Anything, Anywhere But Under Sufferance

My wife has made a gastronomic error of calamitous proportions. It all started innocently enough a couple of weeks ago. Feeling a little below par, Katharine indulged herself in a pot of Nutella Chocolate Spread to spread thickly over a few pieces of toast. It was comfort food of the highest order and considering we've been living off badger food for the past six-months, she felt that she could allow herself this minor frivolity. Now, until such time as she bought this item, I had no great love for chocolate spread. In actual fact, the very notion confused me. Chocolate on toast? Why? Why not just ditch the toast and have chocolate? Chocolate and bread do not go. In the same way as pineapple on Pizza doesn't go (I've checked with the Pizza bosses, and it doesn't - that's the final word) or having Ice Cream in your Tortilla just looks silly and makes your chicken wish it had its feathers back. I watched in confused bewilderment as she tucked heartily into the toast. ...

I am beginning to dread car journeys with my children. In the good old days, the most we had to concern ourselves with was perhaps a nappy that needed changing, perhaps the occasional redecoration of the car interior via the medium of the contents of Jess's stomach, the usual bouts of arguing and fighting or the quiet request to stop for a wee because they are absolutely bursting, approximately twenty minutes after you have left the last service station. Fortunately, the CD player was a bastion of adult respectability. Well, I say that, my wife does have rather 'middle of the road' taste in Music. Billy Joel, Bucks Fizz, Brotherhood of Man and recently, Michael Buble. Pretty much anyone who begins with 'B' really, though even she drew the line at Bros. However with me driving and staking my claim to manhood, my choice of CD's were often the ones littering the car, upsetting my wife and keeping us entertained on our journeys. Not any more. After spending the vast...

I don't understand duty free shops. At all. I'm yet to fathom the origin of the hysterical reaction in some that allows them to wave their boarding pass in orgasmic delight in the face of a confused foreign shop assistant, while spending a stupid amount of money on enough alcohol to pickle the livers of the sheep population of New Zealand, or on cigarettes plentiful enough to turn your lungs into heaving, viscous globs of tar. Oh and perfume. You can buy perfume. You can also buy perfume on the plane too. And sunglasses. I don't know about you, but when I need perfume for someone or sunglasses, my first thought isn't "book a flight somewhere...". Why do they think people will take leave of their senses and think "Here I am, stuck in an airport miles from anywhere, what I really need now is four litres of Paco Rabanne and enough crap toys to keep Taiwan in business for the next millennia"? The chocolate is the worst however. It is always stupidly expe...

It seems appropriate to post this here, I wrote this for a travel website a while back now and I thought those of us going away on holiday shortly may enjoy reading it, or not as the case may be... FOR THE SAFETY NOT SANITY OF PASSENGERS Going away on a long awaited holiday can be amongst the highlights of the year. Once the trip has been sorted you count the months, weeks and then days until the day of departure finally dawns amidst a sea of hastily packed suitcases and excited chatter. Often this can be the best part of the holiday, knowing that the day to day drudgery of work can be forgotten for a week or two and that stretching out in front of you is two weeks of much anticipated bliss. You cannot fail to be in a good mood as you fling your suitcase into the taxi and sit amongst the excited babbling of friends and loved ones. And then you get to the airport. Douglas Adams once remarked that you seldom hear the comparative “as beautiful as an airport” for in as much as these gat...

As you may now, I play golf. A lot. Usually quite badly. Occasionally the golfing gods may be kind and permit me a decent round or two, but this is far from certain whenever I tee the ball up, take out a club and attempt to thump the ball down the fairway (or hook/slice it into the trees, which is more usually the result of my efforts) My friend Ian and I have been playing a fair bit this year. Losing weight and the resulting improvement in my back, has resulted in me replacing my trips to the fridge and sweetie shop, with trips to the course and driving range. This is indubitably more expensive, but while it is costing me £s it is saving me lbs. We've been playing most weeks now, sometimes twice a week, since April/May time and we've both seen improvements in our game. For me that means I am shooting less in the 90's and more in the 80's, on one memorable occasion a 79. Ian's improvement has been even more dramatic. But to put that into context I have to expl...

I was at the Driving Range the other evening, paying for my son and his friend to hit golfballs aimlessly about while Ian and I gazed on in the forlorn hope that we may get a turn (Out of 100 balls, I hit about 10). When our gentle practising was interrupted by the sound of a car being revved to high heaven and then spinning its tyres in the car park. Now, I'm pretty certain that the R&A in their laws of the game of Golf, suggest that revving a car engine while people are practising is pretty poor form and liable to a two stroke penalty. One with the club across your windscreen and the second seeing your putter wrapped around the idiot drivers head. I really don't understand this macho posturing in cars. There's so many ways to do it too. You can wind your window down and play music so loud that you frighten the wildlife, not just in your local town but often in Norway. You can rev your engine aggressively at traffic lights and glance across at someone else in the car n...

Here's a thought for you. I don't like alcohol very much. Let's not misunderstand this. I occasionally enjoy a cold beer (much rarer now since I've been asking the fat fairies to harvest the lard from my arse), a glass of wine or maybe, if pushed a Southern Comfort or nice Single Malt whisky. But I could quite happily give this up forever tomorrow. The problem is, I think, that I don't really understand the subtle differences that so many people witter on about. Let's start with wine for example. If you are particularly unfortunate, you may catch that god-awful irritating, plum-in-the-mouth frizzy haired bint, Jilly Goulden wittering on about "the bouquet of fresh Thyme and Mint echoing through the velvety undertone of Saffron Walden..." or some such nonsense... So I try it and think... "Umm... It's wine." That is my level of understanding. Wine comes in three flavours, Red (which is purple), White (which is yellow) and Rose (which is Pin...