WTF Monday

We found these in a toyshop, but I feel they would be more appropriate hiding in one of those shops with darkened windows that sell "Housewifes' Friends".

Not sure about the bok choi though … That's gotta hurt!

Fun With Katie And Dive

Yay!
Back in the world of trashy kitsch crapola that is Great Yarmouth for the second of our "Katie And Dive Do Great Yarmouth" posts.

The main reason we went to Yarmouth - indeed the main reason Katie flew all the way from San Francisco - was to see the justifiably world famous "American Highway" in action.

Here it is in all its glory last February … the world's most pathetic amusement park ride.

We were desperately disappointed to discover that it has gone the way of all flesh and is now the home of a water pistol target shooting game called - rather too grandly - the Britannia Pier Fire Dep't.

All that is left is the sad little track that the cars ran on …

… at least the outrageously camp US traffic cop survives, though now sawn out of his city backdrop and nailed somewhat ignominiously to a fence.

But bugger all round that! We are here to have FUN (in upper case letters, no less).

And FUN we shall have!
Here's the whole of that teaser shot I posted a while back … Katie hi-jacking one of the kiddies' rides.
Where shall she take us, I wonder?

Er … to be weighed, of course.
Katie is super-slim and fit and weighs not very much at all …

Whereas I am super-not-slim and saggy and appropriately hefty.
Having said that, we ate like piggies all week and I still managed to lose five pounds – which (astonishingly) I have kept off.
Yay for unaccustomed exercise (we … er … walked a lot)!

And so to the pier … Disney World has nothing on Yarmouth!
We have the best and most high-tech rides on the planet.
Witness this: the … er … Camel Derby.
I remember playing this when I was a kiddie.
Tremendous fun!

Best of all, however, was the old "penny push"!
Now updated to 2p pieces it is still the exciting if trashy fun it was all those decades ago.

Katie was determined to win …

… and win she most certainly did!
Again and again!
Woohoo!

There are many more attractions to be had on and around the piers.
Donkey rides! Whee!

Dangerous structures!
Yippee!

Teletubbies!
Holy fuck!

And at the end of the Britannia Pier sits - rather incongruously amidst the tat - a genuine Edwardian carousel.

Complete with scary-eyed stampeding horses to frighten your kiddies …

Or - if your children are somewhat differently inclined - an unnecessarily gay pink swan and … er … a chicken.

And when your kiddies are happily whirling around they can look up and see …
Oh-er … a naked boy with his willie out.

And some splendidly graphic … er … um … I really cannot possibly imagine what these ladies are doing.
But yay, boobies!

Those Edwardians certainly knew how to educate their children!

Let's check out the shops, shall we?
Here's our heroine showing her skills as a photographer.
Katie has an eye for a good photo.
Even here!

Check it out!
Cool, huh?

This lady seemed somewhat over-glam for her vocation - I marvelled at her immaculate hair-do - though she was happy for Katie to take her photo and gave us a smile.
We like the sign behind her:
"A smile can make the whole world very happy."
Yay for Glam-Donut-Woman!

And yay aussi for donuts, spelled the American way, without the highly appropriate "UGH" that we brits add to make doughnuts.

We got these bright and early, just as the place was opening and so - luckily - got them fried in the first fat of the day, which was reassuringly clean and clear and free of cack.

Let's not be coy here … they were fucking awesome!
I'd not had a freshly-made donut since I was a teenager and it brought back all those memories of acne and despair.
And gave me a day-long psycho-sugar rush.

We refrained from following that with ice creams …

Not for want of trying on my part, however.

As for this grotesquely nauseating display … I think Katie's body language says it all: "Let's get outta here!"

I wonder where we shall go next?
Tune in and you may find out …

Chips, Mushy Peas And Gravy …

And so let us hie to Great Yarmouth …
"Gem of the East Coast".

The more elderly among you may remember me relating the chilling horror that is Great Yarmouth out of season …

… for any who don't, the whole miserable collection of posts is here: down near the bottom of my "Coast" posts from last year.

The bleak desolation.
The abject misery.
The choking despair of a once-elegant seaside resort gone to rot and ruin.

What better place - I hear you cry - to take my new girlfriend?

To brighten things up a bit we decided to go there during the May Bank Holiday; that traditional mad rush to the coast, where the beaches are packed with bloated sunbathers smeared in chip-fat, burning their distended bellies and fat, flabby, wobbling, mountainous arses to a cancerous crisp and where the entertainment is a non-stop roller-coaster of fun, fun fun!

Here then is the first in a brief series of posts documenting our cheery encounter with the "Gem Of The East Coast" at the very peak of the tourist season.
Scintillating!
Exciting!
A thrill-packed joyride of …
… er …

Hmm … I believe this shop sells both cigarettes and rock (a nasty, sugary confection guaranteed to rot the teeth right out of your head as soon as you look at it), but the message here seems to be slightly confused.

At least the … er … tasteful figurines beside it are more clear in their intention … to put anyone off hot-dogs, burgers chips and fish for life.

Perhaps the crowded beaches will offer us more tempting fare …

Or perhaps not. Here we have the heaving throng of happy Bank Holiday revellers who keep our coastal resorts alive and thriving.

Katie took this one. I love it!
Redolent of dank despair, it reeks of the broken dreams of weeping children promised the holiday of a lifetime.
It would make a splendid postcard!
Katie has an excellent eye for the bizarre and the inappropriate (hey, she's dating me, isn't she?) …

So … If the beaches are not exactly heaving with pretty girls in bikinis and hunky lifeguards in Speedos, let's head across this stretch of sand to the Marina Centre, the hugely expensive entertainment complex built to revive the town's flagging fortunes.

