What's Cooking With Dive? Seafood Paella

Aren'tcha just sick of Old Dive's risotto recipes?
I know, I know; I make risotto of some description at least once a week and I've already posted seafood risotto and my wild mushroom and chestnut mutant autumn risotto monster, so for a nice change, today we're going to abandon the arborio and hit the basmati.

It's paella time!
Yay!

Hokay, so it's almost exactly the same recipe as risotto but what the hell; it makes a completely different dish.
Plus: if you liked the fact that my risotto was simple, you should try this; it's as dumb as fuck. You don't even have to take your brain into the kitchen with you; you can leave it on the sofa watching the smegging telly.
You'll want a good knife, a chopping board, a heavy, flat-bottomed frying pan, something to stir with and some ingredients.

So … Put away the arborio and carnaroli rice, the sushi rice and the jasmine rice; we'll have none of that short-grain nonsense; let's get some serious length in those grains; today we're going to open that big ol' jar of organic basmati.
I usually use this in all my Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi dishes but today we're heading over to Spain, to a nice little kitchen beside the fish dock of a small harbour.

I popped in to see David the Fishmonger this morning and picked up some of his gorgeous triple-A grade sashimi quality tuna, which I'll be demolishing tomorrow with donburi and miso soup.
While I was in there I grabbed a whole load of miscellaneous fish and shellfish to make some yummy fish stock and we'll be making today's paella with a pint of that fish stock (three more pints in the freezer … yum), a big ol' handful of the leftover fish and some nice prawns.

You know me and olive oil … Well, Olive Oyl, too, but that's another story and don't tell Popeye.
Just because there's a recession doesn't mean you have to buy cheap olive oil. For fuck's sake you can always sell a kidney or a child if things get tight, but good olive oil is important!
This is my favourite; that single quinta (quinta means farmhouse but is actually a named estate like with French vineyards) vintage Portuguese stuff they tread in old stone lagares; a bunch of happy, singing Portuguese farmers stomping those gorgeous, late harvest olives that are so much more intense than even the best Greek ones. I use Greek olive oil in salads but this stuff is unbeatable in rice and pasta dishes where the taste it imparts to the onions and garlic is all important.
The only place you can get this stuff outside of Portugal is the little deli in Pimlico called Delicias de Portugal. Go there. Spend money.

So … Just about everything I cook starts off as a good, strong, local organic onion and some yummy French garlic quivering in terror on the chopping board as I creep up on it with my wonderful Japanese ceramic knife in my hand and vegecide in my heart.
Be merciless. You want a semi-rough chop for this dish and a high heat to get the oil smoking, then it's in with the onions and stir fry them for a few seconds. Whack the heat right down and toss in the garlic then stir it around and sweat 'em down for a few minutes until they are transparent and have achieved that magical one-ness with the olive oil.

Next up: sprinkle the rice over that lot and gently fold it in until every grain is coated with the oil/onion/garlic mélange.

If you've got company coming round you can soak some saffron for this bit but as it's just me pigging out I tossed in a good teaspoon of freshly ground turmeric. Stir it around until everything's nice and yellow. Then rip up some fresh basil so you can do that gorgeous finger-sniffing bit afterwards.

You remember I made that fish stock earlier? Well now's the time to turn up the flame and add that. If it's cool, add it little by little to prevent it chilling the rice; mine was still really hot from making the stock so it all went in at once.
For paella you need to add the whole lot, unlike risotto where you need the rice to absorb it slowly.
Once the stock's in there and everything's stirred around nicely, turn it down to a slow simmer and you can go and fiddle with yourself or a partner for around ten minutes.

After that, there's only about five minutes left to go so give it all a good stir and shake the pan down again. Sometimes I'll add olives here but today it's petits pois to give it a nice splash of colour.

Before you start the dish, just flash-fry the whitefish. Only for a few seconds to give it a tiny bit of colour, then put it on a plate to wait for this part.
Two minutes to go and stir in all the fish and the prawns.
And that's all there is to it.
Honestly. It's that bloody simple. I mean if you lived in a little fishing town on the Spanish coast you'd want to spend as little time cooking as possible to free up time to sit and look out over the sea and get shitfaced on local wine, wouldn't you?

