Nick's Blog
Ice Blog
17/11/2009 @ 13:32
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The white goods appliance, Nick's refrigerator died after a long illness yesterday. It was 13. Throughout its life, the Hotpoint Mistral was instrumental in keeping food chilled at a constant 3 degrees celcius.
Some of the highlights of its illustrious career included the legendary 2006 Christmas season where it not only had to accomodate a turkey that could feed 7 people, but numerous bottles of alcoholic drink, a whole leg of ham, vegetables, cream, puddings and dairy products. Critics were worried that it couldn't hold the lot but somehow it found a way. After that, it's health deteriorated, some say because of the excessive load placed on it that year plus the introduction of Ocado deliveries once a week meaning it had to accept a bulk load of items all at once instead of the previous system of buying junk food on a daily basis. Some have pointed the accusing finger at Nick's wife, a figure known only as "Wifey" on these blogs, as the person who instituted the new healthy eating and one shop a week regime. Others have blamed the fact that the fridge was 12 years old.
The refrigerator was cojoined with the freezer, which is still functioning. Many fear that the freezer won't be able to cope without fridge working. Engineers have ruled out the possibility of surgery or hacksaws to pry them apart. Freezer is expected to be switched off sometime in the next week.
Tributes have been flooding in:
Sting: "Blimey mate, how are you going to keep your beers cool now?"
Stephen Fry: "I remember fridge lighting up the whole kitchen...he was the centre of any kitchen related social activity and his passing will be greatly mourned"
Lindsay Lohan: "He was my guru, my life, my lover, my ying, my yang, my morning and evening, my everything. A huge space will be left where he once stood"
Fridge was also a noted wit and raconteur: His witty magnet insults entertained on wet weekends and he would run a gallery of postcards and vistas as well as exhibiting an array of artwork by today's contemporary infant artists.
Fridge leaves behind numerous perishables and some jars of stuff probably past their use by dates but which still smell OK.
And all because the lady loves milk blog
09/11/2009 @ 23:11
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I often have to go through my local shopping centre to get to various places. I walk through John Lewis, passing the floor manager of furnishings who looks like Rene Auberjonois from Deep Space Nine, past the smells of Costa coffee which is located in a pit below sea level, past the branch of Tommy Hillfiger with its smell of a pine forest toilet cleaner and its strangely dark interior and onwards past the Israeli Dead Sea beauty products stall.
Often, at this stall, one of the salespeople carries a bowl of sweets and offers them to passers by. And in the last 6 months, with me walking right past them twice a day every other day they have NEVER OFFERED ME ONE!
A woman will be 5 feet in front of me and get offered one, but as I swing past they retract the bowl. And it's not just women they favour; old men, young men, every race creed and colour gets offered a sweet except me!
Sometimes I walk as close as I can get to the stall without actually going up to it and buy any products but no matter what I do, the sweetie bowl stays firmly out of reach.
I sometimes take Adam in his pushchair to the shops so they would take kindly to a little boy and offer us sweets but no, the baby is tarnished with whatever it is his Dad has.
Or is it that I'm too fat to have a sweet...just one little bonbon as a gesture of customer goodwill? I'm not fat, I'm just carrying a little extra.
So, in an act of retaliation, I have boycotted Dead Sea cleansing and health products until I get a sweet! Passers By For Justice!
Face like the backside of a blog
02/11/2009 @ 15:56
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As I'm always 24 hours behind the latest zeitgeist thing going on, it's only now that I'm prepared to say anything about the whole Frankie Boyle-Rebecca Adlington controversy.
I am firmly a libertarian when it comes to freedom of speech. I don't believe in censorship or muzzling someone (unless they're breaking an oath, confidence or confidentiality agreement) and I certainly don't want people's right to voice an opinion silenced because it doesn't chime in with the receieved wisdom of the day. If you believe in free speech and the right of everyone to have an opinion, then you have to accept that some people will have the wrong or odious opinion. You can't have free speech on the proviso that you'll always be on message. The strength of a free and democratic society is that it can be confident in making the argument for right and good without having to fear those who would spread hate taking control. If you muzzle those who don't share that ideal, then it sends out a message that you're not so confident in your society to choose right.
My second strongly held opinion is that freedom comes with responsibility. If you voice a strong and controversial opinion, then you should expect an equally strong comeback. Some months ago, I had a discussion with a well known comic about Richard Dawkins, just after he had compared baptism with child abuse. This comic didn't think Dawkins deserved the brickbats he received but I made the case that it was Dawkins who likened baptism to one of the worst things in society and so if he was going to use that kind of imflamatory language, then he had to accept the consequences.
Which brings us around to Frankie Boyle and Rebecca Adlington. Do I think Frankie should be booted off the BBC? No. His opinion, his joke, freedom of speech and expression. Do I think he should make a public apology? No. I've never been a believer in a forced, carefully scripted apology note designed to cover someone's ass.
Do I think his comments were unacceptable? They were certainly crass...I would never have used her appearance as material but that's just me. What's the difference between Frankie Boyle insulting someone about their appearance on TV and doing it to their face (even their reverse of a spoon shaped face)?
Some people have said she should have a thicker skin. Fine, I remember all those people at school who stood back whilst I was being bullied saying the same thing: It was a hollow argument then and it is now. Others have made the claim that she's in the public eye and should expect that kind of treatment but let's remember what she's in the public eye for. She isn't a wannabe pop star, she isn't a fame obsessed celeb. She is an Olympic swimmer who was good enough to win two gold medals...something which Frankie Boyle will never achieve. She never asked to be in the public eye to celeb levels so it's wrong to say she should play by the same rules as Amy Winehouse, Piers Morgan and Cheryl Cole. Frankie Boyle's talent lays in making people laugh through mocking and when he has won the Golden Rose of Montreaux maybe there will be some parity.
So let him say whatever he likes in the name of comedy and be done with it but he should come away from this experience with a better sense of those who deserve his barbs and those who don't. What would be really interesting is to see what would happen if the two of them should meet. I expect a lot of free and uncensored speech on that day.
