Category: Humour

Queued Up.

I’m back from another place and have queued a lot in the process of going and coming.  Departure tax payment, airport check in, bag drop, passport examination, security check, flight boarding to name just those involving departure and with two changes (one involving a US border entry) and a final wait for my checked bags.  I lost the will to count them all.

They have taken all the fun out of queueing.  In the old days one would arrive at the queues, (and there were always as many queues as there were servers), and with a practiced eye one could quickly evaluate the options, length of queue, number of families in each line, number of bags per person in line, gender and age of those in line, estimated nationality of those in line and finally, and most importantly, the gender and estimated national origin of the servers.  The fastest service could be almost guaranteed by choosing that queue of bored, sober-suited, middle-aged, white gents with small carry-on bags waiting, with paperwork in hand, for the highly efficient oriental lady server with the indestructible work ethic.  You could be through and out in seconds, step forward, slap down your docs., two questions, “Did you pack…?” “Did anyone give…?”  Machine spits out boarding card and you’re gone.  She would be pushing them through about two per minute, easy.

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O Zangado, you asked for it….

NEW EVENING CLASSES FOR MEN

 

ALL ARE WELCOME

OPEN TO MEN ONLY

Note: due to the complexity and level of difficulty, each course will accept a maximum of eight participants

The course covers two days, and topics covered in this course include – 

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Icing on the cake

Before I marzipanned the first cake I trimmed it as the edges looked a little over done and gave them to Cyclo who pronounced them dry and over cooked. Since then I have been worried that the cake will be awful. Pretty on the outside, in a rough sort of way, but not so good on the inside….

I decided to have a back-up cake. Both Delia Smith and Mary Berry have a cake recipe made using mincemeat – I didn’t find my versions on-line, but in my old recipe books. I decided to go for Mary Berry and added luxury mixed dried fruit instead of the dried fruit she lists. I made it in my newly purchased round tin, on Friday.

The cake was easy and cooked well, and I had been storing it in a tin until yesterday, when I applied the marzipan. Now, you’re supposed to wait a few days for the marzipan to dry out, but when I considered this option I knew this was really my last chance, and less than an hour after adding the marzipan I had applied the icing. The risk of this is the leaching of oil from the marzipan, which may stain the pure white of the icing. I applied my icing thickly, however and that should stop that problem, at least in the time frame that the cake is likely to last! The icing is less crumbly this time, Christina….

Reindeer kiss

(Since I made the new cake, BTW, we have started the other one and it tastes pretty good…. though I say it myself, but is a touch drier than I’d like, in an ideal world, but still better than a bought one. I shall have to wait to see if this one was more successful)

The weather outside is frightful. Lets stay indoors?

Yuletide poetry competition – 19th December 2012

Oz is right. Why wait a whole month when most cherished poets sally forth with their offerings within a couple of weeks? And nobody is going to versify after 19th December anyway; with all that huntin’, shootin’, fishin’, cookin’, shoppin’ and suppin’ to take care of, until twelfth night at the earliest.

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