Dish it up.
Go "Oooh" at how pretty the yellow rice looks.
Eat it all up.
I find a glass or three of nicely chilled, really good Alsace Gewurtztraminer turns this from a delicious dish into a sexual experience.

Enjoy!

Andy And Dive Eat Japan

Yay for being an old man!
People keep wanting to treat me to lovely things for my fiftieth birthday.
First it was Joy and Thom and Jong, then Mikey, and now Andy lines up to spend money on the old man.
I could get used to this!

So anyhoo …
I took this just around the corner from my office on my way to meet Andy earlier this evening.
This is one of the reasons I love working in Westminster.
As office backyards go it is pretty special.
Especially when it goes "bong".

And here's one to bring back memories for our lovely visitors this summer; Mme, MB and Katie all rode the big wheel while they were here.
I sat the camera on the wall at the end of Westminster Bridge and let it do its long exposure thang. Cool clouds, huh?

And here's the Eye yet again. I never tire of looking at it.
Or indeed riding on it.
Who wants to come over and play next year?

Wahey! It's Andy and Dive doing the formal Japanese greeting thing. All stiff bows and politeness.
Yeah, right.
Andy's back here from Tokyo and about to treat me to a wonderful meal at Tajima-Tei, so we'd better head on over to Charing Cross …

Let's start as we mean to go on … with Japanese beer and plum wine.
After an amuse-bouche of pickled tuna and edamame Andy starts with spiced chicken tempura and I have steamed sesame spinach, both of which are sublime.
The batter on the tempura is perfection itself, achieving both light crispiness and that kind of soft fluffiness you just can't get making it at home. The chicken is so sweet and tender and full of flavour. Delicious (of course we piled into one another's dishes, eager to try everything). The spinach and sesame (always a Dive favourite) was incredible.

It's a shame this one's out of focus as it is pure Andy.
The restaurant was empty when we got there on the stroke of six (opening time), but pretty soon it was heaving with groups of Japanese salarymen on their Friday night saké frenzies. We were the only two non-Japanese in the place but we were both speaking Japanese quite happily to the waitresses and a couple of guys on an adjoining table.
I had real trouble with my Japanese when Joy and I tried out Sakura in Norwich, but with Andy being fluent I seemed to find the confidence to speak it amazingly well tonight.
Hey ho.

Our main course was astonishing, in appearance, taste and texture.
This was some of the best Japanese food I have ever eaten (thank goodness Andy was paying). The sashimi tuna melted in my mouth, softer than candy floss. It was an almost religious experience. Perfect sushi and veggie dishes, wonderful prawn tempura and totally glorious seaweeds, washed down with lashings of marvellous miso soup.

A man with happy tastebuds.
Being with Andy, we talked and talked and talked about our three favourite subjects: Japan, Japanese girls and jazz. We're big on the "J" words.

The waitress kindly offered to take our photo so here we are a few short hours ago (I am only just home), enjoying yet another wonderful fiftieth birthday party.
Hoorah for Andy!
I'll miss him when he goes back to Japan but he's not going yet so we've still got a lot of fun planned.
For now, though, I'm off to bed.
Nighty-night!

Bifurcated Blancmanges And Leg Hair Loss

A big, brash and above all, LOUD good morning to all my Colonial friends with your delightful hangovers, groaning under the colonic burden of Thanksgiving turkey tonnage and eyeing the huge piles of yesterday's leftovers with growing nausea.

I hope you managed to get all the washing-up done. Staggering into the kitchen the morning after the night before to be confronted with piles of baked-on crap-encrusted crocks and pots is one of life's lessons from which some people seem never to learn.

As is the phrase "Oh, go on then; just one more glass."

Of course some of us don't have to suffer that; we have to get up at 4:40 in the bloody AM and head off to work …

I arrived at the office this morning to find that the usual Friday foul-up had been augmented by the creeping horror of boxes of Christmas decorations stacked on the girls' desks (somewhere in there is my nemesis; the fucking singing reindeer) and a roomful of scurrying IT dwarves muttering away in Klingon.

It appears we are in the middle of some kind of server / network apocalypse (again), the upshot of which means I have a small woman hiding under my desk while I work, who appears to be primarily engaged in swearing and hurling bundles of tangled leads across the room.
Whilst I rather enjoy having a woman under my desk the muffled warning to me not to dare say "While you're down there …" sounded ominous.

