: 51%

In my own peculiar way I feel mercurial

Today's the first of July. It's been a funny old week... We in the UK have got a new prime minister in the guise of Gordon Brown, and what a wet old fart he is going to be. First order of business seems to have been to get a new hairstyle -- one that makes him look about ten years older already.

Also, finally we have a smoking ban in public places. Finally. It's been a long time coming, and I, for one, embrace it. As a man who does a little bit of travelling, I've seen how clean the air in restaurants and bars is on some foreign soils, and I like it. When some of our Italian friends visited late last summer, they were open-mouthed at the fact people were smoking in eateries. And they come from Italy, a country where smoking has long been normal among da kidz. But they embraced the ban over there with more relish than I might have imagined.

It's been a funny old week, yes. We've also had three supposed attempted car bombings in Britain: two in London; one in Glasgow. I wonder, though, if car bombings are going to be a tool in the terrorists' arsenal over here whether they might need to import willing perpetrators from the Middle East. We in the UK, I think, love being alive a bit too much. We have good lives in the West, you see. Even the Muslim extremists among us must wonder, What point is there in killing myself? I can do so much more damage by staying alive, by living to fight another day, as they say.

I had an exhausting, physically tiring, emotionally draining weekend with my family last weekend, and on my return there was stuff that needed doing. I spent a total of eight or nine hours, over the course of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, removing horrible old plasticky tiling from our kitchen floor prior to our new floor covering being fitted. Those hours were physically demanding. Most of the time I was stood up and bent right over, using a mini-sledgehammer and chisel to remove the tiles. The hammer was heavy; the tiles, stuck fast. I was removing around five or six per hour. My thighs still ache to bend over or sit on the loo or climb the stairs.

Funny old week? Yes. On Friday night, Red and I were awoken by our neighbours' alarm clock at about 4 in the morning. It kept on going: beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. Clearly no one was going to turn it off. At 4:30am, I decided I had no choice but to knock on their door. The husband answered, apologized, and switched it off. Later in the day, the wife caught us and also apologized profusely before mentioning that they would be having a party tonight, so sorry in advance for the noise.

As it happens, the noise wasn't too bad. Most of it was in the backyard, drunken 30- and 40-somethings karaoke'ing to their hearts' content. But at about 2:45am we were awoken again -- this time to the sound of the neighbours moving their bedroom furniture around. Voices started to get raised, and then the wife shouted something about "don't just dump my clothes in the corner" and stormed out. Finally, we could get our heads down. For about ten minutes, until the alarm went off again, at about 3am. Fuck's sake! It rang for about four minutes, I guess, before someone ran back up from downstairs to turn it off. I feel sleep-deprived today. I feel a little "wrong".

Funny old week? Yeah, and it turns out that -- ALERT: DOCTOR WHO SPOILER -- Captain Jack is the Face of Boe (above). Fucking hell, who saw that coming?! Fantastic! Captain Jack is kind of immortal, y'see. "Will I never die?" he asked the Doctor (I'm paraphrasing). "If not, what will I look like when I get to a million years old?" Then the reveal, and we already know what he will look like at five billion years old. We've seen him die in the future, y'see. And the Doctor was there with him.

Yeah, it's been a funny old week here in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Ha! "United". Ha! "Great". I'm hoping I can at least book a table for Sunday lunch and experience a smoke-free dining experience on Day One of the ban.

And -- unusualness of all unusualnesses -- our pet cat Cat has finally done a new post: you can read his "five things" tag over here. He promises to write more often, too, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Back from my travels

... But not without a close encounter with this little lady, among other things.

It was my dad's 60th birthday, so the wife and I went off to see the family. Talk about a relaxing break. No, not relaxing... the other thing. Exhausting, that's it.

