Eight Things About Me

Tagged a while ago for this, possibly by Jahooni, and only just got a round tuit. Eight, eh?

1. I once wrote a letter to Isaac Asimov.
   The BBC had been screening a Merkan tv series called Holmes and Yo-Yo, about a human police detective and his robot side-kick. This idea was obviously stolen from Asimov's novel The Caves Of Steel and other stories featuring the robot detective R. Daneel Olivaw. So I wrote and asked Asimov if he was collecting royalties on the series. He wrote back denying that H & Y was anything to do with him. If you've ever seen it, you'll know why.



2. I gave my girlfriend a butterfly for Xmas.
   Embra generally gets even colder in December than in "Summer". So imagine my surprise when I woke up on Xmas Eve 1972 (possibly) and found a newly-hatched butterfly fluttering around in the relative warmth of the kitchen. I fed it some sugar water and gave it to my then girlfriend as a surprise Xmas present. She didn't dump me on the spot, so I guess she was fairly impressed.



3. I'm a bad male model.
   Actually, that should read bad rôle model. One of the local kids, G, had overheard his parents gossiping about me, so he repeated it to his mates. Who completely misinterpreted what they'd heard, like Chinese Wispas. The first I knew about it was when they asked me if I was a male model, so I strutted my stuff up and down an imaginary catwalk, to general hilarity. Then they all turned and pointed at G, shouting Numpty!
   (I have no idea why G's parents thought I was a bad rôle model, I've never been banned for drink-driving.)



4. I once stopped drinking tea for four years.
   When I was twelve, I went on a school cruise to Scandinavia. The ship struck Leith docks on the way out - our cabin received a rather large dent in the wall, i.e. hull. I was seasick for the first two days. For hot beverages we had a choice of tea or coffee, with nowhere else to go. The tea tasted like, well, it's hard to describe, but let's just say that it was so bloody awful that for the next four years I would only drink coffee. I had a great time.



5. I'm heavily into recycling.
   To prove it, here's a recycled joke:
   
   Two blondes, let's call them Sam and Amanda, are in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Sam says, "Let's play Hide & Seek!" and promptly buries her head in the sand. Amanda takes three days to find her twin.



6. The first time I read The Lord Of The Rings, it took me three days to finish it.
   Hey, who needs sleep when you're fourteen?



7. I'm the world's worst darts player.
   During one game, I managed to throw a dart through a window. Well, it would have gone through if the window had been open at the time. As it was, only the point came out the other side. Ooer.



8. I love the song Over The Rainbow.
   Especially the Tori Amos version, but also Eva Cassidy. And when they played this one at the end of 50 First Dates, I just had to track it down. It's by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Beautiful.
   
   

Tagging, lets' see, Cat, Mr. X and Brom.

Foreign Food

Travel, as they say, broadens the mind. And foreign food broadens the waist. But how foreign is foreign?

On our first family holiday, we went to Majorca (pronounced ma-JOR-ca). We found a lovely place on the beach, imaginatively named Mel's Beach Bar, that served a canny fish & chips¹. Very Spanish, I think you'll agree.

As an aside, three years later I took Little Miss Farty on a skiing holiday to Andorra, high in the Pyrenees (between the continents of Asia and Iberia). As we sat down for our first Andorran meal, the waitress came over to take our order (curry). I recognised her Surrey accent and looked up. "Haven't I seen you before somewhere? Like Majorca?"

"Yes, I'm Mel. I own Mel's Beach Bar. You had fish & chips." She could also take a drinks order for a party of twenty - correctly - without writing it down.

If you ever visit Andorra, don't order the chicken curry. Unless you want chicken stew. It's a very tasty stew, but it's soooo not curry.

In Glasgow, you can order the popular local dish, the Chicken Tikka Masala. I kid you not.

There's a great Italian takeaway in Embra called L'Alba D'Oro - try their Pizza Maria Rosa. I had thought that pizza originated in Merka, since that's where tomatoes² come from, but t'internet says otherwise and who am I to argue?

Hamburgers, OTOH, are as Merkan as mom and apple-pie, right? As long as you count Hamburg, Germany as being in Merka. It would certainly explain why hamburgers generally are made from bits of dead cow, not pig.

I had my first taste of Japanese food in North Carolina, USA. No, not dead whale, as it happens, but a very nice selection of dips and that. (Not including fish; the only fish I really like is anchovy. On pizza.) It was also the first time I saw a chef set fire to a meal and get applause instead of a good thrashing.

Which brings us to that most Scotch of all foods - Haggis. It's surprisingly hard to find a restaurant in Embra that serves this delicacy, possibly because of the creature's³ increasing rarity. But there are one or two establishments that still employ seasonal haggis hunters, and a pretty penny they fetch too.

One such place is the Stac Polly in Dublin Street, which today served a haggis starter, a main course of beef stew and a delicious cranach dessert with raspberries. My dining companion had the fish; he then remarked that he wasn't used to having a sauce on his fish, as it tended to make the batter stick to the newspaper. Quality, man!

Anyone who says Haggis is originally an Algerian dish is talking a load of tripe.

¹ UK Chips = US French Freedom Fries.

² Tomato factoid - Merkans used to think tomatoes were poisonous, being related to Deadly Nightshade.

³ A haggis is a small four-legged Scottish Highland creature, which has the limbs on one side shorter than the other side. This means that it is well adapted to run around the hills at a steady altitude, without either ascending or descending. However a haggis can easily be caught by running around the hill in the opposite direction.

Mr Farty's Kitchen Tips

Mrs Farty does most of the cooking in our house. Here are a few tips on how to avoid getting landed with it.

Always remember to put water in the pressure cooker before closing the lid.

In fact, since destroying one pressure cooker and having to clean another one - twice - with steel wool, I tend to put the water in first nowadays.

Stir gravy continuously from the moment you add thickener until ready to serve.

Yes, you can strain the lumps out, although using a blender tends to make it runny.

Potatoes are more easily digested when cooked.

So we had them a few minutes after the main course. What's the big deal?

Potatoes get softer after prolonged boiling; eggs get harder.

This actually happened to my uncle Peter. He couldn't understand why the "soft-boiled eggs" weren't soft yet, after cooking them for half an hour.

Back-scratchers are ideal for scraping boiled eggs from the ceiling.

See above.

Remove LMF's kirby grips from clothing before placing in washing machine.

Rather than after draining the machine and checking the filter (or calling the service engineer if you're female).

Don't leave your uneaten pizza at the restaurant.

Get the waiter to put the leftovers in a box, take it home, pop it in the fridge, leave for a couple of days, then throw it in the bin. Well, that's what we do at Farty Towels anyway.

Check what type of oven you are using before cooking Yorkshire Puddings.

Again, not guilty. What happened was, Aunty B (of Full Moon fame) volunteered to cook her Legendary Yorkshire Puddings to go with our Sunday roast. Turned the oven up to supernova. Greased the tray thoroughly with dripping. Popped the tray in the top shelf. Mixed the batter. Opened the oven door. Stepped back to avoid the flames. Shrieked.
Some ovens turn on the integrated grill when you switch them to full heat.
btw, we've still never tasted Aunty B's LYPs.

When your oven goes on fire, close the oven door.

Keep it closed for at least an hour. Turn off the oven. Cover with a damp towel. Slap Aunty B's wrists every time she "just goes to check". Rub it in at every possible opportunity for the next five years.