What's a man to do?
I managed a full twenty seconds of teeth-gritted agony before the phrase slipped out.

This is where a basic knowledge of conversational Klingon comes in real handy.
Thanks to my genetic nerdiness I am the only person in the office on good terms with the IT department and as a result still retain the use of my penis …

Having said that, I did lose several leg hairs.
IT girls are faster than a greased rattlesnake and the moment the phrase "While you're down there …" slipped out a hand shot up my trouserleg and nasty, tweezer-like little fingers yanked out a bunch of hairs from just above the sock line.
A short yelp from me and a long muffled giggle from under the desk and equilibrium had been restored.

My teeth are currently gritted once again, desperately holding back a comment about the inadvisability of crawling around under someone's desk with your rear on display whilst wearing fat-assed IT jeans that gape alarmingly when you bend over together with a quite revolting red thong.

My moan to Amanda about being up at the crack of dawn elicited naught but a raised eyebrow of confused misunderstanding until she turned and saw what was protruding from under my desk; the sight of those bifurcated blancmanges wobbling away sent her hurrying from the room, suppressing shrieked hysterics.
Since her return we have discussed black holes, a yawning chasm and the valley of the shadow of death with no further loss of leg hair but her giggling - and repeated use of the word "but" - is going to give the game away before much longer.

And still the gaping crack of doom wobbles enticingly from under my desk. Do I drop a stapler down there and run like hell?
Ah, the decisions one has to make in a modern office …

Let's Make A Racket - XXXV

Plug your ears, Dive's got his bloody guitar out again.
It's Thursday, so it must be time to make a racket.
Here's something short and silly while our Colonial friends are celebrating Thanksgiving.

Hey, Happy "We've Taken Their Food, Now Let's Take Their Land" Day, folks!

As you'll be eating that most ungainly fowl, I thought it only apt to share a couple of aural turkeys with you in the spirit of Thanksgiving.
Both tracks are from an old concert I played with Sharon and Rod; very much a "rackety raucous" kind of fun thing.

First up is Shazza belting out a mercifully brief version of Nutbush City Limits with Michael supplying the utterly hilarious keyboard solo.
Then it's one I've posted before, my awful demolition of Parisienne Walkway.

Enjoy your turkeys!

Blah

I'm blog-dried.
My mind is completely devoid of anything worth writing about.

So here are some photos of wet stuff I took near the Cathedral on Saturday.






Not as good as these, but I'm feeling pretty washed-out and uninspired of late.

A Laydee Writes

Hokay …
Thanks to Savannah I just paid a quick visit to The Gender Analyser.

It told me:
"We think http://smallglassplanet.blogspot.com/ is written by a woman (78%)."

So … Not only is my penchant for Tiffany lamps and art and cookery suddenly more understandable, but I am also mighty pleased to discover that what I had previously thought of as man-boobs are in fact lady-bumps.
So no more fretting about not being able to get a date; I have my own set of boobies to play with.
Yay!

er … was that as creepy as it sounded?

Yay For Working From Home

Hoorah for living on the east coast.
For any Colonials amongst you who think Africa and Europe are countries and that we are involved in a border dispute with Irakistan, here's some geography: Norfolk is a bug lump of land that sticks out into the North Sea, a bit like Angelina Jolie's arse, only not quite so unfeasibly firm.

Stand on the beach a short drive from my house and look north and there's nothing but grey, freezing sea, a whole lot of ice and the occasional polar bear between that point and the north pole, which means that when the winter northerly winds start to blow we get the arctic slap in the face like a custard pie straight from the freezer.

The rest of the country avoids all of that, so when I emailed my snow photos to the office at five this morning to tell them I'd be working from home I got a flurry of replies (not until gone nine when they arrived at work) going "Oooooh!" and ""Ahhhhh" and "Look at the lovely snow!"

Wankers.

The upside to all of that is that I don't have seven hours of crap commute today (which would inevitably have stretched by a few hours due to the weather conditions).
After I'd emailed the office (and spent a few gleeful minutes sliding up and down the road on the hard-packed snow and black ice - a fifty year old man ice skating in the street in the dark at five in the morning; not something you see every day) I had breakfast in bed and a nice soak in the bath.
Bliss!

