Bacon, Not Bacon (Part 1)

Well, what an eventful time we’ve had in Paris!

I’m composing this sitting in my seat in the Eurostar on the way home…..it’s only a whole 24hours late, and I’ve just finished coping with the dual stresses of French public transport ‘diabolique’, and The Family all getting their combined knickers in a big old twist (as in combined stresses, rather than they were wearing one gigantic pair of pants between them!)

But, as all good stories do, we should start at the beginning….

Ahhh, Paris! The city of love! Of shopping! Of glamouressness!

Sparkly Eiffel Tower!

Now because this is me, of course it was all those things…(ha!)……

I fell in love with a gorgeous Parisian man named Claude, bought a couple of Dior handbags and waltzed down the Champs-Élysées in my towering Louboutin heels whilst dragging a small rat-like yet highly fashionable dog-type creature behind me.

Humn, maybe it didn’t happen quite like that…

So, what really happened?

Well, we arrived at our hotel and all went swimmingly until the next morning when we went down for breakfast. We were shown in as usual, went to get our chosen food from the buffet and sat down to break our fast (sounds very dramatic when you put it like that doesn’t it?)

No sooner had we started than we get a bustling little French man pop up and start whittering on about us sitting in the wrong place and eating the wrong breakfast. ‘Wrong breakfast?’ I hear you say!

Apparently there was a swish option and a pleb option. We’d been allocated the pleb option (how very rude!), but had managed to find our way to the swish side.

There goes the bacon then!

The little waiter looked as though he’d very much like to take our laden plates away from us, but manners just about managed to win through.

On inspection of the ‘plebfast’ as we came to call it, we realised that the absence of any bacon was a permanent feature, and no amount of asking the smirking boy-waiters would bring forth any of the basic breakfast delicacy, however much we managed to convey any feelings of desperate bacon-related need! Tiny random sausages there were, but the best bits remained tantalisingly close on the other side, yet forever out of our reach.

Breakfast continued to be a shoddy affair each day, contributing to the hotel’s frankly undeserving 4 star rating, but we managed to make a joke of it, cram our cheeks full of pain au chocolat (apparently even plebs are allowed these) and get on with exploring the city.

And the city decided to explore me too. Well, one of its many pigeons did. In the form of a giant green poo. Directed cleverly into not only one of the pockets of my handbag, but onto my camera as well. Apparently it’s lucky. I just think it’s grim.

So there I was, travelling around one of the most beautiful cities man has ever built, snapping away with my poo-filled camera having a smashing time, when a young girl stopped in front of me, picked up a ‘gold’ ring from the floor and tried to give it back to me so she could claim a reward.

Now all I could think of at the time was if this seemingly useless rubbish con ever worked on anybody. You would have to be pretty thick to be taken in. (In my opinion-I apologise now if I have managed to inadvertently brand you brainless because you fell for this one!)

I have a brain, and am perfectly capable of keeping track of my rings. After all, they reside on my fingers, fit well and don’t look at all like the one she was offering me! I politely declined to enter into her game and walked on.

Suddenly though, it was if the whole of Paris was trying to re-unite us with countless pieces of recalcitrant digit adornments…We couldn’t take more than five steps without another ‘helpful citizen’ picking up yet another shining band of not-precious metal and insisting we take it from them.

What I couldn’t work out to start with though, is how they ever expected anybody to believe that the shiny object ‘on the floor’ in front of us would have been ours….I’m fairly certain that most people don’t go around flinging their possessions out in front of themselves in the hope that some helpful handily-situated layabout will see them and rush to their aid….They were retrieving rings left, right and centre….yet always from pieces of pavement I hadn’t yet walked on!

Ah well, maybe they got lucky once or twice a day, who knows? I can’t think of any other reason they would carry on day after day trying to be the scruffy French version of Ernest Jones!

Anyway, more on my travel nightmares later; but for now, I will leave you to check all of your rings…if you have lost any, pop out your front door to see if you can find a frenchman….They usually have a pocketfull!

Love,

Fatty Blob Head

Not All Doors Have Chocolate Behind Them.

Happy New Year old chaps!

After the deliciously perfect excuse of ‘It’s Christmas’ is now out of the way, one can no longer utter the immortal phrase ‘i’ll start after Christmas’ until the next November comes trundling round.

All the plans made after Christmas are invariably a bitter-sweet attempt to correct the simply huge amount of over-indulgence that seems to be classic of the festive period.

One of the main reasons for me embarking on the dreaded D-word activity for the 2457th time in my life, is perhaps because of a certain incident that happened to me on New Year’s Day…..

Having imbibed my not-inconsiderable weight’s worth of cocktails the night before, I was tiredly stumbling my way through the cold and empty local petrol station’s foodage area.  Now I am marvellously lucky and grotesquely cursed in equal measures that my local petrol station has not just a food shop attached to it, but a scrummy-I-would-eat-all-the-packets-too-if-you’d-let-me food shop.  If you don’t know which one I am on about, then here’s another clue:  It rhymes with ‘Ben and Cress’.  And has a very sexily-voiced tv advert in the form of Matthew Macfayden muttering things like ‘its not just cake, it’s cake dipped in chocolate and balanced on my chest cake’ (mmmm cake)

And

‘It’s not just stuffing and gravy, it’s a full beef roast fed to you on a fork by me, wearing nothing but a tablecloth’!!

So anyway, I’m walking round Matthew’s Shop of Dreams in a kidney hurting, head throbbing type-daze, wondering just when it was that I got old enough to regard the party to only just be worth the hangover… (we’re talking miniscule amounts of ‘only just’ here…!)…and I spot someone I used to go to school with.

Now, I made the supremely silly mistake of leaving school (hurrrumphlygh) years ago and then proceeding to work very hard to be less of a Fatty Blob Head.  I succeeded rather superbly to the extent of shedding 7.5 stone. Hurrah!

I made a point of forgoing the chocolate in favour of running around like a hyperactive sloth on red bull on the badminton court and generally did slimmer-people activities like sashaying when I walked!   ‘Twas a halcyon era, let me tell you!

One of my favourite activities whilst I had de-FBHed, was popping into the local wine bars when all the university people were on their ludicrously long summer holidays, and waltzing up to chat to people I has gone to school with to see if they recognised me.

(Bear in mind that since school, I had lost the weight equivalent of an average 10-year-old girl, learnt how to apply make-up, dyed my mousey brown hair to blonde and discovered my sociable side!)

