Ageing and Andrews

I’ve been thinking about age recently; I’m approaching another landmark birthday.  As one gets older, landmark birthdays are separated by more years but seem to come with increasing frequency.  Generally, as they age, men lose hair where they want it and grow it where they don’t.  They spend less time washing their hair and more time washing their faces – my thanks to a man named Andrew for that last observation.

“A man named Andrew” sounds like a title for a western.  I wonder what others there might be in the series: “The Magnificent Andrews”, “A Fistful Of Andrews”, “For A Few Andrews More”, “Pale Andrew”, “The Good, the Bad and the Andrew”, “The Wild Andrew”, “Pat Garrett And Andy The Kid”, “Andrew Cassidy And The Sundance Kid”, “The Outlaw Andrew Wales”, “Andrew”, “Andrew Rides Again”. Of course, there are also the classic old TV westerns: “Shotgun Andrew”, “A Message From Andrew”, “Flowers For Andrew”, “Sentenced To Andrew”, “Old Andrew’s Sister”, “Cannonball Andrew”, “Hopalong Andrew”, “The Lone Andrew”.

Phew, I think I’ve got Andrews out of my system now. And westerns.  Perhaps I should turn to music for a change of pace and a bit of light relief; something by the Andrews Sisters, perhaps?

Predictions for 2009

Finance:

• Sterling weakens further and the pound sinks to parity with the Zimbabwean dollar.
• In a completely unexpected move, the Federal Reserve recommends that the USA join the Eurozone.

Sport:

• FIA regulations restrict Formula 1 cars to human only power and the World championship is won by a previously unknown tap dancer from Kidsgrove.
• In response to the continuing credit crunch and declining pound, Lord Coe announces that the 2012 Olympics will be held in the back garden of a Mrs Nellie Pardue of 29 Bramble Way,  Croydon. It is hoped this move will reduce the overspend to around £14bn.

Music:

• Eligibility for the download chart is restricted to finalists from X-Factor, Pop Idol and Big Brother. No-one over the age of eight notices.
• It is discovered that Osama bin Laden has been making fake video broadcasts, in which he claims to be Ringo Starr, hates Liverpool and doesn’t want anything to do with his fans. The prank only comes to light when the real Ringo makes an impassioned plea for anyone to get in touch with him; even Sir Paul McCartney.

Technology:

• Windows version 7 early release is made available. All features of previous releases, including the text editor, calculator, e-mail client, web browser and the ability to run applications are now only available in an add-on entitled “You’re stuffed without this pal – Live!”, expected to cost $99. All familiar menus, options and general features have been moved into illogical and difficult to find groups, which reflect the way Microsoft believe their users think, having not bothered to ask them. The new operating system requires a 3 gigahertz quadruple core processor, 8 gigabytes RAM and 500 gigabytes free disk space. It takes a mere twenty-five minutes to start up and is capable of running MS Word at nearly 50% of the speed Word 1.0 ran on an IBM PC with around one thousandth of the raw computing power, back in 1983.
• Nintendo release Wii Yum, using a special food tray controller, with built in sensors – the Wii diet dish. Wii Yum allows players to measure food intake and play amusing games, whilst dieting. Amazingly, Nintendo appear to underestimate demand and only ship a dozen units to each continent to cover the first six months sales.

The birth of Scoffle

Scoffle started in mid 1950s London. Teenagers, as they were becoming known, were developing their own cultural identities through rock and roll music, dance and other ideas imported from their exotic and distant American cousins. Although it would be many years before the term ‘fast food’ found its way into popular parlance, the hamburger was already finding favour amongst the newly empowered Youth on both sides of the Atlantic. It was only a matter of time before a fusion of the terpsichorean and epicurean occurred.

The poor “washer-uppers” of London’s myriad cafes and coffee shops soon started using the implements of their trade, as substitutes for the unattainably expensive musical instruments used by the jazz and blues musicians, who influenced what was to become scoffle. In 1955 a down and out plongeur, named Terry Dagenham, assembled a band, which was to set the blueprint for all scoffle combos thereafter. Terry, who chose the stage name “Lenny”, was quick to see the musical possibilities of a piece of string stretched between two waitresses, and it is he who is credited with being the first to carry a rhythm by striking a steel draining board with a knickerbocker glory spoon.

