Many offices around the country (and probably the world) will be having sweepstakes with the World Cup just around the corner. Our IT Department is no different. Well, it is. Yes, we’re having a World Cup sweepstake, but it doesn’t involve money, like is tradition. This sweepstake involves food…
All 32 competing teams were placed into a hat, OK an old ice cream container. Everyone then picked out a team at random. The idea is that you will bring in a traditional dish from that nation into the office.
I was praying for USA, Italy or England, as this would give me a simple and delicious task of sourcing burgers, pizza or pie. I was also praying I didn’t get South Korea, as I didn’t fancy kidnapping, skinning and cooking the neighbour’s dog.
I picked out Algeria. My initial reaction was “bollocks”. No, I don’t think testicals are an Algerian delicacy. I thought “bollocks” because I have no idea where Algeria is on a map, let alone what is eaten there. I immediately did some research on the world’s most trustworthy source of information – Wikipedia.
According to Wikipedia, some popular dishes in Algeria are…
Merguez. This is apparently a sausage and NOT something which blocks your toilet.
Kanafeh. Originally I thought this was a pancake with blood in it. It’s not. It is a pastry dish. I don’t think there is any blood.
Asida. Not a giant egg, but a wheat-based dessert.
Sadly, Tesco don’t sell any of these dishes, so I won’t be able to subject my colleagues to them. Not unless I’m prepared to cook them from fresh ingredients, which I’m not. Therefore, I was delighted to see that couscous and vegetables is also eaten in Algeria. Excellent! Available in the salad section of Tesco online. My colleagues will also be delighted as they’ll avoid my cooking and contacting E. Coli.
Cue a Homer Simpson “mmmmmmmmm” and drool.
Tina and Peter’s affair coming out in the open? No.
Rob giving Tina’s noggin’ a floggin’? Nope.
Everyone wondering who killed her? Not that either.
No, the real reason to watch Corrie is… ALL NEW MEERKAT ADVERTS! Simples!
The grass on the lawn in our front garden is becoming overgrown again. You’ll remember a while ago I compared it to a jungle and thought I saw a sleeping lion in the outback. A gardener came and cut all the grass. Within a couple of weeks, the grass grew back! My Dad came round with a lawnmower and cut it again. A month on from this, the grass has grown longer than it ever has been!
Never mind a jungle, our front garden is starting to make our once respectable neighbourhood look like a council estate. Everyone on our street, well “Close”, has neatly kept gardens – then there is ours. My friends, John and Simon, have compared where I live to the location where The Inbetweeners is set. Basically, it’s a nice, clean, middleclass, suburbanville. Then I moved in…
Any Batholian will know that there are two post codes in the city. BA1 and BA2. I’m going to get a lot of hate (leave your comments below, as opposed to posting dog poo through my letterbox), but BA1 is where the posh, well-groomed and intelligent people live. BA2 is where the less-civilised lot exist. I only venture to BA2 to watch Bath City and visit McDonalds.
The state of our front garden is slowly turning our picturesque BA1 garden into a BA2 hellhole. While slightly embarrassed, I kind of like the idea of annoying the neighbours with this. So much so, I am thinking of dumping an old sofa on the lawn and hanging a St. George flag from the window. Maybe even borrow a mad pitbull terrier, named Tyson, to prowl around outside. If someone can leave a burnt out car outside our house, all the better. Proper classy stuff and all that.
Recently, I blogged about my delight in rediscovering the children’s television series, The Animals of Farthing Wood. Since then, I have been spending a lot of time watching and enjoying it. All of series one and two have been viewed. The animals have reached White Deer Park, given birth to young and died. I am now onto the third and final series, involving a nasty stag and an invasion of rats.
I am so enthralled by the series, that I have been onto Amazon in a hunt to buy the books. The first three I found with no issues. They were all available to buy for a reasonable price. The third volume proved a lot more taxing. For some reason, Amazon are no longer supplying it. Adam at work suggested that it was out of print and old books that nobody wants are no longer produced. What a shame. What an outrage!
Adam also suggested that I find it on a Kindle. Adam was unhelpful. I hate Kindle’s. I want a book! It would appear that I am not the only person who wants to purchase a copy of Animals of Farthing Wood Volume 3, on paper and not in some awful digital format. This is a customer review from the Amazon page…
1 out of 5 stars
kindle sucks!
21 Jan 2012
By pocatello50 – Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle EditionHow about printing this story in a real book instead of on some godforsaken yuppie toy? Not all of us care to have our literature stored in such a vulnerable and fragile manner.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Adam then suggested I buy a second hand copy. Again, very unhelpful by my colleague. People read books when they’re ill. It is almost certain that the used book on sale has been read by someone who is very poorly and is now dead. I don’t want to catch leprosy from an Amazon order.
Luckily, I found some third party sellers still selling the book brand new. Some were selling it for over a hundred pounds! I like the books, but I could buy a live fox, mole and badger for that price and have them reenact the whole saga in my living room.
There was one seller who had it on offer for a far more reasonable price of under ten pounds. He had himself a deal.
Now I’m waiting for the books to arrive. I rarely read books, so I do hope I read these and this idea doesn’t turn into one of my many schemes I thought would be good, but got bored of days later.
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
