Telly’s back 23.04.08

The TV free lifestyle experiment ended yesterday when, fed with the constant whingeing about wanting to watch this, that, or the other; I bought a new digital tv box. No expense spared, I bought it from the fleamarket next to the dentist’s I visited. 

World Food Program 16.04.08

While my computer still works I thought I’d write something a little bit more serious than usual. No doubt you have all noticed that food prices have been creeping up and you mat even have seen on the news the riots and unrest caused by this. As food is something close to my heart I have been following the debate on BBC World and last weekend decided to do my bit. I went to the World Food Program’s website and learnt that for what I pay for a cup of coffee here in Finland they could feed a kid for two weeks. It astounds me that by doing so little as foregoing a cup of coffee in a café every now and again I can keep a child alive that it seems almost ludicrous not to. So I’ve decided to contribute to the WFP but erm… I haven’t actually done so as of yet. Why, well I haven’t worked out so far. If you think its easy then go and visit their website

www.wfp.org

I know that it says Donate Online in big letters but thats for credit card payments and what if you don’t have a credit card, what then? Or a cheque book for that matter? I’m going to contact my bank tomorrow and see if I can make a bank transfer without it costing me the earth and I will tell you how I got on.  

Saturday night 12.04.08

Just got a text message from my old chum the Bignose. He’s down at my favourite pub, the Swan in Wood Street, Liverpool,supping Guinness and listening to loud, thumping rock’n’roll music from the juke box before going out for a curry (you grammatically correct people out there will have spotted here a great opportunity to use semi-colons but its Saturday night and I just can’t be bothered) . That´s the way to spend Saturday night, not at home hunched over your laptop! Just to make up for it, I’ve just opened a can of lager which I am drinking out of a ridiculously large Ikea glass. So big in fact that the missus uses them as flower vases.  Don’t worry, I take the flowers out before pouring the beer in!

So, just after I wrote saying that my computer was working again it packed in again. The new battery works fine but the power socket is buggered so the battery isn’t recharging.. The only way I am able to write now is that I have wedged the latest paperback I have read (The Raw Shark Texts- great little read, a bot like the Da Vinci Code but with fish). It sjust typical, this happens just after I spend a fortune buying the new battery, decide against nuying a new laptop even though there was a ridiculously cheap one on offer last week and two nights before I need to hand over a translation. Ok, I know I’ve had three months to do it but I work on the JOT principle or in my cast JINT (just in  the nick of time). Luckily I worked out the paperback trick last night and while I snored on the sofa my wife typed up the text and converted into the kind of Finnish that is actually used by Finnish people. Exploitation! Male chauvinist pig! I hear the indignant feminists cry. Not so, for today she reaped the benefits of this work and got a massage. I do get some weird assignments. The translation was for a cure for cancer (I kid you not) from Spanish into Finnish for a masseur. We settled on bartering our services and this is how my missus got a massage. Now, although  I have plenty to write, I must say goodnight because my back is killing me!

Mum’s birthday 06.04.08

I was recently paid a compliment about my blog (it was the the other one of you who reads this). He said that every time he read my posts he got hungry. So here´s more of the same for you!

Today was my mother´s birthday and we celebrated it with lunch at my house.

In the morning we went to church there being a family service. Daisy was up at the front singing hymns with the afternoon club choir and Minnie was at the back having her own communion of rye crispbread and milk. 

The menu for lunch was as follows:

Starters: duck paté flavoured with armagnac, toasted French country bread

To drink: Marques de Monistrol Cava

Main course: Slow Honey-Roast Duck, Potatoes roasted in duck fat, carrot and turnip, green beans

To drink: Chateau Haut-Lavignere Saint Emilion Grand Cru 2005 (Yes, I am showing off but its not every day we have wine like this!)

Dessert: Chocolate Birthday Cake

To drink: coffee

Lunch was throughly enjoyed by all, my daughters fighting over the last of the roast potatoes being proof enough for me.

The recipe for the duck I got from this guy: 

http://nicholasclee.blogspot.com/2007/01/slow-honey-roast-duck.html

I will be writing to him to inform him of the success of his recipe and I will no doubt try some others too.

Now that I am on the subject, the paté I bought in Paris and it was good so making two good things to come out of my trip there last October, the food shopping I did and the name of this blog which is the title I attained whilst there. The trip was so full of aggravation that its taken me half a year to bring myself to eat the paté;)

The red wine was a Christmas present from my chum Jerome from France who was over in December. A thoroughly nice chap who restored my faith in Frenchmen, but then he is half German!

The duck was from Germany, bought from Lidl at a fraction of the cost that they normally sell duck for here. And very good it was too!

The beans were frozen and not very good. The only frozen green beans that have been good in my opinion are a Belgian brand, Dujardin.

Chocolate cake made by my wife and decorated by my daughters who, in their enthusiasm for licking the utensils used (including the spoon for measuring out the flour) also licked the cake, but we didn’t mention that.  

Back again! 27.03.08

Almost two months since my last post, this is terrible! How could this have happened? You may well expect that we have been on some great adventure, skiing down brilliant white slopes under blue skies, or tanning our hides on some faraway beach and in the afternoons going off to acquaint ourselves with some ancient civilisation perhaps?

No such luck! February we were sick, one after another, right down to my mother and grandmother. The month was spent going back and forth from the doctor, back and forth from the pharmacy, and back and forth from the toilet. Uplifting stuff, eh.

Then the computer started playing up which then killed off any desire to write. There is nothing more annoying than getting your deepest, heartfelt sentiments typed up in screen and as you postion your little cursor on the “publish” button the screen goes blank. Takes the wind out of your sails I can tell you.

Anyway, things seem to be better on both fronts and I am full of the joys of spring so hopefully there will be more posts on the way.