I used to love freaking them out, and lots of times they couldn’t place me!

It is therefore officially A Bit Of A Shame that I put it all back on and more for good measure!

So, back story completed, let us now return to Ben and Cress.  I smile at the man I used to attend physics lessons with on a tri-weekly basis.  He does that funny little tentative smile that screams: ‘Crap, she’s just smiled at me in recognition, and I haven’t got the foggiest!’  And proceeds to scuttle round the corner into the scotch egg aisle.

So now it’s totally the opposite, and I am still not recognised by people who I have no trouble remembering….perhaps it’s because I kept the blonde hair and makeup, who knows!

Ah well, I think as I continue my slow amble round the shop and stand in the interminably long queue for what seems like far too much of my life. I am British, therefore genetically programmed to endure queues with aplomb of the highest standard, but even this queue gets me down, so much so that I do a little skip when I manage to make it to the front, pay for my goods and navigate my way out.

As I make for freedom, fresh air and the promise of an afternoon on the sofa watching repeats of the Vicar of Dibley scoffing too many sprouts, I near the exit.

Physics man is 20 seconds in front of me, which is apparently enough time for the automatic doors to open and shut for him, and to begin opening for me afterwards. I walk towards them, thinking about vicars jumping in ludicrously giant puddles, with a big grin on my face, which soon turns to alarm, then abject shame and humiliation….

The doors had chosen that particular moment to refuse to open fully, but by the time my brain had worked out this rather pertinent piece of information, my body had still valiantly tried to stuff itself through the foot-wide gap. All that had made it out happened to be my head, my boobs and one leg dangling uselessly in mid-air!

I was stuck blocking the entrance for what seemed like ages, but probably was only (a still uncomfortable) 15 seconds, all the while uttering startled phrases such as ‘ooof!’ and ‘man alive!’

All this is standard for me, dear readers, I know.  Except for one change in the by-now familiar script.  Normally, my humiliation is compounded by the supporting actors getting front row seats to watch the fun, yet maybe it was my day off for entertaining the masses…Physics man walked off entirely oblivious to the enfolding door-squishing drama behind him!  Thank heaven for small (well, not so small really) mercies!

And the moral of this particular story?  Apparently, there are doors out there that can crush people to almost-death, even if said person doesn’t have a clue of the physics of it!

Well that, and:

Never listen to Athos from The Three Musketeers tell you to buy the profiteroles. It always ends deliciously badly!

Love,

Fatty Blob Head

Belfast, My Boots and Blimey!

Hello chaps,

It’s been rather a while since I’ve managed to get round to writing a bit of a blog, and one of the main reasons for this is undeniable…I’ve simply been a bit boring!

It’s hard to get into trouble, or do anything stupidly embarrassing when most of my day is filled with rolling around my lounge floor faffing with beads, pliers and tiger tail!

But, dear readers, you’ll be pleased to learn that I am writing this on the aeroplane coming back from a weekend away in Belfast. There was (unsurprisingly) a marked absence of the above jewellery making ingredients, which left me with plenty of time to make a complete tit of myself all weekend!

Lets just say, The Friend has had to put up with rather a lot this weekend. Not to say she hasn’t coped marvellously; she’s been a rock, a brick, and every other hard-sounding object that signifies her general legendary friendship status!

It started well – we got to the airport without mishap.  We might have started off at the highly unseemly hour of 6am, but we got there! Check-in was a doddle.  Even the slightly fraught moments where you hold your breath in the hope that the extra pair of shoes and the chocolate you shoved in your case at the last minute doesn’t tip it over the baggage allowances!  All went well and in no time at all, it was bye bye bags, see you at the other end…

I was through security with nary a glance ( I must have an innocent face?! ) and was collecting my bits when The Friend’s hand luggage was diverted in a highly dramatic manner and was picked up by a forbidding looking woman intent on being very thorough!

As it turns out, there were no fewer than three items of liquid casually rolling about the bottom of her handbag….  It was the one and only time of the whole trip that I actually felt a tiny bit smug, with my liquids in my little plastic bag!

Luckily, the scary lady was actually very understanding, and once she had correctly ascertained that The Friend wasn’t about to blow up the airport with nothing but some rescue remedy and glasses-lens cleaner, we were waved through, putting our boots back on as we went.

Next stop was a greasy fry up breakfast and a traditional pint of cider.  Yes, that’s right, I did say cider.  At 7.00am.   Nothing sets you up for a flight better…try it next time you find yourself in an airport at silly-o-clock!  (Unless you are a child, then you’re definitely not allowed to imbibe, obviously!)

Now The Friend can be somewhat of a nervous flyer.  For someone who travels an awful lot, she normally copes rather marvellously.  But she’d recently watched a tv channel deliberately crash a plane so they could analyse what happens. Not the best idea then, to be sat directly in front of a couple of plonker business types guffawing their way through the main events in the program, in voices loud enough for even the pilot to hear….

Well, we managed to survive the short journey without turning round and planting a fist in each of their insensitive faces, for which we were rather proud!

There follows a journey with a friendly taxi driver/tour guide, a concert for us to sing in, more pints of magners at the after show party and very little food…

As you may know, the above can be a bit of a danger area, as it’s most prudent to line the stomach with something stodgy before drinking…in this case though, not many mishaps befell us before reaching the house we were staying in….What we did have, was a crazy taxi driver who announced himself to be called Ricky, then proceeded to beep his horn at every passing car still on the road at 2am;  this included a police car, at which point we slunk down in our seats and prayed they wouldn’t start chasing us!  He delighted in getting the English-accented people in the in the car (So myself and The Friend then) to continually utter the phrase ‘I know your name’ in a Northern Irish accent.  (Phonetically written it would be something along the lines of: ‘Iiiee knaw yawr kneeaum’!)

Obviously we were highly amazeballs at this, which just delighted him further!

So after an extra long journey home (he was driving slowly to rack up the price…or it could have been our sparkling wit and marvellous company!) He dropped us off back at the house, asked us who this Ricky guy was, told us his real name and drove off.  Now it’s hard to convey here how hilarious this all was, but you’ll just have to trust me!

Cue friday lunchtime, and we’re off to lunch with the legend that is The Friend’s (the one we’re staying with) Nana.  Now this lady is a philanthropic marvel, an MBE no less.  She makes her own sausage rolls and tried to fatten me up further (I know, not needed!) even when I had stopped because I was full!  And apart from a slight mishap involving Nana swapping mine and The Friends names over, and us not quite realising until it’s too late and embarrassing to correct, it was a lovely meal!

