The One about Cornwall and the Wind

I like Cornwall, as I am guessing many of us do. My wife Dave and I have been holidaying there for many a year and despite our best efforts to book somewhere different each year we find ourselves, last minute, saying "Oh but we do love Cornwall" and off we go again. Sometimes once a year is not enough, sometimes we find ourselves twice in the course of the year, loading the top box and stuffing the boot with all those sorts of things that you can't possibly do without on holiday in Cornwall, like body boards, wet suits, beach shoes, balls, buckets, spades, fishing nets, tomato ketchup, tea, milk, bottle of gin, couple of limes, assortment of fancy biscuits from Aldi and a home baked fruit cake! Our motto-"be prepared" and we are or so we think, until we get there and realise we haven't organised any one to feed the cat, the toothbrushes are still in the bathroom and Dave has once again forgotten her knickers!! Good job I packed the travel wash!!

We have stayed in a variety of accommodation over the years but have found ourselves of late invariably booking an eight berth extra wide caravan in a small site near Crantock and because we are a small family of 3 it allows us to invite friends and family to spend a couple of days with us if they so desire. We get to show them the glorious sites of Cornwall and they get to entertain our Son for a few hours, giving us chance to demolish the fruitcake and Gin in peace!!

One year we invited a friend and her husband to spend a weekend with us. I hadn't known her long at the time, but had her friendship well and truly in my sights and decided that a weekend away would give us the perfect opportunity to cement our friendship and to also get to know her husband, who up until that point had been rather aloof!! I shall refer to my friend from now on only as Ring Tong, the Filipino twin, or Ring Tong for short!! She knows who she is!! Her husband I shall refer to as Butch!! I refuse to say anymore on that!!

We had spent a lovely day on the beach, the weather was glorious and as a result we had decided on a BBQ for our evening meal and Butch, being the only man, would cook it for us.

So we shopped for meat and hurried on home so Butch could rub some sticks together and get a fire going...we were after all nearly camping!!!

We women folk had been busy inside for some time preparing salad, chatting, laughing and sipping wine when I decided that I would check on Butch and his amazing fire, and see how he was doing. I thought it a great opportunity to strike up some conversation and get to know him- you know find out what makes him tick, what makes him laugh, that sort of stuff. So with a beer in one hand for Butch and my wine in the other I ventured outside and sat down on the ground near the BBQ and watched Butch work wonders on some steak.

We got on quite well really. He seemed like a nice chap until he asked me to go and get a plate to put the cooked food on. That wasn't the problem obviously, I don't mind helping out especially as the steaks looked so delicious. No, what perplexed me was how much he laughed when, as I tried to get up, I rolled backwards and inadvertently let out a fart!!

To this day he advises me not to try forward rolls especially in company, because "you know what happens"!!!! You are not funny Butch!!

Anyway, after I got over my extreme embarrassment at breaking wind in front of a man I hardly knew, I went on to have a very nice evening. The food was great, the company excellent and we laughed until we almost cried.

But it doesn't end there.

Butch spent much of the evening re-telling my flatulent experience which Ring Tong thought hilarious. In fact she found it so funny that she laughed and laughed and laughed until she too farted!!

How is that for a bonding experience!!

The One About Dad and Morrisons

It's 8 am on a week day morning. I'm sitting at my dining room table staring at a mouldy orange in the fruit bowl wondering at what point does the fruit look so unappetising that we subconsciously forget to eat it. I am faced with a dilemma- can I cook a delicious pudding with 5 shrivelled lemons, 2 hard brown limes, one mouldy orange and 4 blue glass marbles or should I resign them to the compost bin? Times are hard what with the economic recession/depression/crash/crisis- should I really be throwing food away?
I will resign myself to never purchasing such large quantities of citrus fruit again. How ridiculous to think that I would need that many lemons on Pancake Day that they are still sitting in my fruit bowl at the end of October!! And my limes have out-lived my Gin by about 2 months!!
Not sure how the marbles got there!!

This is my third blog now and I always find the first entry the most difficult to write. I need to get into a flow, introduce myself tentatively to my readerage (own word but I think it works!), work out what the hell I'm doing, why I am doing it and how you post photos on this entry- although thinking about it how appealing would a bowl of dead fruit be, even if it is beautifully lit?

So should I jump straight in and tell you about the time that my Dad managed to close the entire freezer section of Morrison's because he could smell burning by the frozen sausages?
Having checked out his suspicions with other shoppers, he cornered a member of staff, who summoned the store manager who in a panic switched off all the freezers and called out an electrician. He could obviously imagine the headlines in the Kent Messenger- "Hundreds saved as fire rips through store", "BBQ season gets underway early at Morrison's", "Woman dies- Mum really should have gone to Iceland!"

We don't know how long the freezers were off but we do know that Dad's smokers pipe had been smouldering away in his coat pocket for most of his trip to the supermarket. The telltale signs were small but significant- sparks flying when he pulled out his wallet plus charred material and a new hole in his pocket that hadn't been there when he entered to get his bogof tea bags!

His mind must have been on something else when he entered the store. By his own admission, he ponders. Questions race through his mind often keeping him awake at night: "why do they call it evaporated milk when you can still see it?? Do public lavatory attendants take their holidays at their own convenience? Why would you travel somewhere over a rainbow just to weigh a pie?"
The man clearly needs a hobby!!

The good news is that whilst I have been contemplating what to write, I have eaten the last 4 edible oranges. The fruit bowl is empty, the mouldy and shrivelled fruit is sitting in a line on the table awaiting its fate and I think I have found a new home for the marbles- I'm going to give them to my Dad to replace the ones that over the years he has lost. Bless him.