You won’t leave feeling affirmed or inspired but you might just crack a smile at something you shouldn’t, and that is okay because I wont tell anybody. Someone even laughed out loud once but then had to pretend it was something funny they read elsewhere because it was wholly inappropriate and they were a bit ashamed but mostly amused.
You won’t leave feeling affirmed or inspired but you might just crack a smile at something you shouldn’t, and that is okay because I wont tell anybody. Someone even laughed out loud once but then had to pretend it was something funny they read elsewhere because it was wholly inappropriate and they were a bit ashamed but mostly amused.
Theo and I wandering the local area with camera in hand
Well, in just a few days my doggo will be 2 years old. Ive not written about him much on here, so thought id post a few photos to celebrate the last year or so.
I regularly say that I don’t want a dog, and did not ask for one. I was convinced that I would not have to walk it or pick up the poo, and like many before me I fell for those lies.
I don’t mind though, as it turns out he is quite wonderful company and a lovely dog with a great temperament and a love of hot buttered toast.
He is mostly trained, though his recall is rather iffy, and should you dare to eat in his presence he will do his best to drool all over you until you lose your appetite and give him whatever you are enjoying.
Oh, poor thing lost his balls a few weeks ago so waiting to see if that changes him in any way. So far it hasn’t…which is good as he’s mostly perfectly imperfect.
Anyway, like kids, I’m sure everyone thinks their dog is the best. I shall shhhh…
So, turns out I have prostate cancer. I wrote about it first here…
There is so much reading you can do on the matter once you find out you have the big C. Stuff on diet, treatment, research, oh the list goes on and on. Websites, forums, books, articles, pod casts. Its never ending.
I’m just saying you can. I’m not saying that I did. Fuck that.
I really don’t want to dwell too much on it really if I am honest, it isn’t going to get me any time soon, and I don’t need treatment yet and people live with it for decades so why fill my head with thoughts on the matter. That is my way of looking at it anyway.
Oh, I saw this nice specialist for a follow up a while ago, he had a tie on and an office and certificates on the wall, and things are settled and no worse than they were and Ill go get checked out every 6 months and maybe have another MRI or a biopsy. So it all seems very much in hand. My head isn’t in the sand, I just feel like it’s best left alone for now, you know?
The only thing that bothers me from time to time is the thought that it can spread or maybe I’m open to some sort of secondary cancer, but I mean what’s the chance of that. Hmm, you know there is probably a statistic for that. is the chance of that is probably well understood. Well, I still don’t want to know.
Probably more chance of me dying from eating too much cake or not getting enough exercise to be honest…
Oh how bountiful is the overflowing goodness that is the list of arcade machines that start with the letter F that I remember playing!
Flying Shark, Frogger, Final lap, Final Fight, Fire Shark…ok so with the exception of Frogger maybe not household names but these are some of the games that I played a lot of. I bloody love vertical scrolling shooters and games like Flying Shark still float my boat to this day. You don’t really get a lot of games like that now, and to be fair its hard to improve of some of those that came out in the eighties such as Xevious and terra Cresta…to this day they remain perfect to me.
Pretty sure most folk remember frogger. Do you remember how hard it was though? Such was its bastardry that your 3 lives could be gone in less that 30 seconds. I kid you not. It may have good memories but just you try to play it today. You’ll realise how hard it was. Cross the road and you think youre doing great, then onto the logs, thinking yeah I got this.
No you don’t, ok. You don’t got this. You don’t got shit. Frogger got your 20 cent piece and you are going to be feeding it more if you want any sort of reward. Frogger was unforgiving and brutal, and don’t you let nostalgia tell you otherwise!
With: Me, my youngest Thomas, Mrs Afterwards and Theo the dog
So just a quick ride out towards Ripponden, maybe twenty minutes away. We’ve had an uncommonly warm summer and have water shortages in places, and the water levels on Baiting’s reservoir have dropped significantly. So much so that the old pack horse bridge – long ago submerged is now visible. We grabbed an ice cream, wandered around the reservoir, commented over and over on how low the water levels were – and then went down onto the old bridge. Then back home as it was rather warm out and being English I don’t really like being outdoors too much when its sultry…
I recently bought an Ooni pizza oven, which you can read about here. When I did the post it was suggested that I add a subject to the blog of the pizzas I do, so here you go. This, is that…
Still going to work through the format but lets do it this way:
Pastrami and Roquefort
Base – Shop bought Pizza Express ready rolled. Pretty good and nice and thin. Makes a big one you can share too so great for when you have guests – which we did.
Sauce – I made my own marinara with tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, oregano and salt and pepper.
