The Horror … The Horror

This is why I don't go to office Christmas parties: a small selection of Gen's photos from the departmental Christmas party, concentrating mostly on the people I have sitting beside me driving me crazy every day.

My department … mercifully minus me.

Steve and Gayle Get Happy

Still sober; Amanda and the famous CB

Donna, who sits beside me at the office and fills my ears with Kiwi gibberish

CB demonstrates how intelligent alcohol makes you look

CJ (the boss) does the same

Genevieve aussi

Hey ho

Hic

Amandurr

These are not the worst of the photos by any means, but I have to work with these people for fuck's sake.

Not Pretty

One down; one to go …
Christmas fucking parties, that is.

Yesterday evening witnessed that copious vom-fest of abhorrence; that suppurating hæmorrhoid on Satan's festering arse; the Office Departmental Christmas Party …


Which I totally avoided by the simple application of the words "Fuck off!" to CJ when he came shuffling round the office with the menu.
Some of you might remember that he was also carrying a sheet of paper on which the senior management team had run a sweepstake on which particular swearwords I would use when invited.

Every office has to have a token curmudgeon and they are used to me now.
I hate Christmas.
I hate parties.
I especially hate Christmas parties.
I reserve an extra special loathing for office Christmas parties.


Don't get me wrong; I actually quite (I suppose "like" is too strong a word) … er … tolerate some of the people I work with but the prospect of actually "socialising" with them is slightly further down my "boy howdy, I'd sure love to do that" list than lining up the world's population of incontinent over-eighties and licking their bodies clean.

As I've said before:
The people in my office talk of happy families and babies, babies, babies.
I hate their simpering, cretinous partners and their ugly, shrieking, puking, shitty little brats.
They talk of football.
I hate football.
They talk of television soaps and "reality shows".
I hate dumb-fuck television.
They talk of fuck-all else.
I hate bores.
You can see where this is going, can't you?

The main office party is yet to come and attendance is compulsory at that one, though I usually manage to duck out while people are still arriving; but last night witnessed the departmental office party (as with departmental meetings, you enter sane and depart mental, though in this case you can add inadvisable levels of drunkenness and unfortunate sexual advances to the mix).

And I successfully avoided it (Yay), extending my unbroken run of party-pooping grumpiness to seven years.
But …
Gen took her camera and was foolish enough to post the photos on the departmental drive this morning.

Holy crap, what a festival of ugliness.

As people started drifting in this morning (at least half the room is "off sick" today … ha!), they checked out the photos and filled the air with wailing and lamentations.
The result of which is that Gen has now been persuaded to remove the photos lest they "go public" …
But not before Old Dive burned the whole lot to DVD and popped them in my bag (do I hear "heheheheheh")?

This evening or tomorrow I may post some of the appalling results to justify my Christmas party curmudgeonliness to the more festively inclined among you.
I won't do it here at the office because I want to live until dinner time.

What - if anything - gets posted depends on how sadistic I feel when I get home.

Update …

Monday, Monday.
So good to me …

Well, now that's stuck in your head all day I can update you on the IT apocalypse.
Having worked myself a headache this weekend trying to catch up and repair the damage I'm glad to be back in the office today. I'm working just as hard as I was at the weekend but here I don't have to cook, clean, mow, tidy, iron, wash, wipe or any of the other crap that I spend my weekends doing.

Being a "paperless office" we fortunately have everything backed up on paper, including all the working drawings that IT are frantically scurrying around trying to rescue from the crash.
Which leaves smug Old Dive (with all my work archived at home on a spare Mac away from the servers) almost back up to speed and everybody else grumbling like pensioners at the prospect of redrawing hundreds of working drawings on CAD from paper backups (there's no point scanning in vector drawings so they've got rather a lot of work to do).

The words "hee" and "hee" creep into my mind.
Not that I want to see everyone here working through the Christmas break (ha) but I did get in this morning to find my workstation wantonly festively festooned so perhaps there is a God … even if it's just a God of petty revenge.

Right … back to being smug.

Too Busy To Blog

Hey ho.

Once again I am too busy to blog so I'll just post this photo I took in St.James's Park the other day of why you should never encourage the flying rats in London.
Unless of course you want your face pecked off never walk through the park eating a sandwich.

Time to dig out my DVD of Hitchcock's "The Birds" for this evening's movie methinks.

What's Cooking With Dive? Fish Stock

Right! Let's get basic …

Anyone who read yesterday's post will know I have to work right through this weekend as well as get all the shopping, housework, laundry and other chores done.
But that won't stop me cooking.

In fact, as I've got to spend so much time at my computer it is a perfect opportunity to make stock.