Many other scoffle legends were to emerge over the next five years, including the incomparable Cheryl Croydon and her “Milk-shake Mamas”.  Cheryl and the girls will be remembered for the enigmatic “Two espressos after sunset”, the heart-rending “No starters for table nine” and the epic “Fifty covers before midnight”.

It is Lenny Dagenham however, who was the undisputed king of scoffle. He became as famous for his novelty songs (“Does your relish lose its flavour in the ice-box over night?” and “My old man’s a waiter”) as for his more serious compositions (“Rock Island Diner” and “Seven golden burger buns”).

Unfortunately, the scoffle boom was short-lived and, as the sixties started to swing and the British public started to develop more sophisticated tastes, eschewing the coffee bar for the Chinese restaurant, the hits even dried up for Lenny Dagenham. In 1961 Lenny teamed up with Cheryl Croydon for the innovative “Shake, rattle and spring roll”, featuring Cheryl on chopsticks, but it was not well received by scoffle purists and didn’t threaten the charts.

Scoffle was gone, but no forgotten. It is believed that, prior to forming the Beatles, John, Paul, George and Ringo had all played in scoffle bands – maybe – and scoffle continues to influence song-writers and musicians to this day – probably.

Lenny and Cheryl are no longer with us, but who can honestly say they can order a cup of tea and a slice of toast, at their local greasy spoon, without remembering them?

Kitchen sculptures, oil and oats

I tried to make some porridge this morning; I hadn’t done this since last winter and I was in a hurry. I looked at the instructions on the side of the box, expecting to see something along the lines of “Add one cup of oats and two cups of milk, per person, to a large bowl. Microwave on full power for four minutes”; I didn’t have time for the far more aesthetically pleasing saucepan method, although, as it turns out, this approach would have been quicker, and easier to fix when things started going wrong.

For some bizarre reason, the well known manufacturers of our favoured brand of porridge have decided that their instructions didn’t present the sort of challenge any self respecting porridge eater would expect, nay demand. The “X cups of oats to Y cups of milk” approach has been replaced with “Add 340ml of milk to 45g of oats”. For how many portions? Will this feed one small child, or will it expand, once heat is applied, to an amount sufficient for a ravening football squad?

I scoured the box for further clues, but there were none. I’d have to find some kitchen scales, so I could weigh the oats, and a measuring jug, so I could add the required amount of milk. After much banging of cupboard doors and slamming of kitchen drawers, I’d succeeded in creating a sort of modernist sculpture out of all the items I’d chucked about, in a frenzied attempt to locate the scales and measuring jug. If I’d had the time to admire my inadvertent creation, I might have called it “Egg-cup with saucepan, blender and crewit”. But I didn’t have time and I swept the unstable structure to one side, to make way for the weighing and mixing of the long overdue porridge. As the pile of implements settled into a new shape, the tiny funnel I use for filling my hip-flask fell to the floor and rolled under the cooker, where it remains amongst a sea of fluff, punctuated by the occasional dessicated – formerly frozen – pea. Now I was really cross.

Based on my supreme ignorance of the subject, I guessed that 45g of oats would be for one person and added 135g to the bowl, allowing enough for myself and two hungry children. I realized my mistake too late; 135g is an awful lot of oats. I decided that I probably only needed half the amount. I couldn’t just waste 67.5g of oats, so I decided to return them from whence they had come. The box design allows a small square pouring hole to be opened via perforations in the cardboard. Returning a not inconsiderable amount of oats through this orifice was clearly not going to work. In a moment of inspiration, I tore a sheet of kitchen towel from the roll, folded it in half and then fashioned it into a crude, and slightly too floppy funnel, the end of which I positioned over the opening in the oats box. I grabbed a handful of oats from the bowl and emptied it into my makeshift refilling device. Around fifty percent made it back into the box, the remainder scattering itself over a surprisingly wide area and adding a snow-like enhancement to “Egg-cup with saucepan, blender and crewit”. I persevered and finally reduced the amount of oats in the bowl to a level I deemed appropriate. All I needed to do now was add the milk. The measuring jug was next to the sculpture and glistening in a way a clean measuring jug shouldn’t. It was also surrounded by a rapidly expanding pool of extra virgin olive oil. The last rearrangement of “EC with S, B & C” had not only consigned my valuable little funnel to a dusty grave, but had also dislodged a bottle of oil.