Now it wouldn’t be a wee holiday without a spot of shopping would it?  I found two lovely tops, had a look round the handbags, and accidentally sprayed myself with the male version of my perfume.  For all of the rest of the day I was wafting about smelling eerily like The Brother.  It was not pleasant!

After that, I thought it prudent to address the problem of my headache.  I am one of those stupid/unfortunate people who find themselves addicted to diet coke.  (Other addictive caffeine-based beverages are available)  Anything after about 8 hours of no diet coke will give me a headache, and right at this moment I was coming up to about 25 hours!  So whilst everyone went off into the next shop, I had spotted a generic supermarket, and quickly headed in to scout out some lovely fizzy brown stuff!  I picked up a wire basket, trotted quickly down the aisles, and selected two big 2litre bottles of the stuff, and a cheeky little bottle to drink there and then.  Unfortunately, the supermarket was absolutely choc-full of customers….I wonder if they thought it was christmas eve or something, but there were people everywhere!

Aware that I might be holding the others up, I decided to take a shortcut through the menswear section…I scuttled through the maze of trousers, socks and underpants, and managed to turn a corner at great speed….next thing I know, I’m skidding over on my silly slippy boots, the basket gets caught on a rack of Y-fronts, the bottles go whizzing off in all directions, and I end up half sprawled on the floor with one arm still threaded through the basket!

After having muttered the immortal phrase ‘Blimey O’Reilley’ to myself and the GIANT queue of sniggering 19 year old boys who witnessed the whole embarrassing event, I scrabbled about picking up the slippery, shaken up bottles and tried to slink off to a queue at the other end of the shop.  I even managed to scuff my boot and leave an attractive black leather ‘skid mark’ on the floor!

Lots of other little things happened the rest of the weekend, but I fear I have kept you lovely readers long enough…

I’ll leave you with the news that I managed to leave my coat at the house and bring an entirely different one to the airport with me, got thoroughly frisked in security by an overzealous woman (what happened to my innocent face?!) Found out we would be flying back on a toy plane with propellers (The Friend was not pleased at all!) and had to ask for a seat belt extension thingy for the first time in my life! (Silly stupid tiny toy plane!)

One thing though…Did they really have to make it orange? I felt like the flight attendant might have well been swinging it round his head and singing as he brought it to me!

FBH strikes again!

To hear the other side of the story, why not click on The Friend’s blog?

Love,

Fatty Blob Head

How To Cook Your Washing Up.

Ever hidden last night’s washing up in the oven?

No?  Well done.  This means you are a sensible, well-rounded individual who clearly has a sane grip on time-keeping and general life skills.

I, on the other hand, have at least one of the above qualities…Yet being referred to as ‘well rounded’ is not necessarily a good thing in my book!

So as usual, I can almost hear you shouting ‘Why on earth did you put your washing up in the oven, you crazy fool?’  Well it makes perfect sense to me, and I now shall proceed to explain myself in what is most probably a misguided effort to claw back some semblance of regard from you all!

I have only put my washing up in the oven twice.  The first one was months ago, and I pulled off the manoeuver without a hitch.  The second time was at 8.57am yesterday morning, and let’s just say I wasn’t quite so lucky!

Being self-employed and working from home has its pros and cons:

Pros-working from home.

• Having a full day at the office working in fluffy pink slippers and a dressing gown.
• Taking your lunch break when ever you like.
• Getting too hot and stripping off to a grotty vest top I wouldn’t be seen dead in outside.
• Sneaking the tv on in the background to watch Team GB do wonderful things at the Olympics!

However, one of the cons most definitely has to be clients popping round to choose and commission jewellery.  Now don’t get me wrong, it’s lovely having visitors, and it’s easily the best way as the jewellery needs to be handled, tried on and generally flapped about a bit to get a good impression of just how gorgeous it is! (All modesty flies out the window when I’m in business mode!)

This is where yesterday morning comes in to the situation.  I woke up and checked my emails.  I had one from a client who wanted to pop over to commission a full set to go with a particular top.  Hurrrah!  This is exactly how I like my day to start…..But not when I find out that she wanted to come at 9am, and suddenly I’m sorely regretting my rash decision to leave the night before’s culinary efforts lying around the kitchen waiting to be washed up!

There’s also a fair amount of dusting and hoooooovering to be done, all in the very small window of half an hour….Arrgh!  Of course being me, I am hopelessly useless at staying on top of the housework.  Couple that with the fact that I hosted a fairly messy 30th birthday party at the weekend ( I know.  I’m 30.  It’s still shocking me!) and I’m still finding sticky patches of unidentifiable alcohol and birthday cake (mmmmm, cake!) artfully strewn in the most random of places….

So there I am: Running about my kitchen and lounge in a bit of a flap, wearing the aforementioned grotty vest top and a very past it pair of pj bottoms.

Task one: Fling open curtains to let in some light!  Task two: Hastily close said curtains in an effort to relieve both the poor woman innocently walking her dog-type-creature and myself from any further crushing embarrassment.  No one should ever be subjected to an outfit that can only be good for the incinerator….(Let’s just say the vest openly showcases some ghastly wings as if every highly annoying bingo advert on tv got together and had little bingo babies who then proceeded to populate bingo world and they all lived happily ever after, just south of my shoulders!)

Task three: Jump in the bath.  Unfortunately the boiler had chosen this very morning to have a strop for the first time since we moved in over three years ago.  It’s always provided us with beautifully hot water every time we asked for it, so I have no idea why this morning should have been any different! (Ask The Brother: he washed his (currently massive) mop-head of hair in freezing cold water and has proceeded to be slightly disgruntled all day as a direct result!)

So I abandoned the bath idea for 15 minutes whilst the water heated up. Cue lots of frantic slapdash tidying: Flinging random items everywhere….Such as a pile of birthday presents into the drinks cabinet and an orange squash bottle into my handbag! (I’m vaguely ashamed that my handbag is big enough to comfortably fit a squash bottle in it, but let’s gloss over that reasonably quickly….)

Back to the bath: The next bath I draw is far, far too bubbly…In my haste I’ve added enough bubbles for five baths and now the bath and its bubbles seem to be taking over.  I dunk myself in and out whilst trying to keep my head above water in a bubble free zone, only to clamber out looking like a soggy disgruntled version of the Michelin man….Have you ever tried to get a ridiculously large number of bubbles off you in a hurry?  Thank god no-one was witnessing this particular one-woman foam party!

