The perfect balanced meal

I treated myself to masala fish from the not very local any more kebab house tonight.  It used to be our local friendly kebab house but then we moved.  Still went there from time to time though until it burnt down.  Didn't go for ages whilst it was shut (well d'uh) but last Friday decided to go back for the first time in a couple of years. Everyone in our house enjoys a kebab and I am particularly partial to masala fish, if you are not familiar with such a delicacy, I implore you to hunt out Khan's Kebabs in Barton Street, Gloucester, part with four quid and enjoy.  We hadn't had one for ages so imagine my excitement.  Then imagine my massive deflation as we bump into kebab house man (imagine the super hero that DC comics could make out of that one) around the corner with a big bright orange van outside the shop.  What's going on you may ask?  I certainly did.  The buggers are closed again, albeit a little more temporarily this time, because of an electric fault.
So, it turns into a Monday night treat; and so to my theory.

You have a good sized chunk of fish and we're always told to eat more fish, although for the sake of my argument let's ignore the fact that it may be a little deep fried.  It is served in a nan bread so there's your carbohydrates.  Then, you add salad, that has to be at least three of your five-a-day that we are evangelised towards. Add a portion of chips and they're made out of potato and that's another vegetable.

Which reminds me of another take away experience from a couple of years ago.  I was staying for the week at an hotel just by Aldgate East tube station whilst attending a course.  Tina joined me at the weekend and, being the die hard romantic that's when we got engaged.  Anyway, back to the story - you know how I hate to digress.  Always straight to the point, can't be doing with unnecessary waffle.  After all, digressing is only superseded in the time wasting stakes by procrastination.  I have thought about procrastination but it needs longer to consider.
Aldgate East is either a) East end of London or b) Downtown Beirut, you choose.  It is also a stones throw from Brick Lane where I went for a take away at a Bangldeshi place.  I went in to a moderately busy place and ordered something.  Waiting for the order I got chatting.  You know the sort of thing, weather, where you from etc.  The conversation is cut across from the proprietor:
"Hey stranger"
"Mmmm.  Me?"  I whimper.  Has your heart ever sat quite so high in your throat?
"Yea you"
"Mmm"  My lower bowel is proper active now.
"You like Bhaji?"  That's it.  You scare the shit out of me to ask if I like an oniony starter?
I answer in the affirmative.
"You try my Bhajis my friend": he passes a bhaji across the counter.
"You like pakora?"
I'm quite enjoying this now, although with the amount of free samples, dinner does have less room.
Eventually my food is served, I bid a cheery farewell back to the hotel.

With all good intentions a day or two later, I decide on a return journey.  Sadly however, this time the place is swarming with police.  Less good idea tonight.

Do you have crabbies?

I like beer.
I also like ginger beer (even ignoring the obvious connotations).
An obvious product of these two facts was to try the advertised Crabbie's alcoholic ginger beer.  I decided to put this plan into action on a recent shopping trip to Sainsburys and celebrate the final weekend before returning to the metaphorical grindstone.  It made sense to me that such a delicacy would be for sale in the beer aisle.  After several minutes scanning the bottles, a young lady assistant approached:

"Can I help sir?"
"Possibly, do you have Crabbie's"

This could have gone one of two ways, I'm sure you understand.  Fortunately, I came out of the situation unscathed and was guided to the cider aisle, I'm sure that made sense to someone where I made a purchase of one bottle.  Why just the one?  Several reasons, partly because if it is skank I haven't lost much, partly because those who know me or indeed read one of my previous blogs will know that Russ and drinking don't go together well but also because I am as tight as a camel's arse in a sandstorm.  If you are interested, assuming you enjoy beer and ginger (d'uh), I must report that this was indeed a fine drink.

So, the celebration marks the end of Christmas and new year celebrations, for our household at least.  How was Christmas for you?  I enjoyed it very much, thanks for asking.  A few highlights.  Firstly, to open the Christmas celebrations for 2009, we all got absolutely soaked watching Father Christmas turn on the light, yes singular, we only saw one work immediately, in Gloucester City centre.  Then there was much excitement Christmas morning, excitement with the realisation that Father Christmas had been and emptied his sack all over our living room - the kids were quite happy as well.



Another highlight is, of course, the time spent with family and friends.  Christmas day was spent at my brother and his wife's house where Sharon laid on an excellent dinner and Darrel provided the musical entertainment by demonstrating his prowess as a rock queen.  Invitations to other family and friends houses, notably my mum's and Wendy's over the next couple of days ensured that not only did we enjoy good company but also vast amounts of food was consumed and, even better, we didn't have to cook any of it.  Now, if you are anything like me and eat everything in sight before a busy day doing stuff all, you might have put on a couple of pounds, or possibly stone.  Now, I'm guessing that my readership doesn't qualify as one of the beautiful people of the internet but if you are then having to cut back for a while and get off your lazy arse may be the least of your worries.  You may find yourself being visited by the fat police and being excommunicated and deemed too fat to find your true love.  Harsh.

And a Happy New Year

So, that's more or less the end of another year then and, in the best of traditions it seems time for a little reminiscence on the past year, you know all the sort of stuff that will be filling the television schedules for the next couple of weeks except this is, shamelessly selfishly, all about me.  Well, it's my blog and I'll put what I want into it.

Starting off with the biggest change, who would have thought at the start of the year that now I would have been made redundant and doing something completely different?  I'll tell you who.  Me.  For the last god only knows how long, there had been regular 'team meetings' at Vertex.  Every time you were summonsed to one it was a sword of Damocles.  Possibly the most surprised people are those that weren't made redundant.  Add to which the fact that I worked with a number of people that were so grumpy that even I looked like Mr Happy at the Happyville convention for the foolishly happy and you have a rather bitter cocktail.  Now, taking destiny into my own hands, if it all does go horribly wrong I will have only me to blame.  Oh, and I won't have to suck up to anyone.

At the end of 2008, I had the plaster removed from my foot.  There was some concern as I had lost a significant amount of weight due to being incapacitated for some time.  Fast forward to the end of 2009, nothing in plaster but I have put on a significant amount of weight due to being an idle git.

I am also marking a whole year of being on Facebook.  It's a good job I haven't dedicated this blog to the changes that this has made to my life.  That would be the shortest blog in the history of the blogiverse.  Facebook has been an experience in some respect; previously, I was completely unaware of the amount of bollocks people could come up with that is of no interest or importance to anyone.  In short, Facebook is marvellous.  That's a  contradiction I hear you cry.  Well yes, I thank Facebook for giving me a whole new subject to be grumpy about.

I was quite heartened to read the other day that there has been a return to more traditional, in a manner of speaking, Christmas gifts for kids this year.  I don't mean wooden spinning tops or bilbo catchers.  In particular, it seems that Lego, a personal favourite of mine, is selling like hot cakes.  Or more accurately selling like a very popular toy.  So much to the point where the most popular sets are selling for multiples of their normal selling price on ebay.  Let's now look in stark contrast at the world's most chuffing ridiculous thing.  I'm sure that most people that know me are aware of my thoughts on games consoles so imagine my horror when I happened upon this monstrosity.  Follow the link to the web page mentioned in the article and it just gets worse.  Whatever your views on gadgets, surely this takes the proverbial biscuit?  It's enough to make even me grumpy.

Seeing as how this may well be my last blog before Christmas, that just leaves me to wish you all a very merry Christmas and hopefully we'll meet again in the New Year.