Honey, Where's The Crocodile?

The above question was asked by someone I worked with years ago when, after a night of drinking, I went back to his place to look at his collection of reptiles.

I'm aware the the first couple of sentences of this blog are more than a little odd! I have, in the past, kept many species of reptiles and I'm still quite fascinated by them, but unfortunately my wife doesn't share my interest, So I'm now reptile-free.

The person who I went home with worked on the same building site with me, and we had a few drinks after work one evening (depends on your interpretation of 'a few') and we got talking about lizards. I told him about a friend of mine who had a 'Water Dragon'. I was fascinated by this beautiful creature. It was free to run around the house and would often scare the life out of guests by jumping off a ledge and landing on their laps. He said that he had a snake which was house-trained, to which I disagreed saying you can't house-train a snake! To prove me wrong he invited me home to prove his point.

The strange thing about the effect of alcohol is that the oddest of situations or conversations seem quite reasonable when you are under its effect. I remember walking into his house, which was kept very warm because of his collection of reptiles. His wife, a rather large imposing woman who looked more pissed than we were, got to her feet rather unsteadily and slurred the words, “Don't piss in the sink, I've got dish-cloths bleaching in there!” then staggered off upstairs. Things became even stranger when he walked around the house shouting, “here Hissy, here Hissy!” it turned out that his pet snake was called 'Hissy Fit'. But for whatever reason it never materialized, I just got the drunken, “Honest, I have a snake, honest”. He then shouted up stairs to his wife saying, “Wot yer dun with the worm?!” To which she replied, “Its in bed wi me!” He then turned to me and said "It's in bed with the wife, do you want to go up and have a look at it?” I declined. I think the drink was beginning to wear off and it was all beginning to look very strange .

He then turned to me and said, “I bet you 'ave never 'ad one of these?” beckoning me into a small room. I hesitated to follow him, but my curiosity got the better of me, so I followed him into a room which was full of glass tanks with various lizards and snakes slithering or crawling about in them. In the corner of the room was an area which seemed to have a shallow pool in it. He beckoned me to walk over and have a look in the pool, but it seemed to be empty. It was then that he walked to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, “Honey, where's the crocodile?” to his wife.

The drink was now definitely wearing off and the predicament I found myself in was becoming more and more strange when his wife replied, “Shit! I've left it in the bath!” He turned to me and asked if I wanted to go to the toilet with him to look at his crocodile? I declined, made my excuses and left. I remember giggling to myself all the way home at the predicament I had left.

The next day at work I noticed that he hadn't turned in, and thought he must have had the mother of all hangovers, as I too felt 'a little under the weather'. He never returned to the building site again while I was there. The nature of being a journeyman joiner means you only work on contracts for so long, before moving on to the next job. It was a shame, because I quite liked the company of this man who happened to be an electrician.

A few months later, while working on another building site, I met up with a man who had worked with the reptile man and I enquired where he was. He told me that the night I had gone out with him, he had gone to the bathroom to remove his crocodile from the bath. It was only a juvenile and only about three feet long, he said. Because he was so drunk, the croc managed to grab hold of him and bit off two of his fingers and part of his hand! I felt so bad about this, as I felt that I was in some way to blame, though I didn't tell him to go croc wrestling! He never worked on the sites again. He bought a small sweet shop. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a little child going into his sweet shop and see the man with half a hand. And then for him to tell you that a crocodile bit it off, just like Captain Hook!

The other evening while at a party a strange woman kept telling me boring stories about holidays both her and her equally dull husband went on, saying, “You wouldn't believe the strange things that happen to us!” 

I just smiled and agreed.

The Un-Scratchable Itch!

According to the spell-checker, there is no such word as un-scratchable. This was also backed up by a friend this week who also agreed that there was no such thing. She told me this when I told her that I had itchy teeth, earlier in the week. I told her that it was driving me mad, because they were un-scratchable. She told me that there was no such word, and no such thing as 'itchy teeth'.

I can't possibly be the only person to have suffered from this phenomenon? Have you never had an itch in your teeth that is totally impossible to scratch? There is also that itch you get at the centre of your back that has been carefully measured by your body to ensure it is absolutely impossible to reach it! What about when you are in polite company or trying to impress someone and you develop itchy crotch syndrome? There is no way on earth you can stick your hands down your pants for a relief rummage!

What about the very strange phenomenon which some amputees suffer from, 'the phantom itch'? This is where an itch develops where there is no longer a limb! Honestly, this is quite a common thing, people developing an itch where there is no limb! Surely these itches are all un-scratchable?