Since six, I've been working away happily, all snug and warm, listening to a couple of Berg operas (Wozzeck and Lulu) that would have given the girls at work conniptions, drinking boffo coffee and generally getting far enough ahead in my work that I'll be able to snuggle down on the sofa and watch old movies after lunch (though NOT Fargo).

The snowman on the way in to the village looked nervous and uncomfortable this morning, watching with increasing alarm as the patches of green grass encroached on his personal space.
The thaw has set in.
By lunchtime he'll be more of a snow-penis.

Here are a couple more shots from yesterday:

This is the Dutch honeysuckle just outside my dining room window. Not quite at its gloriously scented best at the moment.

And this is the white lilac (very white, yesterday) outside the kitchen window with winter jasmine down in the bottom right hand corner that will soon be a mass of yellow flowers.

Roll on spring!

…

Lunchtime update!

The poor snowman had every reason to look worried. Here he is a few minutes ago; a sad, mouldering snow-corpse.
The only good snowman is a dead snowman.

Still Snowing

Aww, crap!

This sucks. I took this on my trudge in to the village store this morning. It's snowing hard again now. Anyone who loves snow needs their head examined.

A Pathetic Attempt At Winter

Hey! It's trying to snow!

It's actually a pretty pathetic attempt but at least it's having a go.

This is the little road that leads to Dive's house.

And this is the crappy road in to Norwich.

Norwich itself is slush central.
I had a yummy breakfast of toasted fruit bread, oozing and dripping with melted butter, washed down with a latte, in the delightful company of Joy and Thom, who are happy with our crappy weather as they will soon be jetting off to spend Christmas in the Philippines.

It's a hectic weekend; I'm about to head back in to the city for lunch with Mike.
So with all the housework to do as well I don't have time to write a post.
This is all your're getting today.
Hey ho.

…

So, I lied.
Here's more:
Lunch with Mike!

らめんはとてもおいしいでしたよ。
Yay!

What's Cooking With Dive? Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core …

And way better than that: to fill my local woods with sweet chestnuts and the gloriously obscene shapes of sexually aroused fungi!

Yay for autumn!

So … What to do with a veritable plethora of smoky-scented goodness.
Do what I always do, of course: put it in a risotto!

From Spring freshness, through summer's over-ripe glory to the warm, brown riches of autumn and on into the … er … root vegetable frenzy that is winter, Old Dive's answer to every piece of fresh, seasonal bounty that comes my way is to put it in a risotto.

My regular autumn risotto (wild mushroom and chestnut) is not so much a risotto as a mutant, fungus-infused, rice-and-bean glop-monster, but one that tastes like you've been licking Heaven.

So let's start where I always start:
Strong, local, organic onions, yummy organic garlic from the French market, single-quinta, vintage olive oil, squished with sweaty feet in a stone lagare.

You know what to do; we've done it so many times before. Just set that oil to smoking, add the onions and stir fry for a few seconds before throwing in the garlic, turning down the heat and sweating those bastards until your olfactory organ orgasms!

Follow that with the beautiful organic arborio rice, fresh basil, oregano, flat parsley and coriander (cilantro) from the pots just outside the back door, mercilessly ripped to shreds.
Mmmmmmmmmmm … Just stick those herb-slaughtering fingers under your nose and inhale.
Boy howdy!
But it gets better!

Your first cupful of stock is actually a boffo French un-oaked chardonnay (you already know my exhortation to always use the best wine you've got; empty your wallet onto your tastebuds and glory in it); and when that sacred liquid hits those hot herbs simply stand there in mute wonder and inhale the world's finest perfume.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooo …

Hokay … I've done risottos before in this series and you know full well that if you don't use a home-made mushroom stock for this dish you are no longer welcome here.
Satan recently built an extension to Hell specifically to house those imbecile fuckwits who use factory-made bouillon or (my mind reels with unimaginable horror) powdered stock mix.
He has asked me to personally design the torments you fuckers will suffer if you go near that stuff … and you know the fœtid depths my imagination can reach so DON'T DO IT!