You must get sick of me moaning at you about stock.
Well for those of you who say "I don't have time to make stock", here am I on a ludicrously busy weekend where I'll be working twelve hours a day plus doing all the chores and what am I doing at the same time?
Yup … Making stock.
Because stock makes itself. There's bugger all effort involved.

This post should also see those of you who think stock is expensive to make slapped upside the head and those who say "but I don't know how to make it" shown how utterly simple and pain-free it is.
With pictures.

To recap:
Earlier in this series I wrote:
"… I checked out a cookery blog that had been featured on Blogger Dashboard and to my utter horror the woman making risotto (at least she pronounced it right) on the video clip said "I can never be bothered making stock; I use this …" and held up one of those cartons of "bouillon powder" (ingredients: salt, salt, salt, acidity regulator, acid, salt, preservative, e-numbers, flavourings and salt).
I am just glad that none of you were in earshot. Words were shrieked that will never appear on this polite and profanity-free blog.

Let's just get this straight before we go any further:
THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A GOOD HOME-MADE STOCK.
Have that tattooed somewhere you can see it.
Your fishmonger or butcher will give (or if he's mean, sell cheaply) you all the crap you need to make pints of stock for freezing, and making stock is a pleasure far greater than sitting in front of a fucking television going "duuuuur".

If you can't make good fish, meat, veggie and chicken stocks and freeze them for when you need them then fucking learn!"

At least two of you (Hi, Neetzy and Robyn) made delicious stock from leftover Thanksgiving turkey last week (check Neetzy's yummy recipe for "fowl-carcass and black bean soup") and hoorah for you two and any other stock-makers out there.

But for the rest of you, here's how bloody easy it is to make basic fish stock.
Beef, turkey, chicken, veggie, pork, whatever else is much the same except I usually add carrots.

We'll start with a bunch of stuff you've got hanging around anyway and use every day.
Veggies.
For today's stock I'm using a couple of local organic onions, a good head (sorry, I couldn't resist) of that yummy garlic from the French Farmers' Market, a bulb of fennel and three sticks of celery.
Cheap. Delicious.

Chop 'em up. Be rough. Big chunks are great as they'll easily sieve out.

Now normally for fish stock I'll get a load of white fish bones and offcuts and mix them up with crab shells and claws, prawn shells and heads and any miscellaneous shellfish remains I can find but today David knew I'd be after stock stuff so he spoiled me with this.
A turbot.
Woohoo! I LOVE turbot!
Turbot comes under my occasional luxury treats heading. It's pricey but good.
This guy, sans fillets, cost me absolutely nothing.
And what flavour!
So today I'll just be making turbot stock and leaving the rest of the stuff out.
Actually, it's cooling in the kitchen as I write and the flavour is sublime! I can't wait to cook with it.

"Howdy, folks!" says Mister Turbot.
He also says "Remember, when making fish stock always use white fish and never oily fish like salmon or mackerel. You really don't want that kind of mess in your kitchen."

Wise words, Mister Turbot. Now get in that pan!

For a fish like this you need a good chopper (yup, I'm in the mood for double-entendres). Take a firm grip of your chopper and give Mister Turbot a comprehensive seeing-to.
Again, big chunks will do; you just want to chop him up so he'll fit in the pot.

Now … Add in your chopped onions, garlic, fennel, celery and a big handful of wild mushrooms.
Cover the whole shebang with water and whack that heat up nice and high.

With almost three litres of water in there it's going to take a few minutes to bring to the boil so you can wipe everything down and clean up and put the kettle on while you wait.

When it eventually boils, you'll want to turn the heat down, but not too much. We're talking a "vigorous simmer" here.
It should look something like this.

And here comes the fun part, scum fans!

Reach for your scum spoon (you do HAVE a scum spoon, don't you?) and get skimming.
All of those impurities that will make your stock icky will be there waiting for you on the surface. Get rid of 'em.

Skim that scum! A couple of minutes scum-skimming and you'll notice the crap is no longer coming to the surface.

A couple more minutes and the stock starts to clear and looks more like the broth you are after.
This is the point where you should add a tablespoon of whole black peppercorns, a handful of flat-leaved parsley and a couple of bayleaves, give it a stir and leave it alone.
It's time to turn down the flame to a low simmer and go and get some work done while the stock gets serious and works its magic.

See? You can do all that in the time it takes to make a cuppa and drink it. You DO have the time to make stock!
In fact I took the opportunity to enjoy a spot of lunch: fresh cockles from David the Fishmonger with vinegar and cracked peppercorns.
Yummy! Especially with the aroma of the stock permeating the room.

