November 25, 2008
Simon, Tim, thingie
Sunday 10am, BBC2: the highlight of my week, waiting to see if my picture has made it onto the fridge of the Something for the Weekend kitchen. So far I’ve had no luck, but it’s always good to have a goal in life.
For those with better things to do with their Sunday mornings, SFTW is a cookeryish show fronted by Tim Lovejoy (ex some football programme I never saw) and the marvellous Simon Rimmer, who might just be my dream man. He’s that bald bloke who, despite being a committed carnivore, opened a veggie restaurant in Manchester. There is some woman called Amanda on it too, who is a nutritionist by trade (it says here), though I’m not so fussed about her as she never does any cooking.
Every week, Simon, sort of helped by Tim, cooks four dishes. He then invites viewers to have a crack at said dishes, and send in a picture of yourself enjoying them. They like it if you wear an obscure football shirt so that Tim can try and guess which team you’ve got on. The best ones get stuck on the fridge.
Can you believe they didn’t show this pic, taken at me and Lexy’s bonfire bash, of me and Nic enjoying some parkin? OUTRAGE. I blame Nic’s porny expression. It was a particularly low blow when a picture of some floozy dressed in a Bavarian dirndl got on and we didn’t.
Porno parkin
Next week!
August 12, 2008
It’s the new Maxibon: toffee ice cream, surrounded by different toffee ice cream, coated in toffee and studded with toffee crumbly bits.
The word toffee no longer makes sense. I’ve written it too many times.
I wonder if I am an ice cream snob. You know, like when people stop liking a band the minute their records are available in HMV? Well, now you can get Maxibon in every corner shop in London, I’m suddenly not all that bothered.
August 12, 2008
Grovesnor
You know sometimes you’re out dancing and maybe drinking quite a bit and everything’s a bit of a blur, but then the DJ plays a song that blows your mind and then the next morning even though most of the night is a bit muddy you can’t stop thinking about that song and before you even try to get some water into your body you go on google and try to find that song? Well: me and Birgit, Berlin, the Lido, a few weeks ago, Grovesnor and Drive Your Car.
Grovesnor used to be in Hot Chip and everything he does is AMAZING. My current favourite is Only 4 1 Nite 2007. “One drink turns into two and you know, two drinks can turn to a few and I’m ashamed to say I forgot about you, I even started doing the electric boogaloo. Cutting loose, drinking juice, watching her shake her papoose…”
I’m not quite sure he really is using papoose as euphemism for bum/breasts, but I love it anyway.
July 6, 2008
This ought to be the stupidest programme ever, and yet, and yet. One comedian (spindly Sue Perkins) and one journalist (Giles Coren, restaurant critic of the Times and one-time winner of the Bad Sex In Fiction award for a line in his 2005 novel about a penis which leapt around “like a shower dropped in an empty bath”) dress up in silly clothes and, for a week at a time, eat their way through a historical epoch. My favourite was the Supersizers Go… Regency. It featured bonnets, jugged hare and for Coren, eating the diet of the history’s greediest bastard, Prince Regent, later George IV, a breakfast of champagne and pigeon pie. Afterwards, he said he felt “like a python who has swallowed a shopping trolley.”
July 6, 2008
Sometimes known as a Turkish pizza, this flatbread-topped-with-tomato-and-minced-lamb is my favourite on-the-way-home treat. So cheap! So tasty! Almost healthy! Last night it was my friend Bex’s birthday, and after jumping around on a sofa in the Jazz Bar then wondering what all the fuss was really about at the too-cool-for-us-really Disco Bloodbath, we needed feeding. Thank goodness for the eternally open Turkish place just up Stoke Newington Road (it’s on the left, opposite Mangal 2). Two Lahmacun stuffed with salad, one can of Perrier, total bill: £3.10. I just realised that I never paid for mine. Er, thanks, Bex.
June 13, 2008
A cocktail containing clam broth and accessorised with a stick of celery ought to be gross, but I do love a Bloody Caesar. It’s a Canadian thing: vodka, clamato juice (a blend of tomato juice and the aforementioned clam juice), Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, served on the rocks in a glass rimmed with celery salt. Today we sat drinking them on a roof in Montreal, looking over the port, and it was very good indeed. Meant we didn’t need a starter when we went for our lunch too. Other memorable clamato moment: trying to drive from Montreal to Toronto in the century’s wildest snowstorm, getting marooned in Morrisburg, in the Macintosh Inn, a hotel with a luke warm tub and a waitress who declared everything “beautiful”. Bloody Caesars got us through the night.
June 13, 2008
Normally I am too impatient to bother drying my hands using a machine, preferring either the back of my jeans or, if available, a wad of paper towels. Then I went to Gatwick airport and discovered the Dyson Airblade. Finally, a hand dryer that works properly! You put your hands in the slot and BOOM! From wet-to-dry in under 12 seconds.
If you would like to know what is more ethical, using a paper towel or a dryer, Leo Hickman debates the answer here.
News just in! (4/7/08): They have an Airblade in the toilets of the Social on Little Portland Street! Another reason to love that venue.
May 20, 2008
So much more fun than a boring old bowl full. My favourite place to get a pint of prawns used to be the Holly Bush in Hampstead, but when I went there last we were served our prawns on a platter. A blatant breach of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 I think you’ll agree – we complained to the barstaff, who blamed “health and safety”. Apparently they’re not allowed glass in the kitchen anymore. BOO!
Today I had a lovely afternoon with my friend by the seaside, at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex. We had a dozen oysters, a pint of guinness (him), a pint of ale (me) and a pint of prawns (shared). The prawns were measured out in a pint pot, then shoved in a plastic bag. It would have been disappointing, but they were well tasty and the sun was shining so I let it pass.
May 20, 2008
The other day, I found myself, for entirely innocent reasons, having a shower in a colleague’s flat. While doing so, I saw that he kept his toothbrush and toothpaste in the shower, alongside his shampoo and soap, rather than by the sink. When I had got dressed, I asked him whether he cleaned his teeth in the shower. “Doesn’t everybody?” he said. Er. No.
I once heard a radio show phone-in on this very topic, and people called in with some corkers. I particularly remember the man who thought it was normal to strip naked when he had a poo.
May 5, 2008
One of my favourite sights in the whole world is seeing people pose with Graham Ibbeson’s statue of Eric Morecambe on Morecambe promenade. No one gets away with visiting my home town without me making them have their picture taken with Eric, left leg bent, right arm waving (or in the case of one of my less well co-ordinated visitors, right leg bent and left arm waving). I’ve done it countless times and it has never become boring. Which is slightly odd as I don’t think I’ve ever watched even one episode of Morecambe and Wise. I just like his funny face and am proud that something good came out of the place – in addition to dear old Thora Hird of course.
Morecambe has been down in the doldrums for sometime, thanks in part to Noel Bloody Edmonds deciding to turn a beloved local park into Blobby Land and making us the laughing stock of the nation. But with the restoration of the stunning art deco hotel The Midland, things are looking up, as this Observer article testifies.