Toppings – Pastrami and Roquefort cheese
Cheese – Roquefort and Mozarella
Verdict – It works. Really works. Roquefort is a blue cheese, so salty and strong, and the sweet sauce balanced it up nicely. Base was super crispy, so it was just one of those pizzas where you want to keep shovelling it in because it just tastes and feels great in your mouth. And cutting back on the mozarella meant it wasn’t too oily or dripping with cheese, so I felt like I was almost having diet pizza – which meant I could eat twice as much!
This is another I did – BBQ chicken with red onion and peppersYoungest child and sister eatign some of the rosemary and garlic focaccia I did too, and her family and the reset of mine were about too…
It pass the morning after test? What’s that, I hear you ask.
When it comes to pizza a good test is just what it tastes like the next morning, cold, with mayo or salad cream. Well, it was really good. The saltiness and the vinegar of the salad cream were a perfect blend and the pastrami was still rather good cold.
All in all, a top pizza and one I shall make again- though next time I will add sun dried tomatoes too to balance out how strong the Roquefort is…
I recently bought an Ooni pizza oven, which you can read about here. When I did the post it was suggested that I add a subject to the blog of the pizzas I do, so here you go. This, is that…
Still going to work through the format but lets do it this way:
Base – 75p LIDL base, average at best but carries a heavy load if you so choose, not too thick, an ok crust and handy when you forget to make dough, or are in a hurry and don’t have 26 hours to spare to prep a proper full on epic dough.
Sauce – Green pesto
Toppings – chicken, Anchovy wrapped capers
Cheese – Feta and a little Mozzarella
Verdict – Bloody hell, that was as dry as a post menopausal, cat loving, God fearing, lube lacking, bake sale supporting, kids-these-days hating old maid. If I’d topped it with talcum powder and old sponges it would have been more moist. Next time there’s a flood Ill whip up a batch and they’ll happily serve if we run short of sandbags. I’m surprised sand didn’t spill out of it when I sliced it up.
Ok, so I’m not saying it wasn’t edible, it was, I had coleslaw and salad with it so I was able to get it down, and I think it needed the sweet peppers I could not find. They would have lubricated it quite nicely I imagine.
So no, on balance I wont make it again…I liked the pesto and chicken and feta individually, and will put anchovy on anything, but together it needs reworking. Plus it was a tad anaemic looking too. It was hard to tell the difference before and after really.
Did it pass the morning after test? What’s that, I hear you ask.
When it comes to pizza a good test is just what it tastes like the next morning, cold, with mayo or salad cream. Turns out that it was actually much much better the next day. After a little moisture had crept into the crust and the salad cream had made the chicken less cardboardy it was a far more pleasant snack.
So there we go, pizza review number 1. Stay away from the Old Maid!
The cupboard is somewhat bare, and populated with games that I have memories of, good memories, but hardly games that made me steal coins from my mums purse and sneak off to the shop to play.
In many ways they sum up quite nicely those games which were just always about, not the top draw ones, but the space fillers. You could always get a go on them because most kids were keeping the hard earned coins for the ones they really loved.
Elevator Action was ok I guess…up and down you went, evading what seemed to be spies of some sort, probably Russian – it was the eighties after all – in search of stuff behind red doors. That was kind of it. Sometimes lights went out, and other times it would slow down and the agents sped up if you took too long.
Actually it was pretty shit. Not that I didn’t play it a lot though – I still did.
Elevator Action
Exerion was in the same mould really. Fly along, shoot things, explode. The machine was everywhere, so you played it. Felt like it was a predecessor to GYRUS, and had this slow cumbersome side to side that left you feeling ridiculously exposed, but an ok distraction on the way home from school I guess!
Exerion
I put enduro rider in because I remember you sat on a bike and actually had to pull up on the handle bars to effect a jump as you went through the track. We used to play it at Fotis Cafe, but it didn’t last long as I remember it was always out of order. I think, perhaps, because it took a right hammering from kids piling onto it. I do remember mailing a jump though and it felt bloody amazing…Funny what sticks with you isn’t it because I can barely remember the kids being born…
Lets explore the sadness of life through the joy of limericks
A young lad I knew as a senior
he got cancer, I think ’twas leukaemia
the treatment it failed
he got thinner and paled
and then died and his wife got bulimia
My dad was a drunk and a cheat
every weekend my mother he beat
took her cash to do drugs
bringing home sluts and thugs
’till we all ended up on the street
First time we met how I tried
not to love, but I made her my bride
then the marriage it failed
when her sister I nailed
Took her life, overdose, suicide
My dog, my best friend always true
dedicated to me through and through
Drunk, I left the door wide
and she ran straight outside
got ran over and died now I’m blue
A chap that I know who loves choir
had to quit giving up his desire
he could not harmonise
when he lost both his eyes
and his tongue when he fell in a fire
I think I’ll stop there, I’m not sure that I’m trying hard enough to make them sad. Or maybe I should blame the limerick, either way I hope it’s not too inappropriate and I think it goes to show that even the most serious of subjects find some lightness in a limerick.
Afterwards 