Around forty-five to fifty minutes later, you can grab a sieve and start ladling the stock out of the pan. I recommend ladling out as much as you can because trying to tip a full pan of stock is asking for scalded body parts and a REALLY messy kitchen.
I confess to nibbling on the leftover turbot. Mmmmmmm …

Once it's about half empty you can safely pour it (don't forget your oven glove, burns fans).

Today's pan gave me a little over two and a half litres of gorgeous, umami-rich, turbot and wild mushroom stock, which I then cooled quickly by pouring it (about a pint at a time) into a tall jug standing in a bowl of iced water.
When it's cool you can pop a pint in the fridge to cook with later (it will be fine in there for a couple of days, covered with film but I'll be using mine to make seafood risotto for dinner later) and decant the rest into tubs for the freezer (leave expansion room or you're gonna have some cleaning to do).

So … There you have it.
Stock is cheap (your fishmonger and butcher should give you the stuff for nothing like mine do, so all you pay for are a few everyday veggies that you've got in your kitchen anyway).
Plus it takes so little time and effort to actually make (and tastes so fucking good) that any stock-virgins among you now have no more excuses.

Remember, if I ever find bouillon powder or stock cubes in your kitchen I will kill you.
Now go make stock!

Aww Crap

Hey ho.
In to London this morning to find yet another server apocalypse; this one having trashed just about all of our current work for the past month (together with the emergency back-ups).

While the corridors run with the blood of IT staff and their severed heads bounce down the stairwell I am the only person who can actually work as I have DVD backups of a lot of my stuff from home.
However, one of my current jobs still has at least a week's worth of work lost in IT Hell so I am working like stink all day today and all weekend to try to recover and catch up.

Hence, no blogging for today at least.
On the up side I will be able to work today accompanied by the satisfyingly agonised screams of IT staff undergoing well-deserved torture and mutilation.

To cap all of that our CEO is currently trapped in the lift.

Lunch With Joy

So there I was, minding my own business, on my way to a ceremony at the embassy when the bloody Queen nearly runs me over.

Not a sentence I can genuinely use every day but here are Brenda and Stavros looking as miserable as sin on their way home to the Parasite House after the Queen's Speech to Parliament yesterday.

Anyhoo …
I was wending my merry way across St.James's Park on my way to the Philippines Embassy (off Trafalgar Square) for Joy's dual nationality ceremony and found I couldn't get across The Mall.
A bunch of Horseguards with fixed bayonets and some very cold and glum looking armed police were blocking my route.

Luckily I'd left the office half an hour early so I could wander and take some photos but in the end I only just made it in time.
I got to hear the Band of the Horse Guards having a good old blast, though.
Which was nice.
These are the guys who were playing Elgar's Nimrod in that Remembrance Sunday video I posted.
Bloody good they were, too.

So … Next thing I know, clattering up The Mall comes the jolly Household Cavalry, which can only mean one of two things:
(a) It was the annual Queen's Speech to Parliament and the mad German bint was on her way back to the Parasite House, or
(b) Her Maj had cottoned on to the fact that it was Joy's ceremony today and laid on a parade in her honour.

It turned out to be the latter, as you'll see in a minute.

Here's one for the laydees. Check out these chaps' chaps. All very splendid and jangly.

After a few phalanxes of Household Cavalry cantered past along came a couple of old duffers dressed for hunting.
Nice horses, though. Very handsome.

And here comes Queenie! Here you go, Lynn. Some Queenie-porn just for you.
I do hope you're standing up while you look at this … OW!

Brenda and Stavros, sharing a cab. Brenda's looking as grumpy and frumpy as she does on banknotes and stamps. But then she has just had to sit and look at the government for the past hour so it's little wonder she's none too giggly.

"Mai husband and aye … are bloody cold. I say! One of you horsy cheps run orn ahead and put the kettle orn."

No Chazza today, but the only royal I have any respect for did put in an appearance. Here's Princess Anne (of Blue Peter fame) wearing a rather fetching silly hat.

And looky! There's our Joy chatting away to her. How spiffing!

There were many other carriages full of glum-looking people but I'm not posting them all so this one will have to suffice.

Once they'd gone I managed to grab a policeman and tell him I was due at the Philippines Embassy in fifteen minutes so he kindly let me across the road between yet more clattering groups of cavalry.

And I just made it. That's my rickshaw parked outside (I wish)!

Princess Anne had kindly dropped Joy off at the front door so she was already in there. The ceremony was lovely and the Philippines consul lady very polite and helpful.
Joy is so lucky to have dual nationality at last. She has her full British passport and can now apply for a full Philippines one too, so when she flies to Manila for Christmas she can go through London customs using her British passport (and avoid all the queues) and go through Manila customs on her Philippines one (again, avoiding all the queues).
Cool, huh?
There are all sorts of other advantages, like property, pension and residence rights in both countries and visa exemptions for EU countries and Asian ones.