All we did was eat pork or beef, then drive on to the next place where we could eat pork or beef. I put on 1.3 kg (2.86 lb) between leaving Saturday morning and when we arrived back home at Tuesday lunchtime. My meals were:


Saturday lunch: Faggots and mash with gravy (above), with vegetables.
Saturday dinner: Scallops on a bed of lentils, followed by steak with a morel mushroom sauce and potato dauphinoise, followed by chocolate and pear tart with cream.
Sunday breakfast: Full English -- i.e., bacon, eggs, sausage, mushroom, tomatoes, and toast (with eggs laid by hens of which the girl at the top is one of 60).
Sunday lunch: Roast beef with all the trimmings, followed by white-chocolate cheesecake topped with blueberries.
Sunday dinner: Garlic mushroom on pesto, followed by beef stroganoff with rice, chips, and garlic bread, followed by strawberry-and-vanilla cheesecake with cream and ice cream.
Monday breakfast: Full English.
Monday lunch: Ham and eggs with chips.
Monday dinner: Breaded garlic mushrooms, followed by bangers and mash with peas and onion gravy, followed by a slice of chocolate birthday cake.
Tuesday breakfast: Full English.

Wow... that almost makes me want to gag now! The first three meals were the best, but then they were at the Michelin-starred restaurant/B&B that we stayed at. The food there is absolutely fantastic, and whenever we visit my family we make sure we have at least one meal there. This time it was three meals, since we hadn't been for so long!

Families, though, eh? They can be stressful, and no messing. I'll move on to that in my next post...

It’s Monday!

Oh, don't you just love Mondays? Time was that I used to hate them, just like most other people. But these days Mondays have taken on a whole new meaning.

You see, because I tend to work all weekend just lately, the reason I love Mondays is that I feel justified again in working. And also I know that most other people are having to do it too. If I've got to, then I derive some twisted pleasure out of knowing others are working as well!

That's not to say there's nothing good about working weekends. The great thing about it is this: most of our colleagues/clients/employers (call them what you will) don't work the weekend. This means that our working days become far more fruitful because we are not constantly answering the phone, responding to e-mails, and generally being pushed and pulled in several directions at once.

We did, however, manage to find time to pop out for Sunday lunch, which for me was a bacon cheeseburger, while Red opted for the altogether more healthy tuna niçoise salad.

So, all in all, not much to report today. My latest bits of ink are healing nicely. My weight is yo-yoing like Ricki Lake's. I watched Mean Girls on TV and think Lindsay Lohan is not so annoying as I had expected. And I've posted a new review over at Such As They Are. And now... to work. Catch you all later, blogpals!

Last-minute edit: How could I forget that we've also started watching this year's Big Brother? Christ on a bike, what a shower of cunts they are, too...

Stuff and stuff

Sunday: Worked all day, but found time to do a little post about shaking my spear, below.

Monday: Worked all day, despite it being a holiday in the UK.

Tuesday: Worked until lunchtime, then headed out to the tattooist for some recolouring on a tattoo that I never got finished. It's two years since it last had any work done on it. Now I think it's finished. Though I can't help but feel it still needs a little sumpn sumpn.

Wednesday: Worked all day and got mad pissed off with some people we're working for. What is with people? I know not all people are cunts, but sometimes... sometimes it sure seems that all people I have to deal with are. I also found time to update Such As They Are for the first time in a month. I made a silent promise to post a new movie review over there at least once a week. And Lord knows I have a backlog to wade through.

Thursday: Started the day, as we do most days at the moment eating breakfast while watching an episode of Seinfeld, the show about nowt after which this blog was named. We've been working our way through the DVDs while waiting for Season 5 of Scrubs to get released. Then we headed out to Asda to do most of our weekly grocery shopping. We couldn't find the tofu. I knew it was a mistake but I thought I'd ask a member of staff.

"Excuse me, do you know where I'd find tofu?"
"Uh, find what?"
"Tofu."
"Toad food?"
"No, tofu."
"What is it?"
"It's ... [I tell myself not to mention beancurd or allude to anything 'foreign'...] It's a meat substitute for vegetarians."
"Oh, then it's probably in the meat aisle."
"I don't know," I say. "You carry other products by Cauldron, and they produce tofu. So I thought it might be in the freezer section."
"Oh... I'd better find someone who'll know. Come with me."

