bopeepsheep's blog

QotD: Your fantasy restaurant

If you could open any sort of restaurant, what would it be like?

British cooking. Just to prove that it's not as dreadful as the stereotypes... :-)

We have some wonderful dishes that just don't get made much any more (including by me, I confess, because I just plain don't cook any more, but I do know how to, at least). Puddings especially would be a treat at this fantasy restaurant, and I'd even allow the serving of custard (made properly, of course) although I can't stand it myself.

QotD: Sugar, Sugar

What was your favourite candy when you were a kid? How does that compare to now?

Candy is 'sweets' to me, but the whole phrase needs recasting to make the substitution work. Anyway, they were pre-Nestle Smarties, which came in a cardboard tube just right for emptying and sticking on your fingers (if you could collect 8 or 10 of them you could make false hands), with a lid with a single letter on - collecting them to spell words was always great fun. They were small disks (oblate spheroids, technically) of milk chocolate with thin coloured sugar shells, each of which tasted exactly the same except for the orange ones, which had a smidgen of orange tang about them. It was common to find the girls at school picking out the red ones to smear on their lips as 'lipstick'. I was 17 when they phased out the light-brown Smartie and replaced it with blue, so I have no allegiance to those and didn't even know they'd been replaced with white. But then, I stopped eating them after Nestle took over Rowntrees (although I do still crave other former Rowntrees products).

Now I like Minstrels (Galaxy chocolate in hard shells) for a similar experience, or something like a Twirl (two chocolate fingers). I'm much more fond of jelly sweets than I was as a child, too.

QotD: Celebrational Muppetational!

Who is your favorite Muppet ? Why?
QotD submitted by knitwitology.vox.com .

Animal. There ought to be more to say on the subject but no, there isn't. He's red, he's wild, what else can you say??

QotD: The one that got away

Tell us a little something about your first girlfriend/boyfriend.

Heh. Well, I have him to thank for my current best local mum friend. I went out with R from May 1988 to May 1990, with a couple of gaps in the middle where I was away at college and he was being an idiot. (No, really, he admitted it himself.) I dumped him the week of my 18th birthday and he was really really really upset. He cried. And about two weeks later he started going out with L, who had previously been the girlfriend of M, one of my neighbours. L was 2 years younger than me, my youngest brother had gone out with her sister about a year earlier, we got on well, but I was still a bit ticked off at her dumping M for R like that, and at R for being so clearly heartbroken, not. They went out for 4 years, during which I occasionally bumped into one or both of them around the town we grew up in, or the city I moved to. After the first couple of months we were all friendly, although I didn't really socialise with them. L moved to live quite near me, and split up with him, and she and I would sometimes meet in town by accident and travel home together, gossiping.

I met R again the summer before I went to university (as a mature student), and was amazed that I'd been out with him for two years - he's a nice chap, moderately handsome, and we shared interests,  but really we were not that good a match. We had a great night - he'd learned to cook and to appreciate wine in the intervening 6 years - but we didn't bother going out again, even as friends. I went to uni (after betting him that I'd get a better class of degree than him), he moved away to take an academic post in Glasgow. After I graduated I sent him an email via Friends Reunited and he sent me a cheque for my winnings in the post. :-) We swapped email occasionally up to the point where I was heavily pregnant with my son, and then he moved to Denmark for another job and went offline.

A few months ago I was in the lift at Debenhams and a girl with a pushchair got in. I thought I recognised her, but I see a lot of mums and babies and couldn't put a name to her face. Across the road in the bookshop she came up to me and said "are you...?". It was L. She has two children, a six year old girl, and a one year old boy, and is living quite close by. At the time I was pregnant she was living literally two roads away, although she says R didn't know that. (He would have mentioned it to me if he had known; he found it funny that we wound up being on good terms as none of his other exes could even stand to be in the same room as another, let alone have long chats about him.)  We've been going to playgroups and things together since, and the two younger kids adore each other. (I've not met her daughter, who has always been at school when we've met up, but I've met her partner who's lovely.) So I have to thank R for that friendship, as he was always the subject that started us chatting, laughing, and sharing some fairly fond memories. His ears must occasionally burn, but we both remember him fondly.

QotD: Art over Music

What are your three favourite album covers of all-time? Any honourable mentions?

Ooooh. Good question.

Script for a Jester's Tear

Marillion

I wrote a long essay for my Art and Design GCSE (not my choice, I was stuck with it after moving schools at an inopportune moment) on the artist who painted this - Mark Wilkinson. The jester is based on himself, wearing his wife's yoga tights - it's amazing what details stay with you, 18 years later...

It has a lot of allusion in it - the other Fish-era albums also do, but the images available for insertion via Amazon aren't as clear as this one, so it's easier to talk about this one as well as also probably true that it's my favourite image of the four. It's certainly one of my favourite albums musically.

Revolver [UK]

The Beatles

This fascinated me as a child. I'd sit and peer at the drawing to see if I could spot new faces or something subtly different each time. It seemed like the kind of picture that would mutate on each viewing, if you know what I mean. The hair wriggles and snakes, the little Beatles crawl and hide and move around. John's eyes scared me, when I was three. George's lips never look quite right, Ringo's fringe looks wonky, Paul looks very sad. But it's still a great way of capturing their image.

1984-1989

Lloyd Cole & the Commotions

The sparseness of this image always made me feel - well, I guess today it would be 'emo'. In 1990 it was just introspective. :-)

Oooh, music too

Too Late to Cancel

Mitch Benn

Although it's not very good at uploading .mp3s, it appears. I'll have to tweak that.

This is a very cool album. Vox only link to Amazon.com so I can't link to the newest one but never mind. (This is the third of four, as it happens.)

I'm listening to The Now Show on BBC Radio 4 as I type, where Mitch (sans Distractions) sings topical songs. The new series started 14 minutes ago, and I'm very very pleased. Everyone should listen to Mitch Benn every day, though, not just once a week.

Exploring Vox a little bit

Fortune's Rocks : A Novel

Anita Shreve

Ooooh, I can write about novels here... this is one of the best ones I've read this year. I read everything Shreve has written so far, between 1 April and 30 May this year. (Obsessive, me?) I hadn't come across her before and took a couple of second-hand titles on holiday with me in April, then had to buy more to bring home. Books aren't always cheaper in the US but it appears that for American authors at least they're easier to come by - I've not seen a UK copy of The Weight Of Water yet, although they must exist. Anyway, this was the first one I tackled, and it grabbed me in a big way and was one of the reasons I went on to read more of her work. I love how her worlds intertwine - reading the books in the 'wrong' order (mostly because I read them as I acquired them) gave me added pleasure when I spotted details that were reused or characters who had walk-on parts elsewhere.

Oooh, it's working now! :D...

Oooh, it's working now! :D