Jonola14

A PASTA-TROPHE

A lot of things seem to happen to me when I am cooking. There was the wasp incident of a few days ago, and the time when I set fire to my dressing gown whilst leaning on the gas flame.

And here’s another one for you.

The pasta I was cooking was on the verge of being done. I’d added in the tomato and herb sauce and was seconds away from serving when I noticed a tiny fly/aphid on the counter next to the hob. I don’t like killing things like that, so I just let it be, thinking that it would disappear of its own accord sooner or later. And disappear it did. But not into the vacuousness of the ether, as expected, no. It flew straight into the saucepan and disguised itself amongst the variety of herbs so that there was no way I could pick it out.

Thinking that I probably swallow little flies like that when running around the football pitch, I figured that the fly wouldn’t do me any harm and ate the meal anyway. Extra protein anyone?

STING-Y PORTIONS

The timing was going to be absolutely perfect. Kick-off was three minutes away and the oven timer indicated that my meal would be ready in two. The vegetables were on and cooking nicely and the potatoes were drained and ready for mashing. It couldn’t have been better timed.

The lights flickered and as I mashed the potatoes, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. ‘Bloody moth must have got in through the bathroom window’ I thought to myself as I turned to see what the mysterious flying thing was in the kitchen. I was very wrong.

There, buzzing around angrily, flying into the kitchen ceiling spotlights and then divebombing straight afterwards was a massive wasp. I’m not talking your standard sized wasp, oh no. This was a giant wasp, a genetically-modified wasp, a SUPER wasp that was well over an inch long. And it was pissed off.

It flew directly at me as I turned and in that split second I knew what it was. Ducking, I grabbed for anything I could defend myself with. The nearest thing was a large plate, so I wafted it at the intruder as I contemplated what to do. I bitterly considered the timing of the attack. The bloody timing! It couldn’t make its appearance when I was cutting the vegetables or peeling the potatoes, no. It had to be seconds before I served up the meal and headed into the other room for the football. How long was this going to take? Was my meal going to get ruined? Poxy wasp.

And then I hatched a plan. I turned off the gas and ducked out the room, closing the door behind me. Swapping the plate for my electric Bug Zapper, I returned to the kitchen, powered up the voltage through the zapper and slowly pushed open the door.

The wasp was really not happy. It was still flying into the hot light, forgetting that it was hot, getting singed and then dive-bombing anything that came close to it. I watched its routine and took baby steps forward. I absolutely had to get this right - bad aim or poor timing would send the wasp over the edge and make it mad. It came for me but was too high, I half closed the door in some sort of shield-like defence and the wasp re-rallied for another attack.

Concerned that my vegetables would turn soggy, I knew that I had to be bold and take action. ‘Attack is the best form of defence’ I thought to myself, certain that that sort of cliché would undoubtedly be repeated in the football commentary, which was kicking off any second now.

I ventured forward, racket poised in front of me like I was about to return Federer’s first serve. I was relying on the speed of my reactions and a suitable height to hit the wasp. It dropped from the light once more and I temporarily lost sight of it, I hesitated, unsure of where it was or what it was about to do. But then I caught sight of it, hovering at chest height after another fall from the light. I pounced, striking the wasp in the centre of the racket and sending it spiralling across to the other side of the kitchen where it struck the fridge and rebounded onto the floor. Fifteen love.

Was it dead? I wasn’t sure. I jumped over to where the stripey insect was lying, powered up the zapper once more and offloaded another load of voltage through its venomous body. In fact there was so much voltage that the wasp stuck to the grill of the zapper, allowing me to open the back door with my other hand, and in one movement, I released the power to unstick the wasp, flicked it up into the air and volleyed it as hard as I could into the neighbour’s garden.

And I even managed to catch kick-off. Wasp 0-1 Jonola.

AIR GUITAR CONCENTRATION

I’d had a few beers and was headed home on the London Underground with my iPod blaring. I’d put on my rock playlist and was happily stood on the train, hands in pockets, subtlely playing the air guitar to Guns’n'Roses, AC/DC, Metallica and a whole host of other massive rock songs.

The train stopped. I looked out the window and realised that I had been concentrating so hard on my air guitaring that I missed my stop. So I got off the train, crossed the platform and got on the train going in the other direction. Only, this train was a different line, so didn’t actually go the way I needed to. I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned here.

BUFFET V

I was due to meet them around seven o’clock so we could grab a bite to eat before heading over to the venue to enjoy our friend Chris’s band playing The Fly on New Oxford Street, London.

Right on time, I got to the pub to find Price-o hunched over his pint and moments later Payno turned up to complete the trio and off we went in search of somewhere that we could get food quite quickly. But we struggled to find anywhere. In fact, we got all the way to the venue and still hadn’t found a decent place for some food, but as luck would have it, there was a Chinese restaurant next door called Buffet V.