I follow her. She talks to another staff member. She too looks confused by the word tofu. I suggest that it could be in the chilled section, rather than frozen.

"Let's have a look there, then," says the second woman, and we walk towards that section. "It's not something I've been asked for before."

We stand there looking at the shelves. My eyes alight on the Holy Grail. I reach for the tofu. "Here it is!" I exclaim gleefully. "I'd better check the sell-by date, since no one knows you sell it!" It's all good. "You'll know where it is now next time someone asks," I suggest. Fortunately they don't kill me. You never know in this neck of the woods. And Asda.

Chick, chick, chick, chick, chicken...

For Sunday lunch yesterday, because we had nothing in the house and we didn't have time to go shopping, what with little bits of DIY and great loads of work needing to be done, the wife and I headed to the new eatery in our vicinity.

A few weeks ago it opened its doors. And the queues on that first Friday evening were quite a sight to behold. Unfortunately we didn't have a camera with us at the time because it was most definitely "bloggable".

Anyway, that's the past remote. Let's talk about the past recent.

The eatery? KFC, as you might have guessed from the pic of the Colonel. We're not really big fast-food types, but now and again it must be done. People say not very nice things about fast-food-joint staff -- y'know, stuff about how dumb they are, how no qualifications are needed to do their job, a trained monkey could do it, etc.

But I gotta tell you this: while you may or may not need a brain to work in these places, you damn well better have one if you intend to order there. All I wanted was a bite to eat, but first I had to figure out what. I opted for one of the "meals", but then I had to choose between the standard Zinger meal or the Wicked Zinger meal.

"I'll have the Wicked one."

"Which side order would you like?"

"What are the choices?"

"Baked beans, coleslaw, or corn on the cob."

"I'll have the coleslaw, please."

"And what extra chicken portion would you like? Wings or an extra piece of chicken?" [Like "extra piece" is some technical term for a chicken bodily part.]

"The extra piece please."

"And what drink?"

AAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And then KABOOOOOOM! My head exploded. It was quite the mess all over the restaurant floor. And they're burying me today. Still, it was worth it. No, sorry, the other thing: not worth it. Definitely not worth it.

“My inspiration has run dry”

Venice: Unlike me, not dry.

What better title for a post than a Natalie Imbruglia lyric? That's right, folks, nothing is right, I am, y'know, torn and shit. Yup, I’m as dry as a nun's cunt, as we used to say back in my old hometown.

The reason for this desert-like state of bloggy being is, as it always is with me, a valanga of work. (That's your Italian lesson of the day. Valanga [literally "avalanche"] is used to mean "shitload".)

Saturday morning I started working at 6am and I finished at 8pm. In between, any breaks I had were used to eat lunch, go food shopping and to the post office, and start clearing out the kitchen.

Sunday I started work at about 8:30am, having had a bit of lie-in, and I finished at 6pm so that I could do some more work clearing the kitchen and have my dinner. I then went back to work at 11:25pm for an hour.

What's with all the kitchen clearing? Well, this week is the week we are having our new kitchen fitted. Everything is changing (except the cooker and washing machine, and I think we are beginning to regret that we didn't decide on new ones of those, too).

So for most of this week we will be without a cooker, oven, and hob, and we also won't have a kitchen sink. Red spent much of her "free time" at the weekend preparing some delicious Italian dishes that we can throw in the microwave, rather than resorting to takeaways every night.

Yes, a fun weekend was had by all. We're into equal-opportunity misery in this household. Even Cat gets a piece of the action. He has been put in a cattery for the week (we call it a spa retreat when he's nearby). This is because the last time we had workmen in (for the bathroom a couple of years ago), he got so freaked out that he legged it out through the back door and we never saw him for hours. When he finally returned he was very quiet. And at about 11pm we realized that he had cut open almost the entire length of the lower part of one of his back legs. Midnight trip to the vet. Severed the ligaments. Hit or miss whether he'd ever be able to use it again. But Doctor Jim was a fucking total genius and you'd never know now from pictures like this the extent of the original wound. We don't want to go through that shit again.