One disadvantage is that Joy had to be thumb-printed. Icky!

We celebrated with (of course) lunch in Green Park.
Joy had promised me she'd bring some sunshine to London and she is a woman of her word. It was glorious in the park and we enjoyed lots of sushi and miso soup and green tea from Yoshino.
We also got mugged by Stumpy the tail-less squirrel but I was too busy fighting it off to take a photo.

So there you have it. A typical lunch hour for Old Dive.

Nothing

Apologies for the lack of a post or any visits to your blogs but today has been too busy to think.
I'll try to visit tonight when I get home.

In the meantime, Amanda has decided the office is not "Christmassy" enough …

Sigh …

Tis The Season … Apparently

Hey nonny nonny; 'tis December already and another year has gone down the shitter.

Joy foolishly reminded me this morning that the festering season is upon us once again with the impending arrival of that most unmentionable of "C" words, the disgusting orgy of greed that is called Christmas.

Norwich was full of misery on Saturday.
I was forced to flee the coffee shop in the face of hordes of Christmas shoppers going about their grisly business, grim-faced and arguing, shouting at the awful shrieking brats trailing in their wake and bitching about one another's relatives.

Joyeaux Noel, season of good will my arse.

Those of you who've been my Blogville neighbours for a couple of years already know to steer clear of me when the Christmas Spirit descends.
I don't do Christmas.
No cards, no presents, no fucking tree, no decorations, no "festive fayre", none of that bollocks.
And definitely no TV!

I get kinda cranky when people mention that stuff.
Ebenezer smegging Scrooge with his horrifying happy ending has a lot to answer for. Had I been him I would have kicked the ectoplasmic crap out of the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, sold off the Cratchit kids for medical experiments and boiled their parents down for candle tallow.

Before I get started on Christmas parties, TV, families, Godawful "food" et al, here's another depressing festive inevitability: the fucking Christmas meme:

Some of this is recycled from last year, but what do you expect? I hate Christmas.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Nothing. No presents either.

2. Real tree or artificial?
None.

3. When do you put up the tree?
Never.

4. When do you take the tree down?
Fucking hell! Can't you read?

5. Do you like eggnog?
Of course I don't like fucking egg nog. It is the suckle of Beelzebub and looks like vomit even before it's sicked back up again by my giggling, imbecile secretaries.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
A microscope from my parents when I was six. I still have it.
You can look at so many totally gross things with a microscope; all kids should have one.

7. Do you have a nativity scene?
No, but Stouffer has been trying to persuade me to buy some really tacky, light-up religious figurines from the lunatic evangelist websites and some bizarre and inappropriate animals and make some kind of obscene tableau for the front window to scare kids with.
Maybe next year. Probably never. I really can't be bothered.

8. Hardest person to buy for?
Me. Because it's so difficult to surprise myself. Though my habit of getting an idea just before I drop off to sleep and quickly ordering stuff off the internet helps, because I go straight back to bed and forget that I ordered it. The upshot being that postie quite often brings me delightful surprises … and an occasional box of "what the fuck is this crap?"

9. Easiest person to buy for?
Me. Book token.

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
A (and this is true. I just wish I hadn't trashed it as I don't have a photo to startle you with) bisque, revolving musical Pierrot a foot high. Hi, Sally. What the fuck were you thinking (I use the word "thinking" advisedly)?

11. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Neither.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
Anything that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
I don't.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
No, but I've trashed quite a few.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Reindeer. With a cherry tomato on top for the red nose.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
No tree. No lights.

17. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Santa just eats all the goodies and drinks the sherry that's left out, then goes upstairs and peers creepily at your wife before interfering with your children.
And he doesn't employ elves; that's just a cover up. All his production these days is done by subcontract child slave labour in China while the Fat Man chills in his Cayman Islands tax haven.

18. Travel for Christmas or stay at home?
Stay in, lock the door, mute the phone, drink 'til it's all over.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
I can eat all of Santa's reindeer.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Oh, for fuck's sake.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
What presents?

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year?
The fact that it happens every year. And that it's a non-stop orgy of greed and misery.

23. What I love most about Christmas?
Other people's inevitable misery and disappointment.

24. Do you hang mistletoe?
Only in effigy. I'm way too ugly to get a kiss at Christmas.

25. Favourite holiday memory as a child?
The fell winter of 1963. The snow was deep enough to bury trains and we had proper snowmen and proper snowballs and proper sledges, not the crap we have now with global warming.

26. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I am Santa Claus.

27. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Nope. That's just greed. Besides, I only get two gifts these days, so it would be kinda stupid.

28. Can you ice skate?
Yes, if you allow for lots of falling over and cursing. Our office goes ice skating every Christmas at Somerset House by the Thames. Mostly this involves watching the girls fall over while getting drunk at the side of the rink.

29. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you?
Not having to set the alarm clocks for 4:40am and commute for seven fucking hours every bloody day. Other than that it's a miserable fucking ordeal.

30. What is your favourite holiday tradition?
Wandering around the city, pointing and laughing at Christmas shoppers as they try desperately not to have a nervous breakdown and kill their children.

31. Which do you prefer; giving or receiving?
Giving makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and smug. Receiving generally involves covering my disappointment with a fake smile and insincere thanks for some piece of tat bought with no thought whatsoever … so "giving".

32. What is your favourite Christmas Song?
Fairytale of New York: The Pogues with the late and lovely Kirsty Mc.Coll.

33. Candy Canes! yuck or yummy?
Yuck!

It's Brown; It's Sticky: It's Poo-Shaped. Let's Eat It!

It seems weird working from home on a Monday but the car's in for a service so here I am.
As I'm too busy to write anything that requires conscious thought and I am also quite peckish I think it's time to re-visit an occasional series we've not seen for a while: "Dive's Extreme Eating."

This series has seen me putting odd things into my mouth and chomping down on them both for my own curiosity and your prurient entertainment.
We've explored the stinky and sticky world of natto, eaten whalemeat, taken part in the infamous wasabi chocolate experiment and I have related the tuna cat food / dead spider / meths / cheese and pickle cautionary tale.

Today I'm breaking with tradition and actually eating something yummy.
Today I shall be launching my tastebuds at a box of sweet tamarind.

Now some of you (especially Joy, who introduced me to this gloriously addictive stuff) may already know how delicious this is, but I'd not tried it until earlier this year and now I am a registered addict.

So … Here we have a box with Sweet Tamarind written on it. If you check your local Asian store you may well come across something similar.
Step one is to buy it.

Step two is to remove some of the strange, poo-shaped and poo-coloured pods from the box and look at them a little nervously.
Some of you may remember how soaking and squeezing tamarind paste is as near to poo-massage as you are ever likely to want to get and may well be backing away from your monitor right now.
Worry not! For yummyness awaits within.

Tentatively break open a pod and take a peek inside.

Oooooh!
Looky! A little poo, all tied up with string.

If ever any of you have nightmares about triffids or Invasion of the Body-Snatchers this might freak you a little.
I dare say not many of you would think - upon first encountering one of these - "Hey! That looks like something I want to put in my mouth."

But persevere! Remove the strings and chow down on that sticky, brown mess.
Holy Moly!
It is utterly delicious!
If there are any Brits out there who remember Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles, these are just like a less sugary and far more delicious version of those.

Once the sweet-sour tang has hit home and your tastebuds are enjoying multiple orgasms in your mouth you'll discover that there are hard little seeds inside the gooey deliciousness.

Simply put these to one side and carry on avidly devouring every last drop of that sticky pulp.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …

Once you have a decent pile of seeds (which won't be long as the taste of the pulp is so fantastic), get yourself a frying pan and gently dry fry the seed cases for around five minutes, shaking them occasionally.

Let them cool for a bit, then crack open the shell casing with your teeth (or a hammer if you've got crap teeth) to reveal what looks (and tastes) like a hard version of a toasted peanut.
These are considerably less delicious than the yummy pulp but still worth trying, if only as a test of your dentist's handiwork.

As a special treat on today's "Dive's Extreme Eating" post we'll be devouring some of the goodies Mayuko brought back from Tokyo.

Pocky fans will be drooling at liquorice and crunchy nut Pocky and lovers of weird, squidgy, milk-flavoured rubber sweets will enjoy the little white packets with the cow on the front.

These read:
ミルクソフトキャンデー
… which is pronounced "mirukusofutokandee", which - as any fule kno - is milk soft candy.

But it is the limited edition KitKat that is the scariest thing here.
The Japanese really love their limited edition weird-flavoured sweets and this one is no exception:

Hands up who can read this:
しょうゆ

Yup. It's "Shouyu" … er … soy sauce flavoured KitKat.

Which … much to my disappointment, actually tasted delicious. A little like Caramac, if anyone remembers those.

Anyhoo. That's it for this episode of Dive's Extreme Eating. Not very extreme this time I grant you, but perhaps it will encourage you to put weird things in your mouth and see what they taste like.