Next came what was supposed to be a cursory nod to a bit of make up.  What it actually ended up being, was far far, far too much concealer; leading to me looking like the half-crazed yet supremely un-scary Ghost of Makeup Past!  Add hairspray liberally applied to both armpits instead of deodorant ( I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried), and I was ‘ready’ to tackle the kitchen!

Time is a cruel, cruel mistress and waits for no man….  (Or makeup ghost!).  With roughly 2.7 minutes to spare, I still had an unsightly mound of washing up leering at me from the kitchen sink.  There was nothing for it than to go with my previously successful plan of action: Bundle it all into the oven and cover up the glass front with an artfully placed tea-towel!  Hurrah!  As plans go, it was fairly brainy, and I distinctly remember feeling rather smug as I relaxed and helped my client choose the best necklace, bracelet and earrings for her style!

Alas, ‘smug’ was the last emotion I was feeling that evening as I came to put the tea in the oven.  The preheated oven.  With a lot of washing up stuffed in it.  With the plastic sieve which had unhelpfully melted itself to my favourite saucepan whilst the spoons and forks looked on in glee….

The moral of the story?  It probably should be: Keep a whole cupboard free and empty ready for washing up hiding emergencies (preferably one that doesn’t heat up and melt poor unsuspecting kitchen items to each other)

Yet I rather think The Parent would say something along the lines of  ‘Wouldn’t it just be easier to do the washing up as you went along?’

Yes.  I rather think it would.  That, or get that butler I’ve been promising myself…..

Love,

Fatty Blob Head

Family Olympics Slightly Less Glam Than London 2012

What ho Chums,

Hope everyone’s having a spiffing August? Those of you who are lucky enough to still be young and learning…Hope you’re enjoying your summer holidays? And those of you who are nowhere near young enough to be at school except in the teaching capacity….How is your time off going?  I have many teacher friends who (bless them) get very excited as the summer holibob looms, then as soon as they’re in it start grumbling about how fast it’s going!

Then there’s the rest of us who only just remember what six weeks of freedom feels like!  Gone are the long, gorgeous days where we used to spend all day outside making up games in our street: I remember one lovely summer, one of The Friends and I used to create a whole ‘house’ from the one solitary street sign! Yep, a thin piece of metal hammered into the ground was the focus of our attention for at least three afternoons…Ah, the imagination of children!

Of course, playing with a street sign might make me sound as if I didn’t have one toy or real game to my name.  I did, I had many lovely toys (very 1980′s themed such as sylvanian families, trolls with massive pink Jedward-stylee hair and a pair of in-line roller blades that hardly got used as I was totally pants at skating in them and feared for the life of both my ankles!) Yet even with all these cracking toys, sometimes the most simple things are the best: For example, give a child a big cardboard box and they’ll be happy for days, creating many different worlds with just their imagination!

Now I am a grown up (sort of, I think I will always be 22 in my head!) August means very different things to me….As the 24th looms with alarming and relentless inevitability, I find myself thinking back over the last 30 years…..

…….Which is a bit of a nutty thing to say really, because I can only really remember stuff starting from age 5, but no-one ever says that do they?

One thing that stands out from all in my memories is the continual and (usually) healthy family rivalry that has always existed, and will always I should think!  Obviously, The Brother and I have always made everything we possibly could into a competition:

One of our favourite games (which I am ashamed to say we’ve really only just grown out of!) was strangely named ‘You are the Liebfraumilch!’ I have no idea why we called it this, as it involved trying to push, overbalance or pull the other onto the sofa before you yourself hit the cushions!  Now obviously, being a bit of a Fatty Blob Head from quite an early age, lets just say I had the weight advantage in this game!  I used to hold my own quite successfully, until about the age of 14.  It was about this time that The Brother got really quite ridiculously strong, and he’s never looked back since! I very rarely get to crow ‘You are the Liebfraumilch’ these days…..The only time I manage it is if he’s not expecting it, in fact not even realising we’re playing the game (Cue evil laugh: Mwahahahahaaaaaaaa!)

So all this family competitiveness was bound to get rather more serious and official as we grew up….(Not that we’re Olympic standard or anything!) The Parent spotted a chart in a shop last year, and presented us with the perfect item to keep us amused for a whole year:

This simple piece of printed cardboard has kept us busy all year.  We’ve got til new year’s eve to complete as many of the 72 different tasks as possible! Hurrah for the Family Olympics!

Now, some of the tasks have been simply made for me:

• Stay in your pjs all day.  Easy Peasy! Next!
• Laugh til you cry.  Done. One of The Friends sent me a big long list of iBone autocorrects that had me rolling about in a very unladylike manner, with tears streaming down my very red face.  Unfortunately I was sat in a cafe at the time, and was making a bit of a tit of myself….I felt the need to read one out to the bloke sat next to me as he was looking to see why I was almost wetting my bridgets….I think he enjoyed it but the same can’t be said for the little old lady who was on my other side…She looked at me as though she wanted to call the men in white jackets!
• Build a snowman.
• Build a sandcastle. Behold both below!

The Brother’s was just too cool!

Now obviously I wish there was a lovely, rose-tinted story to go with the above sandcastle…A halcyon day full of fabulously remembered childhood times that included eating sand-filled sandwiches whilst sat on the fabulously hot sand watching the world go by…..Unfortunately (just for a change) this was not to be……

Picture the scene: Me fully clothed with just the bottom 5 inches of my jeans rolled up to keep the sea and sand off them, brandishing a hastily purchased spade and ‘bucket’ for the occasion.  Now as I’ve grown up, I’ve got a bit funny about sand…You’d never catch me rolling about in it these days, as I just don’t like it when it creeps everywhere and you’re still finding it days later!

So there I am, having a sandcastle competition with The Parents, and I’m trying to do it all from a standing position with a tiny spade that can only have been made for borrowers to dig their vegetable patches with!  I was so busy trying to avoid the demon sand (silly really, as I was attempting to create a pinnacle of building excellence with the stuff!) that I got one foot stuck in a particularly squelchy bit, tried to step back, failed miserably and landed on my (admittedly comfortably padded) bottom with a squeak followed by an ‘oompfh!’

Add The Parents crying with helpless laughter (well done them, they got a sticker for that!) and not helping me in the slightest, things could only have got more horrifyingly embarrassing if there had been any other witnesses to this shameful display of clumsy athletics…….Oh good, yes…That family over there will do….With the hot dad….Brilliant!