Er … It appears to be closed down.
The only sign of life is this chap practising his keepy-uppy skills all alone, perhaps dreaming of one day escaping this pestilential pit of hopelessness via the lucrative world of competitive … er … keepy-uppy.

Talking of sports, let's head for the golf course …
Ah …
I wonder if Arnold Palmer is aware of this place trading on his name?
I do love the Vegas-style sign, though … Nice font.

So … This place used to be heaving with theatres. Let's see what's playing …

Hmm … They are all shut down except one; converted to seedy clubs or slot-machine arcades.
Still, at least the Hippodrome survives to welcome us with some classy family entertainment.

Before we completely give up on the place, let's look for something to eat …

Ah …
The classic Italian combination of lasagne and chips.

Ugh!
That's simply too disgusting for words.

But hey! It's not all doom and gloom!
Tune in next time to see Katie and Dive hit the glitz and glamour of the piers!

Woo … er … hoo.

The French Connection

It's Monday lunchtime; midway through an insanely busy crapfest at the office, so at one o'clock I make a break for it and head toward St. James's Park.

And who should I see walking across the Cathedral Plaza?

Yay! Allow me to introduce Katie's Cutie Cousin Kim and her wonderful hubby Arthur, over from France for a couple of days. Woohoo!

I love this photo … Not just because it's of Arthur and Kim in front of the Parasite House, but also because they are both from countries who … er … did the right thing and kicked out the monarchy (yay), something I've long dreamed of myself.
Vive La Revolution!
Hee hee …

Kim and Arthur are quite a comedy duo. Wonderful, warm people who I got along with immediately. They are very friendly and very funny.

Regrettably, we had to say farewell (or at least au revoir) all too soon.

But we shall meet again in Paris for Katie's birthday later this year.

Thank you, Kim and Arthur for a lovely lunchtime treat.

WTF Monday

As a change from our regular scheduling of happy, sappy posts about luurve, today we bring you something in honour of the lovely Petrea's wonderfully enigmatic "Zen Monday" series.

Incongruity taken to obscene lengths; this is wrong in so many ways it makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

Ever Have One Of These Days?

Hee hee hee … I just love the way she hits that "Now …"



Holy crap! What's happening to me?

What's Cooking At Dive's? Cookies!

Cookies! Yay!
These are Shaker Spice Cookies and they are more addictive than crack cocaine.

As we are cooking another dish from the US of A, we shall be working once again from a recipe (as US cooking is alien to me).
This time the recipe has been provided by my girlfriend's mom (yes, as you should all have guessed by now, my girl has a "mom" rather than a "mum").

Get your pinnies on and come join us in the kitchen.

Here are the ingredients we shall be using. Yay for molasses! I've never cooked with that before.
In fact I bake about as often as Halley's Comet comes around (mum is brilliant at baking so I never needed to learn), so sugar, flour, bicarb and … er … ready-ground spices are a novelty to me too.

In fact - so that I don't mess things up - I shall defer to one who knows these things well and let my lovely assistant do all the hard work in today's post, while I simply operate the camera and eat the cookies.

Here she is already hard at work.
Those pretty orange measuring cups and the cute green and white measuring spoons have come all the way from the US, as I didn't have any such beasts in my menagerie.
You know me … I never measure anything. The nearest handful or "sploosh" is close enough for the kind of one pot mess cookery I do, but for baking - so I am reliably informed - quantities should be exact or the whole thing ends in tears.

So anyhoo … You'll need two bowls to start this off.
In the first bowl, combine 2 cups of plain flour, 2 teaspoons of baking soda, half a teaspoon of crushed cloves (yay me for actually doing some work … I pounded the crap out of the cloves), half a teaspoon of ginger and one teaspoon of cinnamon.

Mix all that lot together with a fork until it's well blended.

Then comes the fun … molasses! Woohoo!
The word "gloop" comes to mind.

In the second bowl, we find two-thirds of a cup of sunflower oil, one cup of sugar, a quarter of a cup of molasses (yay) and an egg.

Stir all that around until it gets nice and messy …

… and then plop the flour mixture in on top of it.

This bit's fun. Make sure all of that stuff gets well blended into a great big, brown and sticky mess.

And this bit's even more fun!
Rolling little poo-balls between your hands. Yummy!
They need to be about yay big (I'm still rebelling against all of this precise measuring business).

Plop 'em on a buttered baking sheet kinda like this.

We put nine on the first sheet, though that turned out to be a bit crowded so we cut it down after that.

We also patted the tops down with a fork the first time around, but later we didn't bother and they came out even nicer.

Here's another gift from across the water: an oven thermometer.
I'd never needed one before but I am so glad my honeypie brought one over as it turns out my old oven runs too hot. You need to have it set at 350º, which is supposed to be gas mark 4, but it turns out that in my oven that is gas mark three and a third.

These little fellas want to be in there for ten minutes, but after five minutes you reach in and rotate the tray one-eighty degrees to make sure and get them evenly cooked.

And here they are!
Utterly delicious (Phil will vouch for that), cinnamon-and-gingery Shaker Spiced Cookies!
These are completely different to what we in England know as biscuits. Our biscuits are hard and brittle and crunchy, but these US cookies are weirdly soft inside and firm on the outside.

And AMAZING fresh out of the oven!

So … After fifty years, I get to eat my first real cookie! And believe me, they are glorious. I made another batch last weekend and stuck most of them in the freezer for treats.

Enjoy!

This, by the way, is just to clear up any confusion amongst those Johnny Foreigners who asked what a "pinny" is. It is short for "pinafore", and comes in a range of fetching designs, from pictures of asparagus to Soviet slogans.

Your models today are Katie and Dive.