Sherbet Dreams

So doing a special birthday cake at the week-end with a spring theme and using some rice paper daisies for decoration, it was obviously important to taste the aforesaid daisies, quality control is paramount!

As the rice paper melted on my tongue I was instantly transported to the little sweet shop that I used to go to when I was at infant and junior school.

The rice paper had evoked the initial salivation and anticipation of sherbet, the memory of the amazing flying saucers that were one of my favourite treats.

The shop was a sweet shop, it sold nothing but sweets, jars of pineapple chunks, cola cubes, aniseed balls, humbugs, fruit salad, black jacks, fireman’s hose, chocolate honeycomb and so much more, a veritable paradise and for me a place to anguish over what to choose!

In the sherbet department not only were there flying saucers and sherbet lemons but dabs, a packet of sherbet with a lolly to lick and dip, the sherbet tubes with a liquorice straw that you bit the end of and then sucked up the white powder (obviously an early precursor for those who now inhale up another white powder through a straw). Then there was the farthing or even a ha’penny worth of sherbet crystals in a white paper bag, orange, lemon or strawberry. There was only two ways of eating it, to tip the bag up and try to gently shake the crystals into your mouth, not always a safe option as you could get too much and choke or miss your mouth and lose some, or to use your finger as a tool, lick it and dip it so the sherbet stuck and then lick it off, by the time the bag was empty it was falling apart and your finger was either bright yellow, orange or pink.

You could of course take the crystal home and put it in a glass and mix with water to make a sherbet drink, but quite frankly even as a small child I thought that was disgusting!!!

Swimmin’ in the Rain

Why it happens no-one knows, but it is almost a certainty that if we have had a bit of reasonable weather, which we did, that it will disappear the moment we hit a long week-end, especially Easter.

Easter has always marked the beginning of the season. I grew up  in a seaside holiday town and throughout the winter months everything was locked down tight, so other than the cinema and youth activities, like St Johns and Guides there was little going on for us natives, as I got a bit older there was the coffee bar, but that’s a whole other story!

But as soon as Easter arrived, whether rain or shine, the first of the hardy holiday makers would arrive by the coachload and spill out into the town.

Rain or shine the brave, or foolish, would swim in the sea, including us local kids, just to prove we were tough, and I could also run barefoot across the stony beach, strangely not a life skill that has proved to be of much use to me since then!

The hotels and B&B’s would open up at early season rates, the pier would take down the shutters, the theatres would gear up for the summer season entertainments anticipating packed houses, the aquarium would open up, the ice cream parlour’s restaurants and chip shops would start to open extended hours. Most would have either closed down for the winter or tailored their opening hours for the indigenous population, so maybe opening Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday lunch only.

The exception was The Blue Moon Café, which was open all year and it was rumoured that if a gentleman (I use the term very loosely) asked for tea and two spoons, he would get his “afters” served upstairs.

So rain or shine the town would begin to come alive, as if emerging, like a living organism, from winter hibernation.

Things haven’t changed much in terms of the season, I have a caravan at a different seaside location and this Easter week-end the whole place was opened up and surging with people, especially Friday, which was the one really good day of this long week-end.

Well, actually yes, maybe one thing has definitely changed, I don’t do cold weather swimming these days, I may be daft but I’m not stupid!!

Colour me Green

Now I am quite eclectic in my tastes, I like a range of music, Rock, Country, Pop, Classic, Power Ballads, although not over keen on Jazz.

I like most food, obviously not sprouts or cabbage, but pretty much everything else, Italian, Indian, Chinese, Thai, African, West Indian and Fish and Chips.

I like most colours, of course the whole range of pinks, lilacs and purples are my favourites but I am not big on green. I quite like lime green but in reality it is more yellow than green.

I am in truth a little bit phobic about green, not how it appears naturally, I like it in grass, trees and plants, but the manufactured greens especially that horrible deep glossy green that they used to paint all the hospital corridors with when I was a child.

And therein probably lies the nub of the matter, it has for me unpleasant associations but even recognising that fact does not eliminate my aversion to the colour.

Green just makes me Blue!!!

Driving Miss Crazy

So in goes the car for it’s M.O.T. and annual service, couple of minor problems that I mentioned to the mechanic were the interior light, bulb blown, and a problem with the front passenger side electric window, which had rather suddenly stopped working.

Was advised that the window may be a problem, could be the motor, but hopefully just a broken wire, he said it was really unusual and that if they break it is usually the driver’s side as that gets much more usage.

Anyway away I went leaving “the Flash” in his capable hands.

On return at the end of the day, M.O.T. and service fine, just needed a couple of new wiper blades, new bulb in interior OK, and then he gave a little smirk!

Now at this point I had that sinking feeling that this was going to be a story to be added to my two other epic car fails:-

So I not long after I got “the Flash” I was in my local supermarket car park with a huge shopping trolley full of stuff, pressing the remote on the key to open the door and nothing was happening, well except for a lot of heavy duty swearing, my mother would definitely not have been proud!