Right, it's 9am. I'd best get to work. I hope to get round to some of my blogpals and check out what y'all have been writing in recent days. Toodle-oo.

I’m a masochist

Okay, well I don't necessarily mean in a sexual sense. I mean, we all like having our nipples tweaked, right? I'm talking more about the way I treated my body yesterday when faced with the shitty day I had.

Yesterday's post was put up in the morning. Then for lunch (and this was prearranged) we had pizza. Not the most healthy of foods perhaps, but it could be worse. After eating that, I opened the gas bill. Big mistake...

Our last two quarterly gas bills were for £50-something and £80-something. This new one clocks in at a massive £212! For three months. And not even the year's coldest months! What the fuck is going on?!

Then I come back upstairs to work, mightily pissed off about this, only to find a new e-mail from Paypal:

"... the funds in question used for this transaction were possibly fraudulent. We did an investigation and it was determined that the funds, indeed, were fraudulent. As such, we had to return the funds to the party that had them taken from them without their authorization. You are not protected from this reversal of funds under our Seller Protection Policy..."

Wow, that's nice. So I'm fucked, then? I replied:

"And so the person who took these funds fraudulently gets away with the goods for free, while honest dealers like myself lose out... Well, I will be certain not to sell anything on eBay again, that's for sure. And I shall be very careful not to use Paypal to receive any funds either."

What else could I do but have Chinese takeaway and a couple of bottles of beer for dinner? In my defence, I did go for a 20-minute walk after work, but I know I shouldn't abuse my body the way I did last night, especially when I'm sort of on a diet/exercise regime and not doing too badly. I take comfort in the fact that this morning I am still weighing less than 75kg (165 pounds). I want to get down to 70kg (154 pounds) by the end of August. That should be doable, right? Just gotta kick that beer to the kerb...

Colour me happy

Well, Friday the 13th was not unlucky for me, since I went to tattooist Xam and got my newest tattoo finished (with the exception of perhaps a little bit of touching up later to hide the old covered-up tattoo as well as possible).

Here's the finished job:



And here are a couple of details:





The one bad thing about my day was my dietary intake. I ate a pizza before leaving home, a burger before getting tattooed, and a Chinese takeaway when I got back. Eww, that's a very bad day's food by anyone's standards...

An update on the TV-less couple

So... It ain't so bad really. It's true that, on the whole, we wouldn't miss TV. Mostly we watch films and stuff on DVD anyway, but there are some good shows out there, such as tonight's Simon Schama show on the abolition of slavery. Hopefully they'll repeat it. And we get our new satellite receiver tomorrow, anyway, when the man from Sky will come a-knockin'.

Fortunately, last night we didn't have to resort to talking after all, especially since we'd IM'd each other during the latter part of the afternoon, so I'm really not sure what else we would have said to each other.


I opted to cook my famed, once-weekly chilli sin carne (recipe coming soon, for those who are interested), and we opened a bottle of Rioja, which went really nicely when we sat down to get our grub on.

And we watched an episode of Scrubs on DVD while eating, followed by the second episode of this US mini-series Kidnapped, which we had waiting for us on the DVR.

Red fell asleep in the middle of that, woke up for the end, declared her general lack of interest in it (neither of us is ever really satisfied by these mini-series, whether UK or US-made), and then made her way up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire, leaving me in the company of Naomi Watts and Laura Harring (see right). Lucky ladies!

I was soon hearing the call of father/son team Hypnos and Morpheus, so I turned off the DVD at about 75 minutes in. The trouble with Lynch films, though, is that mostly they don't have chapter breaks, and our cheap DVD player doesn't remember at what point the disc was stopped, so now I'll have to wind it forward for 75 minutes next time I sit down to finish the movie. Grrr.