Good evening Negative Soundbyters! It’s official. My son has driven me to champagne. If he is to suckle off the tender breast of Mrs H for milky marvels then I am entitled to drink from the golden vine – in quantity! As I write this very blog, I have a flute of the good stuff and a birds-eye view over various fireworks “displays” (Little Johnny holding a rocket in one hand and a lighter in the other) going off intermittently across the night’s sky in “honour” of Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up the House of Lords in the early 1600s. Interesting that we celebrate an occasion in which somebody tried to literally bring down the government, but then governments are not that popular with the masses these days, so it’s no surprise that Little Johnny has an extra rocket-or-two to terrify the neighbour’s cat with!
Amazingly Rafe has taken all the explosions completely in his stride i.e. fast asleep. He has given his Papa a thorough working over today though; hence the need to break open the bubbles just after tea to take the edge off. Mrs H can rely on the boob as the ultimate pacifier whereas I have no place to turn when the Little Man decides to crank up the siren. I can’t say “Let’s go and have a beer down at the pub” or “Let’s go and kick a ball on the Common” or “Let’s fire up Rambo First Blood on the big screen” if he is feeling out of sorts because he is just a tad young for Lager, Adidas or John Rambo. But it’s all part of fatherhood; nothing can compare to waking up in the morning and having your son lie next to you with a massive gummy grin on his face, big sparkly blue eyes and a nappy that needs changing….so if he wants to be cranky every now-and-then, go for it my son! I wonder where he gets it from though….ha!
Anything of geopolitical significance to report:
Westminster Council spent over £60,000 defending a case where a black man claimed that he was being racially prejudiced against because a white woman that sat opposite him put a pot plant on her desk that that grew to a point where they couldn’t see each other. He felt that it was a deliberate attempt to stymie his ability to communicate with her and the wider office. You can imagine this plant taking on Little-Shop-of-Horror-esque proportions and bearing down on this cubicle dweller preventing him from standing up and walking over to his colleagues’ desks or picking up the phone or having the craic over the proverbial water cooler – I mean like seriously?! What about just asking her to cut it back – after all it’s an office not a florist! Nope; laying a complaint, wasting everyone’s time and incurring costs that everybody can ill-afford (and I include Westminster Council in that!) is a much better solution to assuage a very sensitive ego. What a tool….
And as the world gets more nutty by the day, let’s get going with the anecdote…
Big love to you all.
Hoddy X
The Roast Dinner.
Mrs H has just served up a roast dinner. I had precisely nothing to do with it other than “dabble” a bit with dessert; on the menu this evening: sticky toffee pudding that I will be enjoying once this post is complete! By dabbling I mean putting the pudding in the oven, making sure that it was set to 180 degrees and handing the timer to Mrs H. (Whenever I try and use the timer it seems to set itself to 20 minutes – go figure.)
As for the meal; the chicken melted in my mouth; the roast potatoes had a warm, crunchy exterior with soft, flaky, white flesh which I smothered in a gravy, rich with flavour. And let’s not forget the crunchy asparagoose and green beans to meet the Sunday night veggie quota. All-in-all heaven-on-a-plate!
However Mrs H has done me a serious disservice; I no longer risk ordering pub roasts, because I know that disappointment is but a chicken stock cube away.
Some of the Sunday afternoon car crashes that I have experienced over the years do not bear mention, but then this is a blog so a mention they will get.
Cold plates. I can’t see the point of serving a piping hot meal on a cold plate. I am not sure this serving technique exists in any hotel or restaurant school syllabus, yet you would think it is standard practice for some.
Leathery meat – and that could be chicken, lamb or beef. It’s never wise to book around 4 ‘o clock because it’s likely that the last remnants of some hacked up, lukewarm carcass is going to make its way onto your cold plate covered in a thick, brown “glupe” courtesy of a “chef” that believes that the basis for an award-winning gravy is Bistow granules.
Potato rocks. Mrs H’s roast potatoes do rock, but those that come from most pub kitchens have been dropped straight into the oil, forgotten about, retrieved from said oil, left on the side to cool down, dropped back into the oil to reheat only to reappear on the serving plate as an assortment of objects best saved for a geology class – or better still, the bin! That’s if you haven’t bent your fork trying to chase one round your plate covered in the aforementioned glupe!
No pub roast would be complete without the lukewarm Yorkshire pudding that covers your entire plate to hide that fact that the kitchen has run out of just about everything except Bistow granules and some roast potatoes from last Sunday’s sitting. And if you’re lucky peaking from beneath this concoction of milk, flour and eggs, you might find a very forlorn green bean or broccoli stork.
I find it somewhat of a lottery so while others round the table throw the dice, I don’t even give that part of the menu a second glance; no way it’s going to stand up to Mrs H!
OUT :)
Pic of the Week
Love the trees and the soft, afternoon light...