Just as I was beginning to curse anew, as I also couldn’t get the key in the lock, my partner chimed in with, “actually I don’t think this is our car”.

And it wasn’t ours, it was the same make, model, colour, year and very closely matched number plate but it wasn’t our car. Our car was two spaces away the other side of a big van!!!!!

My best goof however is the one from way back when I owned  a saloon car and out of the blue I noticed this banging noise every time I turned right, it didn’t seem to happen all the time just on prolonged bends and cornering, all very mysterious.

So after checking the entire car for something loose, and looking at all the bits I knew how to look at I sought a professional opinion about the problem. Turned out to be a bent mudflap!!!!!

Back to the present, by the car, in the mechanics garage, with nowhere to hide from another embarrassment.

About the electric window, he said, thought I’d test it out before I disassembled the entire car door. It wouldn’t work, he said, because you had locked it!!!!!

How was I to know, that I had, at some point, inadvertently, pressed a window locking button, that I hadn’t even realised was there.

 

We will never speak of these things again!!

A Fridge too Far.

Time for a wipe out of the fridge, whilst it was still relatively empty before the weekly shop.

What should have been a quick job turned into a mammoth task due to a previously undiscovered spillage of fresh coffee that had been put into the fridge in an ill-advised container.

Anyone remember the sticky gloop that was Camp Coffee? Yes, well you get the picture, the fresh coffee combined with the ambient moisture in the fridge produced lovely gluey grunge.

Of course it had worked its way between the glass shelves and the plastic edgings, making them extremely hard to prise off, but off they had to come in order to remove all trace of the offending substance.

O’Seedy popped in and had a field day, well at least someone was happy!!

Have Drill Will Travel

So, time for a bit of attention for the older members of the Grandchildren Clan and a bit of assistance with putting a blind up in the bedroom for one of the young men, one of two who will be hitting 21 this year!!!.

Now the decorating was done a long time ago, so long in fact that it really is ready for another coat, but he and I made a good job of it at the time and all the room needed was a blind to finish it off!

Not being one to rush into things it has taken himself the best part of two years to buy the blind but, at last, it was a tangible presence and needed installing.

So round I went with my trusty electric drill to drill the holes for the screws.

The whole thing was an interesting experience and took the pair of us basically the entire afternoon. The instructions were somewhat scanty, one was even the direct reverse of what we actually needed to do! The diagrams did not look like the parts we had and in order to get the brackets up we had to drill additional holes in the brackets.

There was much measuring, cutting and sawing and when at last the time came to actually fit the blind to the brackets, did it slide in like a hot knife through butter, did it heck as like, but after a bit of wiggling pushing and nudging it was up.

It also fitted pretty well into the window recess and almost completely blocked out the sunlight, so at least he can now put the light on in his bedroom without anyone seeing into his room.

However it is a roller blind with a sidewinder and clearly has a delicate disposition needing slow and measured winding up and down.

I’ll give it until himself, coming home after a couple or four bevies, gives the sidewinder a rather too firm a pull!!!!

A Stab in the Dark

Knives are dangerous and clearly one of the weapons of choice for the disturbed youth of today and if you are not worried and concerned about it then you really are not opening your eyes to the signs of discontent around us.

Yes, each generation has had its troublesome element, I would be the last to defend some of the violence wrought by the mods and rockers but they were distinct mass groupings and effectively territorial, like a lot of rutting males showing their virility.

From a very young age I can remember the call going round the neighbourhood that there was going to be “a bundle” down the rec. In those days the only weapons were words and fists.

Yes, sometimes it went too far and kids got injured, bloody noses, split lips and untold bruises, but it was incredibly rare for anyone to be hurt enough to need the Dr., let alone the hospital.

In fact it was more than likely that there would be a clip round the ear for the injured party when they got home as a punishment for fighting, or, depending on the parents, for not winning the fight!!

Things just seem to have escalated over the years moving through lumps of wood, bats, the occasional penknife or flick knife to the seriously heavy duty knives and guns that we see with far too much regularity on the news today.

But it was gang warfare from the get go back in the day when kids just shouted abuse at each other and wrestled or blooded each other’s noses through the clashes of the mods and rockers to the territorial gangs that grew up a few years ago. Whilst not to be condoned it is very easy to see the sociological parallels between countries fighting wars and groupings of young people fighting each other.

However many of stabbings and shootings that occur these days do not seem to be gang related, at least in the sense of occurring during a clash of gangs, they are not so much part of a big fight but more a picking off of people when either alone or in very small groups, some of it is clearly linked to prejudice or vengeance and it feels very different from the traditional overt hostilities.

Is it the fact that, in real terms, the young today have access to more money than ever before (however they come by it!), do they feel more hopeless and disempowered than previous generations, is it that they are bored senseless, have they been so de-sensitised by the barrage of violence on TV, in films and video games or is it fear and paranoia that fuels the anger and hatred.

Whatever the cause it is scary because so many truly innocent bystanders, including young children, seem to end up being victims of the sociopathic behaviour of these disaffected juveniles.

I fear for our youngsters when they are out and about in a way that would have never occurred to my parents.