My shame was compounded further by the cutiepie four-year old poppet who asked said hot dad: ‘What is that lady doing lying in the sand?’ in a loud voice only a four-year old can achieve!

To top all that off, The Parent won the sandcastle competition (Though I’m wondering if he didn’t bribe the judges with wine…) and I went away from the whole sorry experience with a pulled leg muscle!

So there’s just a few of the stickers I’ve already got…..I’m going to find some of the others slightly more tricky: No tv for a week? Humnnn…..Turn your mobile phone off for 48 hours? Arrgh! I’d rather chew my own arm off!

Guess which one was my very first achieved sticker?  Yep, that’s right….Bake a cake! (Mmmmmmmmmm Cake!)

Love,

Fatty Blob Head

 

Leave Headbanging To The Professionals….

Right.  Ok.

Now I know there’s entirely no excuse for my absolute tardiness and inability to write a post since January.  It’s disgraceful and I am filled with horrendous amounts of scalding shame……

So what has affected my ability to put pen to paper these past months? (Not that it’s actually pen to paper any more, but finger to key just doesn’t have the same romantic-type writer-ish ring to it, now does it?)

I’d like to say that it was because I was kidnapped by an insanely scary yet pure-at- heart band of ruffians who put me to work in a sock factory making well, er, socks. (obviously).  They’ve only just let me out for good behaviour and because I reached my own personal goal of twenty finished socks!  Woo hoo!

Twenty finished socks? I hear you say…that is an absolutely pathetic number of socks, seeing as you’ve been AWOL for 5 months!  Ah, but you don’t know what the socks were made from do you?  They were created with the silk from a very rare and scary spider.  As I have no doubt mentioned before, spiders are not my most favourite thing on earth, so milking them for their silk, (or ‘Silky Milking’ as we in the trade call it) was a harsh and acutely terrifying experience for me!

But that of course, isn’t what happened…  You, dear reader, are slightly silly for even believing that story even a little bit…I know I paint such a rich and interesting picture that you’re saying to yourself…’This must indeed, be true!’ but come on; milking silk for socks?  He he! I bet you feel just a tad bit foolish for being so gullible!

I am now the proud owner of a business!  Yeah baby!  As before (when I was writing blogs willy nilly) my laptop has been permanently attached to my knee, but I have had to employ the willpower of a god (someone really strong like Thor or Odin rather than one of the less impressive ones obviously) to keep my recalcitrant fingers from wandering on to wordpress…I have my very own website and everything! Feel free to pop along and have a gander..I’d love to know what you think:

I had some stunningly-marvellous-websitey-genius-people helping me obviously, but I am rather chuffed at what I have managed to cobble together!  It was all done with a generous helping of very little sleep, lots of cake (mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, cake!), some healthy yet probably slightly childish tantrums at The Brother when I couldn’t possibly understand why I needed to acquaint myself with SEO keywords and Cookies (I assure you-not the chocolate chip filled, interesting kind!)

So that’s my excuse (the real, non spider story one too) and I’m sticking to it!  After a ridiculously long bout of hard work and inforced reclusiveness, I am back in the world, and don’t feel such debilitating guilt for taking an hour off on a sunday to catch you all up on FBH news….

Of course, the random occurences and embarrassing happenings haven’t just stopped because I haven’t been writing about them, oh no!  They continue their at inevitable and alarming pace….And so to the title of this particular blog:

As I may have mentioned in the past, I am a person who is 5ft 9in.  Now, this in itself is not a bad thing.  I am able to reach up high in supermarket shelves to help little old ladies to the high up cake (who have been known to bark at me rather than just ask, how rude!), I can also see above most crowds, and make a rather impressive lamp-post with my arm in the air brandishing my illuminated phone for The Titchy Friends along dark alleyways when we’ve had one or two glasses of pink fizz!

So all in all, I have grown used to how tall I am, and the relative pit falls that are associated with what feels like giving the Empire State building a run for its money!  One of these afore-mentioned pit falls happens to be how often I unsuspectingly bang my head (Ah ha!  Now the title becomes clear, heh?) and a few recent instances come to mind:

Instance 1 (Also known as Handbag Head Horreurs!)

A new handbag always has me clutching it protectively to my side, so imagine me in the cinema loo:  No hook.  There’s no way on this great earth of ours that I am putting it down on any manky surface.  Ever.  What to do?  It will fall off and become a nuisance if I leave it on my shoulder…..Hang it around my neck: Huzzah!  A nifty and rather clever solution, if I don’t say so myself!  Everything is going swimmingly until it comes to pulling up my jeans (yes I know this might be ‘too much of the informations’ for all of you sensitive creatures out there, but bear with!)

I lean forward, and in that small pocket of time, stupidly forget about the sheer volume and weight of said handbag (I am one of those people who will be able to produce whatever you need: paracetamol, nail file, plasters, cake, safety pins, lip balm, mints, chocolate, washing line, kitchen sink…)  As you can probably guess, I lose the battle with my now evil and cackling handbag, and crash my poor head into the stall door in front of me.

Now this is a popular cinema, with anything up to 30-ish female patrons making use of the facilities at any one time:  Once they’ve got over the fact that there seems to be some sort of crazed monster trying unsuccessfully to escape the stall, there ensues a deathly silence only punctuated by a nervous giggle from one small girl.  The next painful dilemma for me then is: Do I stay in there and quietly die of shame and embarrassment, or do I walk out of there, head held high as though nothing strange whatsoever has occurred?  Much as I’d have liked to do the former, the latter won-just! (I think Ryan Reynolds was in the film I was about to watch, and the prospect of watching him gorgeously smoulder on the big screen for two hours would probably have got me out of that loo even if I’d managed to lose all my clothes and grow a tail!)

And now we come to yesterday’s delightful occurence, and the reason that prompted me to pull FBH out of semi-retirement:

Instance 2 (Also known as The Cake Made Me Do It)

Cake. (mmmm, cake)  Yes It would be about cake wouldn’t it?!

Picture the scene:  In a coffee shop with The Parents, The Brother and New And Lovely Sweetie Of The Brother (Catchy title, I know!) and New And Lovely Sweetie Of The Brother asks me if I’m having cake. (She’s new, she’ll learn that is a most redundant question!)  So anyway, I look towards the cake.  I can’t see what the inside of the toffee cake looks like, so I lean in to get a closer look.  What my cake-distracted brain hasn’t quite managed to compute in enough time, is this:

As with any sensible coffee/cake establishment, there is a highly polished (almost invisible – honest) pane of glass in between me and the cake.  Sensible, otherwise they’d be forever having to quell cake-induced riots I’m sure…

A most almighty crash occurs, with my head being the main protagonist in a very excruciating and mortifying scene where, thankfully the glass remains whole, and where New And Lovely Sweetie Of The Brother and I are able to laugh our way up the queue, and hopefully dispel anyone else’s view of me being mentally unhinged by our ability to see the funny side!