But today there has been the news of an itch that I, for one, welcome. Jeremy Corbyn has been elected the new leader of the Labour party. All the Tory Blairites who have been masquerading as socialists have now started to squirm, having all declared they wouldn't serve under him.

The Tories are now worried because there is suddenly a true opposing view to their callous, money-grabbing philosophy. This was evident in the way Cameron has launched a scathing personal attack on a man who has done nothing but show dignity and charm so far. Cameron claims that Corbyn will destroy the economy if he ever gets voted in. Well isn't that what both Blair and Major did? But they did it by letting their banker friends have all their own way.

For far too long, there has been no alternative to the greedy capitalist mentality. People bought into the myth that market forces will dictate the economy. Market forces are manipulated to suit the few. This is not Marxist propaganda. It is a simple fact that rich people stay rich no matter what happens to the economy, while the rest of us suffer.

I'm in no way a Communist, as this system has been proven not to work, but then, so has capitalism. Only the latter seems so much more seductive, giving you a chance to make it big. But we all no how lotteries work, they are never in the favour of the punter.

So even if you don't agree with a word of what the new Labour leader has to say I'm sure you will find out a lot more about your chosen party, when they now debate with him?

If you all sing from the same hymn sheet, you always get the same old song!

Eat, Drink and Be Mary!

The above title is the answer to the old Christmas cracker joke, 'What does Jesus's mother do at Christmas?'

But food is something that divides people. Some see it as fuel to power the body, while others see it as something to relish (forgive the pun). For me it's a mixture of the two.

I like to keep fit, so I do watch what I eat, and how much, but I do also love good food. Because of my heritage I tend to favour Italian food as that's what I was fed as a child, but I love to try foods from all over the world. Having said this, things like spag bog and lasagne, along with foods from other cultures such as curries and Chinese food are now a big part of the staple diet of people here in Britain. I put my foods into three categories, which are based only on my taste and preference, nothing else.

The first category is the foods I avoid at all cost. I have argued many times in the past that there is no such thing as good and evil. People do appalling things and people do good things but they do them all for a reason, not because they are good or bad. But having said this, my argument falls apart when confronted with pickled onion flavoured monster munches. EVIL!, EVIL!, EVIL! There can be no other description for this vile piece of manufactured fat and E numbers. 

I don't like vinegar and I'm not keen on most sea foods, although I do eat some. The main sea foods that have me squirming are mussels and octopus. Mussels look like something a gynaecologist would have to remove from some poor unfortunate woman. Octopus is a thing of nightmares for me when it comes to food. My Grandmother, whom I have spoken about before, was a little Italian lady whom I adored and happened to be, for me, one of the best cooks that ever lived. I would return from school some days and she would have obtained some octopus (polpo) from who knows where, as 'sixties Huddersfield was not exactly awash with it at the time. She would be cleaning the hood of it out in the sink, then she would chop up the tentacles with a look on her face of a child receiving an ice cream. The thought of this sight still fills me with dread. Octopus are beautiful creatures while swimming in the sea, but not on the dinner plate.

The food I love is Pasht, an Italian peasant soup which was our staple diet as kids. There was always a pan on the boil in the kitchen. The soup seemed to be self filling, as the level in the pan never seemed to drop. Our family eat this now when we are ill, it is the only thing we crave: it's our snuggle blanket. I also love most of the dishes I grew up with, many of them bean dishes (not the baked type). But I also love a good curry and lots of Chinese food. 

But strangely, one of my favourite treats is one of the simplest. When little Harleigh stays on a Sunday night, we go to bed to read her favourite books and Nonna Carol makes us both a cup of green tea with honey and a couple of rounds of toast. This is one of my greatest pleasures in life.

I love cooking. It is my way of relaxing,  and I use lots of authentic recipes which I have acquired from people from all over the world, and have also created lots of my own. When I was a child I used to stand in the kitchen with my Gran and help her cook, while she chatted away about when she was young and the 'old country'. I developed a great love for making fresh food and my son used to stand with me and help me cook: he in turn has done the same with his daughter. And that is the reason for this blog.