Thinking £6.50 was a bargain for all-you-can-eat Chinese food, we piled in, grabbed a table and scurried off to the tables of dishes where we each filled our plates to the brim. I am always wary of these places and am never convinced that what we are eating is actually what the sticker says it is.

This occasion was no exception.

My first mouthful proved that what I thought was chicken was anything but. In fact, any of the meats I had piled onto my plate were dubious in both their texture and taste. Picking at the rice, beans and roast potatoes, I made do with what I knew was safe.

Payno and Price-o, however, went up for more and returned with full plates. “This isn’t meat” Payno announced, “I asked the assistant if this was spicy beef and she said no. It’s a vegetarian restaurant. What we’ve been eating is Soya. That there is Soya Chicken, that’s Soya Beef and this one here is Soya Duck”.

SOYA DUCK! Ridiculous! I actually felt quite unwell and battled to keep it down. Bloody vegetarians.

Moments later the band arrived in the same restaurant and tucked in, taking their meals outside to reduce the cost by a pound! When we saw them outside a little while later, two plates were left almost untouched and the bassist was round the corner throwing up. It turns out that the ‘V’ in Buffet V is for ‘vegan’.

MAYOR BORIS JOHNSON

Well, it’s happened. The London Mayoral elections have taken place and Boris Johnson is the winner. Quite frankly, good.

Boriswatch.com has all the details and even sells Boris merchandise, but what Boriswatch also has is the song that I wrote and that Wibbler put the video to. Here it is again, in all its glory. Clearly it was the defining moment for many voters!

DAVID FORD: GO TO HELL

David Ford is a genius.  See www.davidfordfans.com for Ford in all his glory but for heaven’s sake, watch the new Go To Hell video. 

See what I did there?  Heaven … hell …

COME FIRST, OR DIE

The Grand National is the one time of year when I go to the bookies and place some money on a horse I know nothing about in the hope that it will jump all the fences, not unseat its rider and come first in the race, all spurred on by a lot of shouting at the tele and ultimately earning me a few quid.

Historically I’ve been pretty successful, picking the winner four years in a row but I’ve had no luck in the past two years, especially last year when I lost by a nose. Stupid horse.

Anyway, this year I decided to place my bet online. Using cashback referral site Quidco, I took advantage of their special offer and joined Betfair.com, earning myself £50 just for doing so. Result, I was already up and the race hadn’t even started yet. I went onto Betfair and made my choice. Next stop, race day.

Comply Or Die was my horse, it was being well backed but Cloudy Lane was the early favourite. I also plumped for Kelami, a French horse that the BBC website tipped for a good finish. At 85-1 it was hard to resist.

The usual phonecalls from Shaun, Simon and Wibbler all ensued, asking me for my top tip. Strange, given that I know nothing about horse racing, but for the Grand National I do tend to have some luck.

“And they’re off” the commentator announced, the horses all bouncing off each other as the mayhem of the Grand National got underway. For some reason I was quite subdued in the early stages, my horses hadn’t been mentioned but some of the other front runners had fallen so my horses had a better chance of winning. This was good.

Kelami fell. I was gutted, but not surprised. My £500 win wasn’t going to happen this year, so it was Comply Or Die, or nothing. The leading horses broke from the pack and Comply Or Die was amongst them. I changed from slouch position, to edge of the seat. The last couple of jumps beckoned. “GO COMPLY!” I yelled, thinking at the time that that might have been a line from Flight Of The Navigator.

“RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNN!” I yelled, hoping the neighbours would forgive the loud outbursts. Comply Or Die was out front, it was a sprint for the finish but there was a late challenge and it was touch and go for a while, but with a bit more yelling Comply Or Die got over the line and Betfair soon credited me with my winnings.

Come back next year for your winning tip, I’m back on a roll.

B-LIME-Y, THAT’S A LOT OF CRAP

Usually when I clean my car, something goes wrong with it soon afterwards. The first time, the head gasket blew two days later and the second time the thermostat jammed that very afternoon, both leading to journeys in a recovery vehicle. I didn’t want to clean it again.

I’d just arrived home and was walking around the car, checking that the tyre pressure seemed to have been maintained, having pumped them up again that morning. I took a step back, everything looked fine, but I didn’t expect what happened next.

Suddenly, the car became covered in white and brown spots, some large, some small. Many of them were more splats than spots and they weren’t concentrated in one area like the bonnet, they were all over the damned car, including the difficult-to-clean soft top and between the engine air-grill that covers the engine. “What the f..” I exclaimed, my voice trailing off as it dawned that it can’t have been one bird that dropped all that crap on my car, it must have been a whole flock.