I also crashed my head in exactly the same place on The Parent’s car boot later on, but as this was simply painful and not funny, we shall gloss over my obvious misfortune and go straight on to the fact that:

I managed to achieve a personal best by mentioning the word ‘cake’ 16 times in one blog post.  Hurrah!

I hope this finds you all well, and in less pain than me, as no doubt you are all sensible people and manage not to be taken in by cake (woo, 17 times!) on such a regular basis!

Love,

Fatty Blob Head

Almost Midnight Pancakes

Hello chaps!

Now I know I have been beyond rubbish when it comes to actually doing any blogs for the last few months, and for this I apologise most profusely!  (Setting up your own business takes time, energy and a lot of biscuits!)  But of course I couldn’t let the Christmas season slink on by in a flutter of glitter and cake (Mmmm, cake!) without a few words on the subject….

So what does Christmas and New Year mean to me?  Well, pretty much what it means to everyone else:  The insane panic of the forgotten presents, random family members popping up when you least expect them, chocolate, pink fizz, and the same films and tv programs every year……

Now this may seem tedious and slightly boring to say we watch the same programs every year, but Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without at least one episode of the Vicar of Dibley (Think an abundance of Christmas dinners and Dawn French squeeeezing that last mangy looking sprout in between her teeth!)

We even have a Home Alone night every year where I, The Brother and The Parents sit down to watch Home Alone 1 and 2 (Not 3-No Macaulay Culkin?  How rude!) and laugh in exactly the same places as last year!  Over the years as The Parent has got a bit older, he grumbles if we make him watch a film in the evening; yet with The Home Alones he chuckles along with the rest of us, and it is now a firm Family Tradition!

Other Family Traditions include stockings in the bed on Christmas morning (Yes I know The Brother and I add up to nearly sixty, but we will do this til one of us ambles off to have a family of our own!)  Over the years this Family Tradition has improved considerably; it now includes a snazzy bottle of fizz usually balanced precariously in the duvet, to go with the stocking stalwarts of:

Chocolate coins (get scoffed as soon at they get pulled out of said stocking!)

A Toothbrush (Father Christmas always gets the specific make wrong but hey, he tries!)

A scratch card (I’ve won a small amount once in 13 years)

A chocolate FC (I bite his head off first, oops never mind!)

An apple and an orange (I think FC picked this one up from when The Parents were young whippersnappers….a nod to healthy eating at Christmas!?  They never get eaten, and The Brother once left his in his stocking for a whole year….Mouldy wasn’t a descriptive enough word for what was left!)

There is of course different little pressies every year too.

About 5 years ago I noticed that Father Christmas was doing a wonderful job with everybody’s stocking, including his own…

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU ARE YOUNG ENOUGH TO BE UPSET BY THE ACTUAL ORIGIN OF FC BEING MY MOTHER, LOOK AWAY NOW!

What?  That’s not how a spoiler works?  Eh?  Oh!  I’m supposed to give a warning THEN tell them the news!  Oh well…..Ooops.

So I took over her stocking so she didn’t have to open presents she’d wrapped a mere 7 hours beforehand and look excited!  Now she really is excited with the small random bits I collect for her, and everybody’s happy! (Especially after the fizz at 8am, whoop!)

Inevitably, the actual job of filling our stockings fell to me.  I am always the last one awake on Christmas Eve, so I get to actually be FC!  I am sorry to say there’s no mince pies, sherry or costumes involved, yet I am stupidly excited as though I was a little girl-so this makes up for the lack in traditional dress and nosh!

Now the naughty person that is The Brother encouraged me to the last glass of Fizz in the bottle before heading to his bed, so let’s just say I was a tiny bit Merry Christmas at this point!   Rustling bags whilst giggling and muttering HO HO HO under my breath, I filled each stocking with goodies, sprinkling a liberal quantity of monetary chocolate: the real currency of the world!

That’s what I thought I was doing anyway…..!

What was really happening was the following: I was ambling about shoving pressies in willy nilly, managed to let my stocking fall through the banisters and knock into a photo frame that resides on a ledge on the stairs and send it crashing to it’s noisy demise at the bottom!

Stealthy wasn’t quite the word!

And so to the title of this particular blog:  Almost Midnight Pancakes!

A new yet hopefully annual tradition that popped up on New Year’s Eve this year!  It was all down to The Parent planning one pudding but not quite making it with the right ingredients, pancakes being the next best (and available) alternative!

Have you ever tried making (and flipping in a slightly drunken yet very hilarious manner) pancakes at almost midnight on NYE?  No? Well I thoroughly recommend it!

So the recurring theme throughout Christmas just might have been fizz in various forms and quantities…I think I’m off to do some sort of detox thing…..Orange squash and Macaroons I think!

I hope you all had a cracking festive season, and if anyone has any annoying friends who are counting down to next Christmas as I have…Tell them to put a sock in it!  (Or should that be a mouldy fruit stocking!?!)

Love,

Fatty Blob Head

The Nutty Chef

Today I was advised by a crazy chef (but in a genius, hilarious all round snazzbuckets-bloke sort of way) to pop the couple of dry roasted peanuts he’d just reverently placed in my hand into the ground and watch them grow into a magnificent plant-type object!

Apparently I’d be able to climb this plant tomorrow and have wondrous adventures…I’m not sure whether I’m ready to be featured in ‘Jenn and the Nutstalk’ quite yet, but who knows, I may follow his advice in the not too distant future!

And what was this highly entertaining chef’s name?  Stephen Bulmer;  This guy is a solid-gold legend!

A few minutes before he imparted the slightly suspect peanut advice, he had been busy making his apprentice get his face painted with a rather fetching pair of black glasses and a bright red smackeroo-lipstick mark, all of which Aaron endured with extremely good grace, and even with a cheeky grin!

Having introduced Aaron to the audience as Maureen, he then proceeded to smear glucose on Aaron’s chin, add copious amounts of chopped parsley and present his creation to us; a fetching bright green goatee!  This was in a marquee with about 97 people all watching avidly, giggling away for an hour this afternoon!

