Unbalanced Advertising

I hear that following the PIP breast implant debacle, the plastic surgeons' professional body wants to stop the advertising of 2 for 1s. 

I trust they are not referring to breast implants, where I would expect a client would be offered 2 for 1 as standard. 

Dutch Cousins

I have been talking via FaceBook to my long-lost Dutch cousin who has lived in France for many years. She and I have shared some family history - specifically photos. She has some I had never seen and I have some she had never seen. 

We're going to arrange a family reunion of the English, Dutch and French contingents over the next 12 months. 

This one is one she gave me and is of my grandfather and grandmother - or opa and oma. Opa was born in 1882 and died in 1947.

Salad Days in Irish Chipping Sodbury

I'm really impressed by Israeli wines. They don't go in for bulk production, being mainly made by small, boutique vineyards. Being limited in production they aren't cheap, but of exceedingly good quality.

I can particularly recommend last night's libation - Binyamina Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2007, which accompanied my lamb kebabs and roasted vegetables. 

Having starved since the previous night, I ordered what was shown on the menu as lamb kebabs with salad, thinking it would be just a small dish. Wasn't expecting the feast that came. Only managed about half of it before feeling fully sated.

A hideously healthy concoction of seared egg plant with tahini, a very nice avocado and garlic dip, a platter of roasted peppers, sweet potato and fennel, marinated sweet peppers, marinated tomatoes, deep-fried potatoes and bread to die for. Total bill, 139 Shekels, or £23.68, including the half bottle of wine.

Eat an Israeli salad and you'll never touch a Greek salad again; a plethora of different compositions, each having multiple, complex layers of flavours and comprising a cornucopia of vegetables. Greek salads are quite pedestrian and bland by comparison. 

Israeli food has so many influences; Mediterranean, Arab, Ethiopian, eastern European, Berber and western European - as many as the peoples that came together to forge Israel.

Talking of food, Hay and I are attending an Irish-themed (don't ask) Chipping Sodbury Yacht Club Burns Night dinner on Saturday evening. Dress is meant to be a melange of Scots and Irish, but I don't have anything suitable. Thinking of going in a DJ and tarting up my travel bum-bag as a make-shift sporran. It promises to be a raucous night, and if you know Chipping Sodbury Yacht Club, you'll know why - a condition of membership is that you cannot own a boat or have pretensions to becoming a member of a real yacht club. The annual regatta held on the river Frome (a stream at best and a puddle in droughts) is a sight to behold.

Caesar Salad

About 20 of us went out for a meal in the old port of Caesarea last night (it’s a ruin which has been partially reconstructed as a tourist attraction and houses a couple of restaurants). I always return from one of these Israeli dinners feeling hungrier than when I first went out. 

You get a variety of disgustingly healthy small courses which don’t really add up to much and are shared between three or four of you. Not wanting to appear greedy, the natural British tendency is to restrain oneself and take only a small amount from the shared plate. 

I’d rather have a mountain of steak I can call my own and fill my belly, but there again I am trying to lose some weight while here for the week by cutting down dramatically on what I eat.

Leave it to Mum

Israel / Iran

Flying out to Israel today for our 2012 kick-off sales meeting at HQ. Just hope the Israelis don't decide to have a go at Iran till after I return on Friday.

Overheard in the Pub

The Chairman is explaining to friends the vagaries of life in the caravan. 

Chairman: “Before our second winter in the caravan we installed a log burner.” 

Phil N: “Burning coal?” 

Ted B (an American): “Can you burn coal?”

Our Generation Didn't Have the Green Thing in its Day

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. 

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days." The cashier responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations." 

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. 

Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day. 

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every shop and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day. 

Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day. 

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the county of Yorkshire . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the post, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then. 

We drank water from a fountain or a tap when we were thirsty instead of demanding a plastic bottle flown in from another country. We accepted that a lot of food was seasonal and didn’t expect that to be bucked by flying it thousands of air miles around the world. We actually cooked food that didn’t come out of a packet, tin or plastic wrap and we could even wash our own vegetables and chop our own salad. But we didn't have the green thing back then. 

Back then, people took the tram or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mothers into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. 

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then? 

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.

A Scot by Any Other Name

I’ve been listening to this argument about the mechanics and timing of the vote over Scotland seceding from the Union. 

What exactly is a Scot; is it someone who was born there? If so, then some 15% of Scots won’t be eligible to vote anyway, as they live south of the notional border – or indeed abroad.

Concomitantly, if the definition is those individuals who live there, then those Sassenachs who live in Scotland (of which there are quite a few) will have the right to vote. 

One thing can be guaranteed if Scotland does secede – nothing will change. In the words of the prophet, it's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.

The Nobs of Tesco

It had to happen! Poor bugger...

Was watching an item about wind turbines on the local news last night. Some entrepreneur wants to put a half dozen of these inefficient eyesores up somewhere in Wiltshire. The local BBC reporters put up a local nob who owns a castle as the opposition. He said it would ruin his view and reduce his profits from visitors. Methinks the BBC knew exactly what they were doing. Planning Approved!