Anyhoo … You've cleaned and chopped your ceps, your chanterelles, your black ear and trumpet fungus, your bracket fungus and whatever else you've managed to find …
Be warned: if you don't know your fungi really, REALLY well, this dish may well prove fatal; if in doubt, buy locally collected dried wild mushrooms and fungi … Harvey's sell them in season in Norwich and you probably have a local shop that does the same - I use those to make the stock I've been soaking the chestnuts in.

You've also peeled and blanched your chestnuts.
I'd advise doing this the evening before, as you're going to eat every other one you peel because they are so tempting and delicious, and if you do that you won't have any room left for risotto.

Here's where I depart from risotto-making and veer off into the realms of stews, hotpots and general gloop.
I still add the stock little by little as in a normal risotto until the rice is perfect but I also throw into the mix a can of flageolet beans (that most intensely nutty and autumnal of pulses - it goes perfectly with this dish), a handful of black olives, a couple of handsful of chestnuts that have been soaked for forty minutes in the mushroom stock and a few pine nuts because I think the texture suits the whole feel of the thing.

Now it's just a case of resisting temptation until the rice reaches that perfection of al dente readiness, turning down the heat and stirring in a generous amount of finely grated organic Parmesan.
At this point, add in a teaspoon of that most magical of heady autumnal ingredients: white truffle oil. Make sure it's the real thing. Bugger your bank balance; this is worth it.

Dish up the glop and rough-grate some more yummy Parmesan on top. Add some more basil leaves and drizzle a few precious drops of white truffle oil around the plate to drive your tastebuds crazy with lust.

Then eat it and weep with pleasure.
You might have gathered that I am particularly partial to this dish.
With good reason.
Enjoy!

Let's Make A Racket - XXXIV

Yesterday: kittens; today: dogs.
Sheesh! Now my blog's covered in hair.

This is the same line-up as one of my all time favourite Blues Club Rackets, from earlier in that gig; a song about a dawg and its stupid owner.

A Gentle Word On Etiquette

Hokay. Enough of that crap.
The last comment box threatened to turn this blog into a fucking sewing circle.
Sweet cheeses of Nazareth; the next thing you know photos of kittens will start appearing here.

Because I'm stupidly busy today and have no time to trawl my Profanisaurus for inspiration I shall resort to rehashing old crap from the early years of the blog.

THIS is how we post kittie photos over here …

And this is what happens when the sewing circle takes over my comments box while I'm asleep.

Don't do it again!

Right …
Time for Dive - the seven hour a day commuter - to update my old rant about how to behave on trains.

Jean-Paul Sartre was right: "L'enfer, c'est les autres".

In the mornings, les autres (my fellow long-distance commuters) generally behave themselves pretty well, slumped in their seats, mouths agape, peacefully drooling; the only disturbance being the occasional grunt or snort.

The unfortunate exception to this is the smegging school holidays, when we are joined by family groups on their way to the airport, bickering couples and their snotty, screaming kids, running up and down the aisles and clambering over the seats, kids and adults alike shouting, shrieking and arguing while they let their babies cry at pain-inducing decibels for the entire journey.
Add to that groups of twenty-somethings laden with rucksacks and drinking beer at six in the morning while they shout and laugh at the tops of their voices.
People who have to get up at 4:40AM every morning and who need to catch up on their lost sleep on the train can get exceedingly grumpy during the school holidays.
Be warned.

But most of the time the mornings are not too bad.

In the evenings, however, the carriages resemble the hellish offspring of a drunken hen night and a football riot.
So if you noisy bastards don't want one of us mild-mannered but burly six-footers going postal and spoiling your day in a terminal way, let's lay down a few ground rules:

Now … heads up, mobile phone users. If you don't want to be wearing that thing up your arse, here's a little piece of advice (this is best read slowly and clearly, as if to a small child):

• First up: the concept of the "telephone":
If you speak into your "telephone", the person you're connected to can hear your voice coming out of their "telephone". Just because they may be miles away doesn't mean you have to SHOUT to make them hear you.

Related to this point: If you cannot hear them clearly over the noise of the train, SHOUTING at them is unlikely to resolve the problem.
They will, in all likelihood, be holding their phone at arms length because you're so fucking LOUD!
It also causes other mobile users around you to stick a finger in their ear and raise their own voices, and is therefore counterproductive.
It may also result in a painful visit to the colo-rectal department of your local hospital to facilitate the removal of your phone from its rightful position.