I was working at an event in Northamptonshire, a food show one of The Cousins organises with her business partner.  I go along every year to help out, with various tasks including welcoming the public, handing out programs, directing people round the event, and being thoroughly entertained by Chef Bulmer!

This guy is unlike any other chef you’ll ever meet; he’s uproariously quick and had me laughing continuously, and produces top-notch grub whilst doing a cracking stand up comedy routine!
He’s also partial to throwing ingredients at the audience for them to try; employing the (admittedly lesser-used) ’25 Minute Rule’ when Joe Blogs in the audience wasn’t quite quick enough!  Tomatoes, sausages and chocolate pieces all found their way into people’s hands, mouths and bags!

It’s certainly impossible to be grumpy around this man, he had me grinning widely from the moment he turned up, and even ‘helped’ in his own way when I was doing the more embarrassing part of my job:  Announcing at the top of my voice the various food demonstrations going on in the marquee behind me!

Now I’m not one who really minds everybody stopping and turning to stare at me when I’m yelling, after all that was what I was hoping to achieve by doing so, but when Chef Bulmer happens to be standing behind me at the time and starts yelling helpful hints at the 200 people in front of me, I couldn’t help be a little bit nervous at what he might have said next!

When not alternately chuckling and cringing at what he was up to (and the amount of stuff he was able to just about get away with!) I was busy directing about a thousand people to the toilets, buying raspberry liqueur (yum!) and sniggering at The Brother.  You see, he had an absolutely genius role over the two-day event;

Also, there was another fantastic costume he sported magnificently for most of the day:

Luckily The Brother has always loved a spot of dressing up, so took to these roles with the kind of polish and finesse usually only seen in Shakespearean actors!  He even developed a scarily accurate waddle-bouncy walk whilst wearing the fat chef costume, and only made a total of 2 small children cry which I think may be a show record! (Don’t quote me on that one, I’d have to check my sources)

So between Chef Bulmer and The Brother, I managed to spend a large amount of time having a good giggle, and even tripping up on some pesky cobbles and nearly landing on someone’s cup of tea didn’t even phase me!

All of a sudden, it was the end of the show.  Stephen Bulmer had launched his last (delightfully fresh, locally grown ingredient) missile and left me clutching my dry roasted magic peanuts, hope and excitement evident in my eyes!  He dragged the long-suffering Maureen/Aaron off to pastures new with a cheeky wink and a chef’s-uniform-clad bum wiggle!

It made me want to sign up for his cookery school just so I could have more fun, but for that I’d have to deny who I really am: an amazing cook, obviously!  I really doubt that there’s anything he could teach me that I didn’t already know….In fact, I reckon that next year I might give him my recipe for plastic soup, that one’s always a winner!  (Small plug for my FBH archives: If you haven’t read Plastic Soup, get on with it!  He he!)

After a combined effort tidying up and long tussle with copious amounts of rubbish (we filled two skips worth!) we called it a day…exhausted but happy!

Having driven home and walked from the car to my house (only about 15 metres) and appeared scarily as if I were an arthritic waddling 96-year-old granny, I dragged my extremely useless, limp and achy body off to bed! (Via the bit of earth under my window to plant the nuts, of course!)

And so the Food Show is over for another year; we had cracking fun with the good people of Northamptonshire, almost-perfect weather (it only drizzled for half an hour, which unfortunately was still enough to make my hair frizz out to Lily Savage proportions!) and above all, buckets of scrumbunctious nosh at every turn!

Here’s hoping that Maureen’s glasses truly were applied with face paint, otherwise the permanent marker’s going to cause a few giggles back at the cookery school!

Love,
Fatty Blob Head

Hats All Folks!

I’m sure it happens in most places across the UK, so most of you will understand me when I tell you that this weekend was my town’s annual folk festival.
Forgive me if you already know of this delightful occasion, but for those who don’t, here’s what it is:

Among other activities too numerous and exciting to list here, there’s live music with some morris dancing, then a group called ‘Peatbog Faeries’ with some added ’Spooky Men’s Chorale’ and rounded off nicely with ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’.  Like my explanation?  Good wasn’t it?  Now you know exactly what it’s about!

Ha!

And the main culprits?
Definitely the Morris Dancers.

Freaky people dressed up in raggedy costumes with black makeup haphazardly applied to most of the face (sometimes missing out crucial patches by mistake…Beauts)

Now in my book, there’s shortish list of characters in life that scare the heeby-jeebies out of me, and morris dancers are firmly placed within this category!  Others include any type of clown, idiotic mimes and chav-men with a distinct and disgusting lack of a top of any kind whilst out in public! (I don’t care if it’s a lovely sunny day; there’s no excuse for such a display of scrawny/blotchy/hairy chestage!)

Anyway, back to the morris dancers….Every year my hometown is overrun with these beasties from another planet, and I have proudly perfected a very good impression of not being affected by them whilst I’m at work.

This is generally achievable as I’m inside and they are outside; a simple truce that has worked well for us all over the years.  My downfall this year however, was to have a mahoosive and uncontrollable urging for Battenberg cake (mmmmmmmmmmmmm, cake!)

Now you all by now might have realised what I’m like when it comes to cake….It has a control over me that is hard to find in any other aspect of human life:  maybe only matched by the urges The Beckhams have for naming their children with unfortunate and ridiculous names, or Lady Gaga’s passion for interesting meat-based clothing!

In my opinion, Battenberg is right up there with the cake greats, and once the thought takes hold in my brain nothing can dislodge it until I am in possession of the snazzy yellow and pink confection!  What is even more impressive is that The Minions aren’t all that bothered about it, meaning there is more for The Boss and I!  Whoop!

Off out I ventured into the Alien Land of The Morris, taking care not to engage any of said dancers in eye contact of any kind (I’ve heard it said this is how they catch you and suck out your soul.)  Unfortunately I was travelling the normally pleasant, uncluttered streets at a geriatric snail’s pace due to the sheer volume of visitors and massive meadow-filled hats that are all the rage in the ‘Mo-Dancing’ community… (Seriously, I doubt Holland had many tulips left)  These hats were everywhere, I wonder if they had to employ a couple of students simply to follow everyone round watering them all day?

Anyway, I came to a total street-sized blockage which turned out to be a dancing demonstration.  There was nothing for it but to sidle through right on the edge of the action:  I was a woman on a mission and nothing was going to keep me from my prize!

