AndyBlog

Having had a lovely time

It's been a great time away.

The first three days were very quiet, because Fiona was working at the University, but these last two days we have been doing holiday things.

Put simply, on Thursday we “did Cambridge” - and on Friday we drove out to the coast and visited my childhood remembered place of Lowestoft.

Tomorrow, we will return home, but not before one last visit to a couple of places in Cambridge itself. I need to take something back, and we need some more special Cambridge Chelsea Buns. They are completely amazing - and very different to normal. A photo will be taken, I assure you. If you visit us the very moment we arrive back, you might just get a bite of the last one - that is assuming we buy 567 of those little tinkers. Wow! So nice.

I am having difficulty posting tonight, and the problems seem to be with pictures, so I will keep this entry short and not include any pictures, in the hope of getting the site to take the posting.

More in full with pix when I am safely home.

Sheesh! Kebab...

Whilst searching for a picture of a shish-kebab, I happened across this masterpiece of a man's head, sculpted beautifully out of beef and lamb kebab meat, and I thought you might like to see it. When displayed, it revolves on the machine. Pure poetry. I do hope they refrigerate it overnight though...

Before you read the rest of this posting, I would like to point out that no-one was harmed, and that I ended up with a delicious kebab as a result. Everything was fine.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Fiona fancied cheese on toast, and I fancied a kebab the other night. Nothing wrong in that, you might think - and, indeed, there is not.

So, I skipped off to our local “Istanbul Kebab House”, which is just round the corner from this flat. It's a lovely place, full of signs saying stuff like:  “No cheques, credit cards or anything at all whatsoever accepted here, apart from cold hard cash. So watch it, sonny.”

Nevertheless, the kebabs both looked and smelled great, so - cash in hand - I entered, eager to partake. No sooner had I ordered, when a large motorbike roared up outside the door. The rider came into the shop - pushed to the front of the counter and did not remove what can only be described as a massive black shiny helmet.

I was a little unsettled. There proceeded an animated discussion twixt rider and kebab-house owner. It was in a language which I do not understand, but which I presume to be Turkish or some dialect of Turkish.

[ In order to be comfortably accurate, I should point out that the category: “Languages which I do not understand”, is a very large and exhaustive category, extending to literally every language in the world, with the possible exception of English. ]

I digress.

The discussion became so heated that I started to wish I was not in the room at all. My mind was racing through all the scary possibilities that this situation suggested. Thankfully, after a few minutes the dialogue quietened down a little, and the shop-owner hastily put together a donor kebab and a portion of chips.

The rider grabbed them eagerly and left without paying.

Soon, but only after a very load roar from the motorbike, the rider was gone into the night. There was an uneasy moment as my eyes met with the kebab shop owner's eyes. He obviously felt the need for some sort of explanation - but when it came, it was surprisingly short and rather alarming, on several levels.

The man simply said:  “Sorry. That was my wife.”

Stormy Tuesday

In homage of the great blues song, sort of. Please click on the “black” picture to see the full movie.

We had a humdinger of a storm last night, and great fun it was. I regret that I failed to capture the best of it, but this tiny video might give you a little taster.

It's been hot here, jolly hot. Very close and oppressive. I have found it very hard to get any work done at all. So, it was with a considerable degree of relief that we realised there was to be a thunderstorm.

I just stood at the window and marvelled at the majesty of it all - nature in full cry, demanding attention. I was happy to oblige, just sorry that I didn't get my recording gear out sooner.

Today has been much nicer weather for working. Pleasantly cool, but still warm, if you know what I mean. I know that I could never live and work in warm climates. They're great for holidays, but not so good for working.

I have been amazed by how warm Cambridge actually gets. It has been positively Mediterranean these last few days. How anyone passes a fancy degree in this weather I'll never know.

So, as a result of Fiona working these last three days, and me nearly working, we have done no real holiday things, except from a couple of meals out and a visit to the pictures last night.

We saw The League Of Gentlemen's Apocalypse at the crummy VUE cinema in Cambridge's Grafton Centre. (It's like the Metro Centre, only pants) The movie was nothing special. I'd have been happier seeing three episodes back to back on a big screen, I think. Feel free to argue. No, really.

Orange have kindly agreed to send out my new phone to this holiday address. I do hope they find me OK...