The urge to TALK LOUDLY if you cannot hear somebody else speaking is caused by "Basic Stupidity".
We now move on to "Advanced Stupidity".

• "Hi. It's me. I'm on the train".
Whoever is waiting for you at the end of your journey (and one day it might be me, with a nasty headache and a baseball bat), you need only call them if you MISS the train, or if it breaks down.
Are you and your partner really so insecure and pathetic that you need to be constantly reassured that either one of you isn't fucking their way through the telephone book whenever you are more than ten feet apart?
I mean you've not shut your fucking mouth for the past three hours shouting asinine drivel and driving your fellow commuters into a murderous rage; what the smeg is there left to talk about when you get home?
Oh, of course … You don't talk when you're together, you simply sit on your fat arses in front of the fucking television while your brains dribble out through your ears and you stuff your balloon faces with deep fried lardy gristle from a bucket.
Get a life, you fucking morons!

So that's "Basic" and "Advanced" stupidity dealt with; "Postgraduate Stupidity" includes the following:

• The constant, repetitive and loud barking of the word "Yeah" merely informs those around you that you are a low grade moron who would lose a battle of wits with a lump of polystyrene packaging.
Stop it, you ignorant fucking bastards!

• Using your inane laugh - like an asthmatic donkey being repeatedly kicked in the lungs - as punctuation when you speak merely highlights the fact that the tedious drivel spewing from your mouth does SO not justify your whinnying cackle at the end of every boring sentence.
If you were that funny, we would all be laughing.
Look around you.
We are not …

• "Tarquin? Hi! … Yah … Yah … uhuhuhuh … Yah … Um, look. I need to go through my emails with Sally … yah … uhuhuh … yah … yah …" etc ad nauseam.
Look, you worthless piece of shit: if you are not good enough at your job to do it in office hours then get off my fucking train and go stack shelves at Tesco for a living.

• The same thing goes for Blackberries.
Look at the stupid thing. It's only a few inches wide.
So why in God's name do you need to stick your fucking elbows halfway across your neighbour's seats when you use it?
Tuck those bony bastards down at your sides, you inconsiderate twat!
Here's a hint: Jamming your elbow into somebody's ribcage and then flicking your fucking thumbs like an onanist plugged in to an electric socket is not going to earn you the respect of the person sitting next to you.
It might, however, earn you a well-deserved smack in the mouth.
Cease. Desist. Or I may make your dentist very happy.

• In the thousands of train journeys I have suffered since the dawn of mobile technology, I could count on the fingers of one hand the words I have heard bellowed into phones that actually needed to be said. THINK before letting a carriage full of annoyed people know how utterly worthless your life is and how fucking BORING you are.

• Another brief piece of advice: If you're not on the train but are actually with me and we are talking face to face and your phone rings … don't you dare answer that fucker.
If you are so mind-buggeringly crass and rude as to pick it up and start yapping into it please do not wonder why I wander off to find somebody who is actually worth talking to.

• Your ringtone is neither cool nor amusing.

In conclusion:
Mobile users: Shut the fuck up!

Filler Photopost

Hokay …
I've got no time tonight to write anything. The trains were crap, it's past my bedtime and I've not eaten yet.

So here's a portrait of my family to add to the litany of pictorial shame from the link in the last post.


Mum's going to hate this one so much! That's one doozy of a hair-do.
This must be some time in the mid sixties on what looks like Dunwich beach.
I have no idea who took this photo but they must have said "Everybody look out to sea like you're enjoying watching a yachtsman drown."
Hey ho.

I've got another busy day coming up but I hope to get blogging properly again before long.

Oh, my

Oh, my …

You have got to see this.

Choke A Cratchit For Christmas

Oh, God, kill me now.

That's all I fucking need the week after my fiftieth birthday.
I just popped out for noodles and it seems that every smegging pub and restaurant in Westminster is festooned with posters yelling at me "Tis the season … for FABULOUS FUN CHRISTMAS PARTIES!!!!!"
"Book Now to avoid disappointment!"

Er … never mind the first part; I'll rant about that another day (as you probably already guessed); let's look at that last phrase again shall we?
"… to avoid disappointment".