I grabbed the jug and attempted to clean it with my kitchen towel funnel. Take it from me, you don’t want to mix porridge oats and olive oil. The sudden increase in the level of lubrication, brought about by the unholy union of oats and oil, caught me by surprise. The jug slipped from my hand and fell the short, but fatal distance to the stone flagged floor. A traditional, stone flagged, country kitchen looks great until someone like me tries to prepare a simple bowl of porridge in it.

My only option now was to estimate the amount of milk required. I poured enough in to cover the oats completely and placed the bowl in the microwave. After four minutes cooking on on full power, I’d managed to create a congealed mass, which could be removed from its container as a single, bowl shaped, lump. In a larger size, I suspect it would have made a very hard wearing trampoline. I didn’t have the time, or fortitude to start again, so I just added more milk to the trampoline and attempted to mix the two together.

“I suggest you have extra syrup with your porridge this morning kids.” They eyed me with suspicion – normally I lecture them on the damage such concentrated sugar can do to their teeth. We chewed our way through breakfast in an uneasy silence. My relief at them departing to clean their teeth was short lived; as they attempted to achieve any sort of brushing motion in their porridge cloyed mouths, I turned to face the bomb-site, which had been a kitchen a mere half hour earlier.

I will spend this morning tidying the kitchen and will then set out to purchase a measuring jug. If I’m feeling brave, I may fish around under the cooker with a piece of bent wire, in the hope of retrieving that precious little funnel.

Tomorrow we’re having muesli.

Underarm chemical warfare

We had a little Euro-break last week, starting with a weekend trip to Brussels, to stay with friends. As tradition dictates, we visited a number of bars and sampled several splendid Belgian beers. At the first hostelry to be blessed with our custom, I was shocked to see a woman at a nearby table light up a cigarette. “Aha!” I thought, as the barman swiftly made his way through the thronging room towards her. “The home of the European Union is not a sensible place to flout the international smoking ban”. He loomed over her, she looked up from her beer, exhaled a blue-grey plume of banned smoke and he gave her an ashtray. The ban has been implemented comprehensively and without opposition or revolt in the UK; Parisians light up outside cafes but don’t venture in with an ignited Gitane, Gallouise, or Disque Bleu. Even in deepest, most rural Ireland, where I imagined they would just turn a blind eye to the new law, a couple of pubs tried it on, got fined and then towed the line. But in Brussels, the seat of European policy making power, they couldn’t give a toss. Later on we visited an establishment which had an ashtray on every table and a row of them all along the bar; not only were half the clientèle puffing away happily, but most of the staff had a tab on the go as they poured frothing demis of Jupiler and Leffe Blonde. For the first time in a year or so, I returned home from a bar with my clothes stinking of smoke, but couldn’t find it in my heart to condemn the Belgians; in fact, a tiny part of me almost admired them.