(Yes, Robin, that's right......Treo650  £49.99)

Excitement.

Breakfast, and stuff...

There was a sort of crushing inevitability to today's picture and blog entry. I was going to apologise on that account, but decided that since this was a part of me and what I do, I should, instead, just get about my business and be the person who I are.

“Who are I?” I hear you reasonably ask. well, I am the person who photographs my breakfasts, and I am slowly coming to terms with it. I shall post a full rpeort, for breakfast lovers, on the breakfast blog. Suffice it to say here, that this was a pleasing brekky, and we enjoyed it.

Returning to our hotel room, it was time to take a shower and prepare for the business of the day. I did note that this hotel uses sensibly sized shampoo and shower gel bottles, so that it is possible to use a realistic amount of both substances in the important endeavour of cleaning one's body. They should be highly praised for this - as most hotels take great joy in providing the most meagre little bottles, which shoot out of one's hand at the slightest prompting.

I have done some practice, using the bass guitar - trying to make my fingers remember the time when they played little else. This is tricky for them, as such a time never existed - but a worthy goal, in my view, nonetheless.

No doubt the actual playing time tonight will go just great, and most people will be pretty drunk by then, but I find myself very nervous, and keen not to let the band down. The material is stuff that I do not normally play, so it's a double challenge for me to start with. I really do wish that bass player had been able to make the gig - it would have helped me no end.

So, we have a short break before the wedding - maybe a good time to go and scare up a cup of coffee before the festivities begin in earnest. Here's hoping that my crazy idea to take and print photos before the reception starts actually works out. It would be a nice gift to give.

Time to go and frighten some coffee.

Onion Rings

The great onion-ring battle

I never intended this to happen, but it turned out that I had onion rings twice today, at two different places. Onion ring aficionados will know that it's very easy to make poor onion rings, but that the finest onion rings are food fit for the gods.

I experienced both today. At the Lane end Inn in Carlisle, they were frozen onion rings, cooked in fat that was not quite hot enough, and so had taken in too much oil. Actually not very nice at all.

Then tonight, I ordered stir-fried onions and they brought me onion rings by mistake. However, I kept them and ordered more stir-fried onions. I like onions, borderline love them. Anyway, the point is that these, unexpected, onion rings were quite the finest I have ever tasted. They were everything the earlier ones were not.

Richmond Oriental in East Kilbride. Highly recommended.

These were the main course dishes that we chose. Shredded beef and chicken in crispy batter, and chicken lar chee. The latter is a spicy dish with peppers and fresh chilli. I felt it was lacking in body, but it was pleasant none the less. The crispy shredded beef and chicken was out of this world. Completely sublime. It's a hard dish to get right, but they really carried it off.

So, a nice drive up, a pleasant hotel and an enjoyable meal out. Friday was a success. Let's hope the wedding goes well tomorrow, and let's hope even more that the reception in the evening goes well, as that is when our make-shift band is playing. I was down to play keyboards, but then the bass player was unable to attend due to family reasons. So, I may have to do a strange hybrid role of both bass and keyboards. Might be quite a test, as I do not know the material well.

I'll let you know.

I do so wonder how the Amarylis is doing. I miss it.

My final hope for the night is that I can sleep well on this bed....

Glasgow bound

I spoke of the wedding in Glasgow, to which my good lady wife and my own dear humble self are cordially invited. I reckon it's a pretty good deal for those inviting us. Sure, we get to enjoy their happy day - and that really is wonderful. But from us they get:

1) A wedding present
2) Our company for a whole weekend
3) Us attending a rehearsal for the wedding band
4) Me playing in the wedding band
5) Me taking extra pictures on my wizzy camera*

Having said that, we get:

1) To go away for a weekend
2) Lots of nice naughty meals
3) To inflict our company on many others
4) To play in the wedding band
5) To take pictures on the wizzy camera

So, I guess it all evens up.

The clever thing we hope to do with the camera is take pictures at the wedding ceremony and afterwards. I know that does not sound too clever, on the face of it, but when I add in the crucial extra piece of information that we have brought a Canon photo printer with us, you will start to see the depths to which we have sunk. In a vain effort to appear clever and slick, we will have prints of the wedding pictures to hand round at the reception. Click One Hour service, that's us.