Who the fuck do they think they're kidding?
All over the country, factories are busy churning out microwave catering packs of shit ready to reheat and become office Christmas party meals.
Congealed platters of inedible disappointment.
Frozen festive foulness that bears no relation to any food I've ever known or even imagined.
Horrifying portion-controlled abominations of industrial agro-chemical waste that would choke a Cratchit.

What delusional fuckwittedness makes companies all across the country droolingly imbecilic enough to imagine that staff morale can be improved by presenting them with a fœtid lump of reheated "turkey" (or at least the bones, beak, gristle, feathers, feet and any other parts of a battery-grown, growth-hormone packed, antibiotic-pumped mutant any butcher would throw away, smeared to a pulp in an industrial press and mixed with textured GM soya protein, flavourings, preservatives and anti-oxidants and pressed into shape), slapped on a plate with a paltry selection of the cheapest and nastiest vegetables money can buy, boiled to a mush and smothered in enough salt to kill a moose, with a cheapo, crap cracker on a sideplate and a glass of industrial cleaner masquerading as "house wine"?
Not forgetting a sausage the size of a cigarette butt that contains no meat at all.
And a noxious and mercifully tiny ball of "stuffing" made from carpet fluff and dog-vomit that stinks like a tramp wanked into a bag of dry-roasted peanuts.

Avoid disappointment?
Fuck off!

I've already avoided disappointment by contriving to dodge our compulsory Christmas meal for so many years now that management hardly bothers asking me any more.

CJ came round a couple of weeks back, armed with an idiot grin and a piece of paper and said "Any chance you'll change the habit of a lifetime and indulge in our glorious Christmas festivities this year?"
To which I could only reply with a healthily sarcastic "Fuck off!"
At which point CJ showed me the piece of paper he was holding which turned out to be a management sweepstake to guess my response.

Andy from Accounts had picked the winning reply, but others came close with "Bollocks", "Fuck that", Screw you guys, I'm going home" and the disarmingly charming if utterly preposterous "Oh, yes please!"

It's nice to know my bosses use their time so productively.
Enjoy your lukewarm plates of disappointment, guys.

The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul

Feeling autumnal today.

These are the last dregs of autumn colour from my morning walks through Green Park and St.James's Park this week.

Together with my favourite song for spending miserable Sundays alone.

Aww, You Guys!

So there I was, minding my own business, having avoided any kind of celebration of my stupid fiftieth birthday all week when I popped in to pick up Joy for a spot of lunch today.

When we pulled up outside Jong's house I thought "Oh, cool! Jong and the kids are coming, too. That'll be fun."

But no sooner had we got inside the door …

The strains of Happy Birthday To You rang out and I turned to find Jong, Joy, Martha, Josiah and Mave armed with cute little sweet rice cakes with individual candles (not fifty, that would have brought the Fire Brigade).

I may be an old curmudgeon but how sweet is that?

Jong is amazing! He had laid on some glorious food for us: Here (before he got started on the banana fritters) are adobo squid, sweet and sour fish, sweet and sour vegetarian and "Quorn-chicken" and mango, with delicious jasmine rice.

Now that is what I call a fabulous lunch!

Thom tried his hardest to beat the wide-angle lens but it just got him.
In the background are Richard and his girlfriend (who is lovely but whose name has completely flown from my head).
Richard (aka Richard Penguin) presents an acoustic music show on Joy's radio station, but many decades ago we hung out and played in bands together and generally whooped it up in a thoroughly reprehensible manner for many a long year.
We'd lost touch for ages but then when I met Joy and checked out her radio station website there he was and it has been wonderful catching up.
We have musical plans again. Watch this space.

At two o'clock, when Joy is usually presenting her show live (she had pre-recorded this week's especially), we tuned in only to find her telling the whole city about my fiftieth birthday!
Sheesh!

How cute are these guys? I've not got a paternal bone in my body but I love these three so much.

Mave was having an attack of the shies when the camera came out but she's the complete opposite the moment it goes away again.

They made me cards on Jong's computer. Yay!

So … To Joy and Thom and Jong (and Josiah, Martha and Mave).
You guys are the best.
You know I only pretend to be a sweary old curmudgeon. This afternoon meant a lot to me.
Thank you and huge hugs all round.