The other day my son's partner had to go somewhere and little Harleigh and myself found ourselves with an afternoon together. I asked her if she wanted to go out somewhere to which she said, “no Babo, we bake buns!” We didn't have the time or the ingredients for this so I offered to cook one of her favourite meals with her, Chinese soft noodles. She declined, then asked me if we could make something that falls into my third category, 'cosi, cosi?' This just means 'so, so'. These are foods that I don't either love or dislike, I can take or leave them. Foods such as pizza, risotto, paella, lasagne, spag bog and many more. I eat them, but if I didn't ever see them again I wouldn't be bothered. 

My son loved to make pizza with me when he was young, and he also loved fried rice. Harleigh loves rice dishes but then, like her mother, she eats lots of Caribbean food. But the other day Harleigh asked, “We make pancakes Babo?” The last time I made or ate pancake was when my son, who is now nearly thirty, was only nine or ten. I don't see the point of them. But because I think that eating and cooking with children is an important part of their development I agreed.

We got out a baking bowl and put in the milk, flour and eggs and both Harleigh and I took turns to whisk the batter. I then cooked them with Harleigh helping me to toss them. I then dressed one with honey only and the other with a mixture of lemon and honey. I put them on a plate on the dining table. Because I'm not that bothered about them I only made two pancakes and told Harleigh to dig in while I washed up the pan etc. I told her I would be in in a minute to share the food with her. She is only a tiny little thing and usually only picks at her food, preferring to eat things separately rather than mixing her food. So can you imagine my surprise when she walked into the kitchen with an empty plate in her hands and in true Dickensian style asked, “More, Babo please?!” I was shocked that she had eaten so much in one sitting. So I told her that it might be best if she let the food settle first. Sure enough her stomach was full, as ten minutes later she fell into a deep satisfied sleep. When her Mum picked her up the first thing she asked was, “Can I come tomorrow and make pancake with Babo?”

This morning I have received a text from Kim asking if Harleigh can come for a while today, as she has done nothing but talked about pancakes all night? So today we shall be making mostly pancakes and I might have to revise my favourite food list and take pancakes out of "so, so " and put them in my favourite foods (Although I still won't be eating many of them!)

Caviar and Kippers

A friend recently told me about some other friends of his who had booked a holiday on a very expensive cruise ship.

This couple had come into money and had both retired early. One of their loves was going on cruises to many different places. It was the attraction to the ships as much as the holiday that they loved. Both of these people had been married before and had met each other later in life. The wife had had a good life and already experienced many different types of luxury, while the husband was a working class lad "done good", as they say.

One morning while having breakfast on board this ship, the wife noticed that there was caviar available and urged her husband to have this for his breakfast. He declined, having tried it and disliked it. He asked the waiter if he could just have some fresh kippers for his breakfast as he regarded this as a luxury. His wife was incensed that her husband had, 'showed her up' but the truth is she just missed the point! It doesn't matter how much something costs, if you don't like it then to you it's worthless! Just like two weeks on a luxury cruise ship would be to me.

Another woman I talked to this week told me she wished that she was French. Was it the language, I asked? Or maybe the food, or what about the slow-paced lifestyle of rural France or the cosmopolitan style of Paris or Marseilles? No she wished she was French so she didn't have to shave under her arms! She had missed the point of what it is to belong, and as far as I'm aware there is no law in Britain that dictates that women must shave under their arms!

An American lady (I'm being kind with the description) once tore into me about my lack of love for ickle baby cheeses. When I told her that I had no belief system in anything supernatural she accused me of being a 'devil worshipper'! I know she just missed the point: how can I worship something I don't believe in? She told me that if I didn't have Jesus in my heart then I must have the devil in there. No, just blood and probably a bit of cholesterol swimming about in there, I'm afraid. What about other religions that don't believe in the hippy carpenter? Are they all devil worshippers?

The only reason that I'm telling you these dull pointless stories is because after spending a whole evening watching the TV the other night, I came to the conclusion of "what's the point?" The news wasn't news. Part of it was about a "singer" who had to borrow some other singer's pants to go on stage. And that David Beckham had got a small part in a film! Obviously this is far more important than people clinging for their lives on makeshift rafts with their children in their arms. It's more important than mindless imbeciles who are raping and torturing their own people while blowing up ancient monuments because of... fuck knows! What happened to the news?

Also all the programmes seem to be copies of each other. Medical, or police programmes, real life not dramas. Cooking or antiques shows or quiz shows or inane docudramas. My wife can sit and watch all this dross and even wants to have a conversation with me about it!

I know my views are not popular. People tell me that I'm just whinging whenever I point out the shit that is fed to us on a daily basis by the powers that be and the media. So maybe they are right, maybe I just miss the point of it all!