I checked my clothes. They say that being crapped on by a bird flying overhead is good luck. Personally I would consider it extremely bad luck, but my check proved clean. The birds had missed, I thanked my lucky stars for that one step backwards.

So I grabbed a cloth and wiped away all the bird lime from my car. It had really got everywhere and it wasn’t a pleasant job. However, I did take great joy in informing my sister that there was a whole load of bird lime on her car too and that she should really clean it off.

EASTER EGG HUNT 2008

Easter was very early this year and won’t ever be this early again apparently, well not in our lifetimes. So between the spells of wet weather, last year’s Cook family annual Easter Egg Hunt winner, Carole, trudged out to the back garden with 28 eggs and hid them all amongst the shrubbery.

As we lined up for the start of the hunt, Carole stood up and announced that this year’s hunt was not about the volume of eggs collected, but the number of points that the size of the eggs represented. And that the hunt was effectively a Harry Potter style game of Quidditch. The explanation was difficult for me, having never read any of the Harry Potter books, so she might as well have been talking in a little-known Dutch dialect for all I understood, but here’s what I got from it. Large eggs were known as Korfles and were worth five points, small eggs where called Badgers and valued at ten points and there was one golden egg worth fifty points called the Golden Snidge. There was also a special ball called a something-or-other that was in play at all times and if you got hit with it, you were disqualified from the hunt for a full minute and had to spend the duration of that penalty period standing on the starting step. For the sake of this post, let’s say this ball was called a Schnark.

To be honest, I had no idea what she was waffling on about, but I guessed the general gist was to go out and find Easter eggs, especially the gold one.

I made a pretty good start and my pile of eggs began to grow in size, some of the old favourite hiding places had been used again, and some inventive locations were also being used for the first time (under an innocuous-looking pile of leaves for example). If it had been a game of finding the most eggs, I would have been winning.

Former organiser TC then threw a spanner in the works. He got me with the Schnark and I had to spend an agonising minute on the step whilst the other players continued the hunt. But the final eggs were simply not being found. And the Golden Snidge was nowhere to be seen. Ben wasn’t in the running and TC, Jane and Olivia were struggling, but Sophie was matching me for eggs and I needed to find that Snidge to get my name on the 2008 trophy.

After a barren spell of no eggs being found, Carole held a regroup on the step. There were about half a dozen eggs left to be found, and I had the Schnark in my hand. The plan was so cunning you could paint it green and call it a stoat. Once the regroup speech was over, and thanks to everyone being in the close vicinity, I would get everybody with the ball and have a free minute to search the grounds. Pure genius.

“According to my list there are three in the front and three in the back, and they’re all close to the paths” Carole announced, giving us all a clue as to the whereabouts of the missing eggs. Sophie dashed off, a rare idea coming into her head and as the group began to split, I threw the Schnark to instigate the most cunning plan since camouflaged trousers. To my horror, Carole then added “and the Schnark is no longer in play”. I was distraught. The plan was ruined, my game totally disrupted by an appalling refereeing decision and, despite my protests, the ruling was upheld, the Schnark was useless.

The eggs gradually showed up, but not the Golden Snidge. It all came down to the simple fact that if either Sophie or I found the Snidge, we’d win the hunt. I trotted off to the Wendy House and searched in vain. No Snidge in the log-pile, no Snidge behind the stack of paving slabs, an egg in the Wendy House had been found there already so the Snidge wouldn’t be there, so it must be somewhere I hadn’t yet thought to look.

There was a stone plant tub with some tiles on the top and stones dotted around the top. It looked heavy. I lifted the tiles on the left hand side of the tub. No Snidge. DAMMIT. I wandered round the corner to try to uncover another as yet unthought-of hiding place when there was a shriek of joy from Sophie. She’d found the Golden Snidge and won the hunt. I was gutted and cursing the decision to disengage the Schnark, that was the defining moment. I’d lost the hunt again, but worse than that I’d lost it to my sister. She would be unbearable.

And then came more bad news. The tiles I’d moved on the left hand side of the tub revealed no Snidge, but had I moved the tiles on the RIGHT hand side, the Snidge would have revealed itself and I would have won the hunt. I kicked myself for not being more thorough. An amateurish mistake for such a seasoned Easter Egg Hunt professional like myself. Disaster. Second place. Screw second.

As this year’s winner, Sophie is responsible for organisational duties in 2009. God help us. No doubt there’ll be a Barbie theme or something equally child-like and all the eggs’ll be pink. Oh good.

SPLAT THE RAT

I saw this in The Metro yesterday:

“A rat which was electrocuted at an electricity sub-station caused a three-hour power cut at Stockholm’s main railway station. The 11,000 volt shock in Sweden on Saturday actually blew the rat apart.”

Let’s face it, the article was only included to fill a gap and to delight English rail passengers who are allegedly never further than ten feet from a rat.