Family Shenanigans

I have been tagged by Fiona at The Cottage Smallholder to share 6 random things about me.

Tag Rules:

Link to the person who tagged you. Post the rules on the blog. Write six random things about yourself. Tag six people at the end of your post. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. Let the tagger know when your entry is up (I assume this means tell the person who tagged you, when you’ve published your post about 6 random things?).

6 RANDON THINGS ABOUT MOI:

1. I have no middle name

2. I played in a Javanese Orchestra at The Royal Albert Hall when I was 15.

3. My pet hate is being rushed. I’m definitely the tortoise of “the hare & the tortoise” fame.

4. My most humiliating experience was whilst working for “The Big Breakfast” TV programme. I had to get celebrity “vox pops” at a film premiere, which meant chasing these folk down the red carpet and hassling them til they said something cute through gritted smiles. I’ll never forget the look on Angelica Huston’s face, after I’d run and shouted after her, deep into the theatre “Angelica, Angelic-A! ANGEL-IC-A!”. She finally stopped, turned round and flashed her wide eyes at me – her expression said “this had better be good”. And I had to ask our stock question – “what did you have for breakfast this morning?”

I was reminded of this incident recently when I read Stewart Copeland’s account of working with Angelica on a film score. Stewart’s other “Dinner Tales” are definitely worth a read. He’s a compelling story teller as well as being the best drummer in the world.

5. My “porn star name” is Queenie Davies. (Name of first pet / mother’s maiden name)

6. I get very nervous about breaking rules. But on this occasion, I’m going to be bold. I’m only going to tag a couple of other people because a) I don’t know that many bloggers and b) I’m not sure what the protocol is. Personally, I’m flattered to be tagged but perhaps it’s not everyone’s cup of tea? I hope you enjoy visiting these as much as I do and I hope they will enjoy having fun with the tag:

Kopstoot

Artful Parenting

Shadows And Clouds

Twas Mr. P’s birthday last Sunday and he’d requested a kiddies style birthday tea (they’re the best aren’t they?). We managed to go the whole hog with balloons, treasure hunt, egg n spoon and sack races and even wheelbarrow races. Some of this was for the kids delight, but mostly for the adults I’d say!

I wanted to do some traditional stuff to eat so aswell as cloudy lemonade, jelly n ice-cream and sausages on sticks, we tried painting leaves with melted chocolate. You peel the leaves off when it’s set and they look brill! Trouble was, I had so much choc left that I ended up painting and dipping in choc anything in sight. Including my tongue. Several times. So what started life as a boring old victoria sponge birthday cake took on it’s on momentum and ended up being an amazing creation.

As well as chocolate leaves and dipped strawbs on the top, it had round the base lots of little chocolate baskets with edible acorns in! The baskets were made by painting the inside of mini cake cases and the “acorns” were choc dipped grapes. The best thing about all this was that folk thought that I’d actually planned the cake concept, so I was getting lots of compliments for my happy accident. Never had so much fun in ages. Go and melt yourself some choc and see what you can create!

They’re getting bigger every day. Soon time to dust down the chutney pan and load up the shopping trolley with vinegar. It’s that time of year where if I forget to go out in the garden for a few days, I’m then inundated with armfuls of produce that I “have to do something with – QUICK!”. We’re novices at this growing lark so I’m sure we’ll find other ways of staggering our crop but for now we have umpteen lettuces, umpteen courgettes growing into marrow and give it a few months – a squillion apples.

I set about looking for recipes and came across this site which made me laugh. I was looking at it’s silly flashing icons while making one of the recipes for tea and then it started dawning on me. This all looked familiar. I seem to remember this funky cookery show on TV from my youth. I’m sure it was on late at night advocating anarchy in the kitchen backed by loud guitar music. But there’s more to it than this… I go back and look at the site some more. Oh yes, there were 2 crazy “mystery chef” characters. Then “plink” the missing piece of mental jigsaw slots in. There’s mention on the website of an incident where the “Mystery Chefs” were guesting on another TV show and threw a plate of spag bol over Johnny Vaughan while he was presenting a link. Why should this ring a bell? It was me who booked them as guests on that show!

If you’d like your snails with more of a sense of urgency then check these out

Thanks to my friend “allotment girl” who lent me the book, we’ve discovered Jamie Olivers’ ice cream “smush-ins” . I’d promised R a treat and she’d asked for an ice-cream. I was wondering how I was going to match the excitement of all those holiday ice-creams she’d got used to and this certainly did the trick.

What you (and / or your little ones) do is, get a couple of scoops of ice-cream and mush or smush into it, any lovely stuff that you fancy or have lurking in your cupboards. We bunged in banana, sultanas, sprinkles, some Winnie the Pooh chocolate coins left over from easter and mamaluke’s gorgeous strawberry cordial but the possibilities are endless. The idea is so, so simple that you wonder why any editor would’ve allowed it into a recipe book. Thing is, it turned into such an event that I understood why it was in the book – to create a buzz and excitement around mixing, bashing and smushing a bowl of ingredients. And then of course, there’s the eating. Yummm.

I love lists. I spend my life making lists. On several occasions I’ve actually caught myself making lists of the lists that I need to make. Is there a job I could do making lists? I drive Mr. P insane. I’m like Monica from friends except without the team of comedy scriptwriters. Anyway, I’m wondering if I can enliven my posts with some listy action?

I like the idea of those “10 things that make me happy today” lists. They’re uplifting & thought provoking but somehow not quite me. They don’t allow for my sardonic streak. (can anyone even think of 10 happy things – a day for goodness sake?)

I’m more with the “let’s talk about what’s good but lace it with a nice dollop of mockery” gang. I felt so at home working in Birmingham with the self deprecating humour of the brummies. Who else would create the most passionate and upbeat website about their home city and call it “Birmingham: It’s Not Shit.”? Hilarious.

So, how bout a list where the good stuff and the not so good stuff is all jumbled up – much like it happens in life? So here goes:

10 erm “things” about our Greek holiday. (more…)

I’m sitting here getting wafts of something smelling really lovely. I did turn the air freshener on earlier but it’s not just that. Ah! The basket of elderflower heads sitting next to me on the table might have something to do with it – doh!

I think I might have got away with it. The flowers were out the week before we went on our fortnight hol. I was convinced there wouldn’t be any left when we got back but sadly didn’t have time to make any cordial before we left. Was amazed to see a few flowerheads still on the go when we got back but it’s taken me a few days to get the citric acid together and even then I forgot to buy the lemons – double doh! So I dragged R out before tea today on a “flower hunt” and managed to find just about the last dozen elderheads in the whole county I reckon. Boiled up the water and dissolved the sugar before tea and now R is settled, toys semi tidied away and the washing sorted, I can get to zesting those lemons. That is, if Mr. P hadn’t decided to be a model husband and do the washing up and in the process chuck my nicely cooling cordial base down the sink. Is someone somewhere trying to tell me this cordial was not meant to be? Of course that only makes me more determined to make the stuff!