The pictures you see are from the Lane End Inn, at which we often stop off if passing by Carlisle for any reason. Luckily, it is not in the centre of Carlisle, or we would not have presumed to intrude. There's nothing worse than a gauper.

The pie was excellent, but not as good as the even finer pie available at the Plough Inn, near where we live. Next time you're going out for a lunch with us, request the Plough Inn by name, and we will take you there, and you, too, can enjoy the most sublime steak pie in the known world. Well, it's quite good.

I must end now. To continue would be naughty.

Fun, Fire and Freedom

For the very first time in a very long time, I find myself in a holiday location so remote and unserviced that there is no kind of connectivity whatsoever. There is no landline to use, no mobile phone coverage and certainly no wireless internet coverage. In short, we are completely isolated, and I only write this today in the hope of driving a few miles to where there are rumours of a BT Openzone wireless internet hotspot. That said, if you're reading this, it must have worked. The only other point to bear in mind is that I am unlikely to be able to send as many updates as I would normally, or certainly that they will all come in bursts rather than singly. If you have been emailing me and wonder why there is no response, this is why.

I used the word freedom in the title of this blog entry, and it is this freedom to which I refer. I simply haven't been out of range before and it has a liberating effect. Far more pleasing than I might have imagined. This seems to emphasise to me my need for a full and complete break from everything. I have been getting these messages from all departments of my life so perhaps now it is time to start listening.

The Jacuzzi bath was absolutely the most fun, although I think I may have flooded the place.

Our first night was spent at the Hatton Court Hotel in Upton-St-Leonards, near Gloucester. It's a nice little hotel and I would only fault it on two things: The poor quality of the breakfast and the fire. It would be fair to say that I have not previously stayed at a hotel and experienced a fire before. The fire engines arrived reassuringly promptly and it was all over in just over an hour, but sleep was not easily achievable thereafter. The laundry in our wing was damaged, but the fire did not spread. we spent an hour waiting around in the courtyard and finished up by having a large free drink in the hotel bar, courtesy of the management.

No-one was hurt, but it caused a fair old adrenalin rush. It's interesting to note the thoughts which go through one's head as one leaves a building without even a pair of glasses. We took time to get dressed after a fashion, but there was not time to rescue my laptop or anything other than Fiona's handbag and my phone. For a short while we faced the prospect of losing most of what we had brought with us. Very sobering.

Breakfast the next morning was rubbish.

If I had been a non-resident paying £12.95 for this breakfast I might have asked for a refund. The sausage was large, penis-like and tasted rather "gamey". Even if it was OK, it was a dinner sausage and therefore inappropriate. The bacon was black and obviously old - too long in the fridge. Other elements were OK, but nothing special. The poached eggs were just barely soft in the middle, avoiding total criticism by a whisker. I shall be setting up a Breakfast Blog separately from this one one my return home. I will leave a full account of this breakfast there, along with many others. The new blog will be reachable from http:www.friedbreakfast.com

The drive down to Cornwall was pleasant, punctuated by many places we thought were in other parts of the UK. I can't remember them now, but I do remember several times saying "I had no idea this was in Somerset/Cornwall." So, if you know of a place and are not quite sure where it is...

Coverack is beautiful, and the Coverack headland doubly so. Upon arriving, we instantly knew that this was the kind of remote haven we could learn to love, and learn quickly. The only persistent sound is the wash of the sea into the shore and since we have been here the sun has never been far away - apart from at night of course. Actually that was a stupid thing to say, because it is always far away. It's just that...well, you know what I mean.

We ate creatively last night, of tomato soup and sausage sandwiches. Proper sausage. Nice sausage. Cooked in our little apartment sausage. It's not palacial here, but it suffices, and there is a very pleasant 30 foot balcony to sit out on in the warm sun. It's quite easy to believe that one is in paradise here.

Hopefully, these pictures illustrate how great the scenery is. What is harder to pass on, is the total peace and quiet. No car noise, no bustle of a village or town. Nothing. Even the other residents in this fine old building are quiet and well-behaved and this is definitely no place for lager-swilling types who want to paint the town red. No town, see.

So today we will visit the Goonhilly Earth station and seek some broadband coverage with which to send some email and this blog. Later we may go down to Lizard point, returning here to get on with the serious business of doing all but nothing.

Thanks for reading all of this. Have a great day.