‘Almost Managing To Evade Humiliation’ ought to be my continual tag line!  Why?  Because I’d forgotten about the yelping.  The Mo-D’s love a good yelp mid dance!  There’s some sticky stick things which they brandish in a roguishly cheerful manner, whilst shaking their bell-clad clogs and yelping at the tops of their voices!  I had my back to one such monster just as he let out a shriek that could have felled a couple of shire horses and a whole troupe of badgers at once:

The lady next to me jumped and giggled.  Oh how I wish I’d had the composure to do the same!  Instead, I went down the slightly more mortifying route of matching him, shriek for shriek!  I leaped high in the air and landed far too close to a very ‘Licky Neck Daddy’, who whisked his small child away from my flight path quicker than you could say ‘Atrociously Feathered Hat’!

Let’s just say I fled the scene as quickly as my legs could carry me, and went the long way back to work to avoid all further encounters with the Mo-Ds or the hot Dad!

Let it be known that I am not in any way being deliberately disparaging to the wonders that are the Mo-Ds and their assorted offspring, merely stating my opinion on all things Folk related!

I’m not sure what the point of the whole exercise was, other than to terrify sane  humans and most breeds of dog….After all, what is the use of dressing up in that slightly scruffy get-up?  Has anyone ever seen a Mo-D bank manager?  Or a policeman?  What about the other end of the jobs market?  How many successful Morris Dancing Cat Burglars do you think there are out there?  The bells on their shoes alone would render the raid useless, let alone the yelping!

I’m glad the festival is over yet again; to avoid further humiliations next year I may just invent a nasty 24hr tropical malady to keep me occupied….Rather that than more cloggy bell dancers!

I slept that night safe in the knowledge that only 27% of the festival revellers had witnessed my own unique take on the tradition of the Mo-Dance; for me, that’s way below the FBH average!

I never did get any Battenburg.  Drat.
Love,

Fatty Blob Head

Going Out Out

Ah, it’s that time of year once again.

The school holidays.

Obviously over the years it has changed in its significance and meaning:  When I was at school it meant the start of six impossibly long weeks with endless possibilities and wearing exactly what I wanted.  The evenings were glorious and golden, probably because we were allowed to bed a few hours later than normal, as well as the prospect of the traditional six weeks lie-in!  Oh how I miss you, dear lie-in!

Once I left school the absence of the holidays had a bitter ring to them, as though someone out there was laughing at me saying ‘Ha!  Life now gets harder and you get less time off just to rub your nose in it!’

Then came the next phase:  The Holiday Child Annoyance.

I love children.  Ask any one of The Friends….  I get all broody and want to hug all of their offspring as much as possible!  Yet the summer holidays brings out the irritating weird ones whose parents seem to keep them locked up the rest of the year, which is of course a shame when they do let them out;  We are quite happy not getting hounded Sept – June and it seems a shame to pop the bubble!

I heard one in the street just yesterday:

Mam, I’m hungry, can we go to Greggs now?’ (Other purveyors of grease filled lumps of stodge are available)

‘No Dale, I’m trying to choose a picture frame’

‘But Mam, I’m really BLOODY hungry and I’m getting ANNOYED now!  We NEED to get some food!’

Charming!

On to the most recent phase, The Teacher’s Escape Holidays:

I seem to know a lot of teachers.  Some are my age, and others are older, but what they all have in common (except the obvious being teachers part, keep up!) is their fervent, almost manic love for the six weeks holiday.  Every single teacher I know finds the last two weeks before summer a particular struggle as they count the number of sleeps to go til freedom.  Then when the day of abandon is upon them they go a wee bit loopy and get very carried away, declaring to the world that they are ‘Going Out Out’ (Cue triumphant music!)

Going Out Out is very different from merely going ’Out’.  When I go Out, I only do every-day things to get ready:  Shower, hair, makeup, iron clothes and so on; usually whilst listening to whatever’s on the radio at the time.  (That is my way of saying I like what I’m hearing but don’t ask me to name any artists;  The other day I made a complete tit out of myself because I thought Scouting For Girls was an organisation for tomboy brownies!)

When I’m Going Out Out, I’ve got the full shebang going on! There’s usually a full team of backing dancers, beauticians, magicians and designers all there to assist with the centuries-old Going Out Out rituals:

Ritual One:  Half an hour shower, double shampoo and an exfoliation routine that would have the most hardened dermatologist kneeling in awed wonder at my feet!

Ritual Two:  Makeup that takes at least half an hour longer than normal, but looks exactly the same as usual.  A natural phenomenon no one has actually been able to fathom yet!

Ritual Three:  The best going out handbag.  Reserved for special occasions due to its fragile beauty and the fact that it’s so small it usually gets buried under the mounds of less special bags as though they were hiding it on purpose!

Ritual Four:  Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’  blasting from the sound system as loud as the neighbours can stand.  Do not judge me!  This is my getting ready song:  Once chosen there’s no changing it, it’s yours for life!

So there you have it, the Four Rituals of Going Out Out.  And what happens that makes Going Out Out so special in comparison to a normal evening?

It’s when everyone endeavours to make it to the club at the end of the night and when one too many drinks are had!  There’s a bigger air of celebration which makes everyone extra giddy and bouncy, and more money is spent in 5 hours than we spend on food in two weeks!

It’s when at the end of a hilarious evening we’re all still standing and rather on the peckish side:  Off we pop to the nearest takeaway-kebab-fine-dining-establishment where we all giggle at the random leery nutters in the queue behind us, until we reach the front and start slurringly ordering cheesy chips and Diet Coke.

Well, that’s what The Friends usually do anyway!  For some reason, when I’ve had a few pink fizzes everyone becomes extra familiar; from the bouncer on the club door to the taxi driver:

I remember one such evening of a very successful Going Out Out staged in Sheffield;  It’s my turn to order the requisite mound of undercooked chips covered in a solid lump of cheese, yet what comes out of my mouth is the never before uttered (as far as I know anyway!) phrase:

Darling, I want a Battered Sausage!

To this day, one of The Friends still occasionally texts me with those six little words, and I know that he’s eating a sausage or someone’s mentioned it.

It’s most likely very wrong to judge a night out’s success on that one phrase, but I do!  Long live the Going Out Out Rituals and the Battered Sausage!  They have both brought happiness to my life in different ways and I salute them!

Teachers, enjoy your massive holiday; I grudgingly suppose you deserve it….  It doesn’t stop me being forever envious and just a little bit miffed!

Love,

Fatty Blob Head