We spent the remainder of the week in France and on the first day there, I ran out of deodorant. I favour the stick type product and set off to a local pharmacie to find one. Once I’d got over the shock of the price – I know the Euro is strong against Sterling at the moment, but five quid? Anyway, I decided I really couldn’t face spending a week smelling like the inside of Zinedine Zidane’s jock-strap every morning, after the short trip to buy a fresh baguette, via the four stories of steep spiralling stairs in our ‘historic’ apartment block, so I made the purchase. I rushed home, showered, dried myself and applied the newly acquired deodorant. The aftermath of this simple toiletry operation took me on a journey across a sensory spectrum of remarkable scale. Initially, I was aware of a cool, not unpleasant sensation, which gave way to an invigorating, if mildly alarming, tingling. The tingling subsided as I walked into the bedroom to get dressed. A couple of minutes later, just as I was popping my arm into the sleeve of a shirt, the tingling returned. This time it was a little more intense and my alarm progressed from mild to the twitchy-eyed stage. It became clear that my armpits were hosting some sort of synchronised chemical reaction, as the intensity of the tingling increased to a level, which can only be described as burning. The only way I could think of ending my increasing underarm agony, was a return to the shower – BIG mistake. Whatever chemical process was going on, it was clearly enhanced by the addition of water; if you’ve ever seen a lump of sodium dropped in a bucket of water, you’ll know what I mean. In a panic stricken frenzy, I grabbed the soap and set to work, whipping up so much lather that I looked like a failed attempt at cavity arm insulation. Eventually, the pain subsided and I was able to complete my ablutions, dress and head out into the glorious, if expensive, neighbourhood. An hour later, as I sat in a small cafe, enjoying a large espresso – a snip at 6.50 Euros – I noticed the aroma. At first, I thought the waiter must be sporting an excessive amount of very cheap after-shave, although this seemed unlikely – most French waiters would rather gnaw their own limbs off than be caught in possession of poor quality toiletries. It was when I raised my arm to attract his attention that the awful truth dawned on me. I had applied the aromatic equivalent of a permanent tattoo. It didn’t so much prevent odour and perspiration as completely mask it, rather like the smell of a sewage farm might overwhelm that of a buttercup.

As the week progressed, I got used to applying the minute amount of deodorant required to provide at least seventy-two hour protection and my armpits developed a bit of resistance to the chemicals. I thought the offending toiletry device might be confiscated by customs, but no such luck, so I’m still in possession of it. I’ve tried using it as an air freshener in the shed, but quite frankly, the aroma of stale cat food, weed-killer and rotting mouse is infinitely preferable. I daren’t throw it away, as I’m terrified of causing some sort of rural biohazard incident. I’ll have to settle for leaving it in a lead-lined box in the cellar for its half-life, which must run into decades. Give me weapons grade plutonium any day; it’s odourless and far kinder to your armpits.

Navigation by Spam

Have you noticed that slices of Spam don’t have a uniform texture? Each slice contains changes in colour and contour, which look rather like a map of a region of wilderness; albeit, a pink one. Living, as I do, amongst the hills of England’s Peak District, I am familiar with such charts. The other uncanny thing about this tinned meat / cartography correlation is the fact that ‘Spam’ is, of course, ‘maps’ spelled backwards.

Maybe I should point this wonderful phenomenon out to Hormel Foods, owners of the Spam licence. Perhaps specific maps could be incorporated in the Spam manufacturing process. Imagine setting out on some intrepid expedition, with your survival and navigation equipment:

High tech wicking base layer – check
Thermally efficient middle layer – check
Durable, ultra light, breathable outer shell layer – check
Bivi bag – check
GPS – check
Emergency flares – check (I withstood the temptation to insert a 1970s fashion joke at this point)
Water purification tablets – check

Hey, wait a minute! Where’s the Dark Peak region 1:25,000 scale tin of Spam? OK chaps, I need to plot a course to our revised first expedition objective, the village store, tinned food shelf.

Anti-gay support for lesbians

I couldn’t help sniggering this morning when I found out about the planned ‘State-Wide School Sick-Out’, in protest against the California Teachers Association’s $1M donation to fight Proposition 8. In summary, a group of parents, students and teachers, who are against gay marriage in California are planning to stage a protest today.

The funniest thing about this is that the State-Wide School Sick-Out organisers have selected a war-time reproduction  poster to support their campaign; the same poster which has been available for purchase, with a lesbian caption, for several years.

Here are the two:

Pro Proposition 8

Pro lesbian

You can find out more about the pro Proposition 8 guys over at Beetle Blogger, the ‘No on 8′ campaign at All Facts and Opinions and you can buy the poster from Amazon UK. Tee hee!

Edible golf tees

In these times of financial hardship, an increasing number of people are turning to the old war-time practice of ‘make do and mend’. I thought I’d share a few tips, inspired by those passed down to me by my parents and grandparents.

• Grow lots of carrots and use them for everything. Here are some ideas to start you off:
  • Edible golf tees
  • Novel wine bottle stoppers
  • Aerodynamic improvements to the fronts of roller-skates
  • Cut into the right shapes, artificial goldfish
  • Any labour-saving device, which can be fashioned from a carrot
  • Exciting and original knee-cap decorations
  • Very realistic toy carrots
• Short car journeys are less fuel efficient, so always use the longest possible route to any destination.
• When following a recipe, don’t rush out to buy missing ingredients. Just substitute a carrot for each item you don’t have in the cupboard. Carrot and butter pudding has become a particular favourite in our household.
• Treat your house spiders as pets. They’re free, don’t need feeding and look after themselves whilst you’re on holiday.
• Save money-off coupons from magazines, your local supermarket etc. Boiled up with some grated carrot, they can make an appetizing meal.
• Potato peelings can be sewn together to make stylish and eye-catching leg-warmers.
• If you must buy new clothes, sew fragments of old clothes to them immediately after purchase. This will make them last longer and stop poorer people from feeling jealous.
• Individual strands, from a carefully dismantled hair-net, can be tied together to make an excellent hair-net.

Swiss cheese and pickled eggs

I ran for a bus this morning. It didn’t ask me to, but I thought it would appreciate it. It didn’t. Later on, after much pondering I concluded that the reason for this is that:

a) Buses are inanimate and incapable of even the most basic reflex action, let alone independent thought or reason.
b) They don’t like me.

After this early set-back, my day took a turn for the worse. I discovered I’d run out of Gruyere, apparently as a result of having eaten it previously. I find consuming Gruyere a remarkably uplifting experience and often break out in a grin at the mere thought of it. Imagine my mood, having anticipated the ultimate in cheesy delight, only to be disappointed. I would have consoled myself with fish, chips, peas and a pickled egg, but had neither the time nor the gastric capacity. Although the aforementioned FCP&PE is my favourite meal, bar none, it isn’t something I can eat that often, requiring twenty-four hours of fasting in advance and a minimum of one hour on the couch afterwards, doing very little other than digesting.

Tomorrow I’ll go and buy some more Gruyere. I’ll leave in good time, so I don’t have to run for the bus. I’ll saunter up to it, effecting complete nonchalance and taking care not to make direct eye contact with it. I’ll return home later, elated by my cheese acquisition and emboldened by the fact that, at least once, the bus ran for me and not vice-versa.

The adventure – Part 1: Troffle at eleven

That morning,  I strode purposefully through the portals of the old family pile, knowing that I was about to make a difference. I was armed with a considerable amount of soft cheese and a pair of pink jelly shoes. Hidden from prying eyes by the kitchen garden wall, I packed most of the cheese into the hollows at the backs of my knee joints and smeared the remainder into my hair. Taking care to conceal my beautifully polished Chelsea boots in a plaid shopping bag I keep behind an old privet hedge for this specific purpose, I forced my feet into the jellies; not only were the shoes rather tight, but my mild, anticipation-induced perspiration had rendered my feet a little sticky. Now was not the time to be put off by tight and incongruous footwear, however. Ensuring I was adequately shod, having secured the little plastic straps and buckles, I set off once more, heading across the lower field into Blimpton Wood, a route guaranteed to throw all but the most persistent and accomplished pursuer off the scent. By rather circuitous means, I arrived on the outskirts of Throgmere-under-Panda a little before eleven o’clock. A creature of habit, I stopped in a ginnel, to toast a teacake on my Blewitt. I consumed my elevenses with relish, washing it down with two drafts of home-brewed troffle.

Having cooled my Blewitt off in a nearby beck, I returned it to the poacher’s pocket of my windcheater, from whence I had retrieved it earlier. I checked the wind direction by means of my portable flabskit and made for a back-alley with which I was familiar.

Five minutes later, having attained my objective without detection, I settled down behind a an old water-butt to await the arrival of my unsuspecting quarry.

To be continued…