So, it’s happened then. For half a decade of working in sports betting I have gone no more into golf than my every-other-year concession to watching the Ryder Cup. However, I’m currently working with Sky Sports and it it is impossible to ignore not to get caught up in the buzz. This year I actually sat down and watched some of The Masters.
I say sat, I was really lying in bed. However, I managed to get through nearly an hour of it without failing asleep, which I suspect means I am getting old.
Not like Jordan Spieth. 21 years old and now a Master champion. I should point out at this point that he is ageing, he hasn’t found some magic cure for that. However, his fresh young face puts even Sebastian Vettel to shame. He dashed any hopes of Rory McIlroy completing his set of all four major championships (not that McIlroy even managed second), and now aged 25, it’s probably game over for him…
I wanted to document some of the challenges I had had registering myself as a candidate. It’s not impossible, but if you haven’t done it before, there are definitely some things you need to be aware of.
You do not have much time between the election starting and getting your forms in. Leeds City Council opened submissions on 1 April and closed them on the 9th. However, this was over the Easter weekend, so you actually only had 5 working days to submit them.
I downloaded the forms from their website and then went to the town hall to hand them in. The man on the front desk said I could give them to him and he would pass them on. However, the next day the elections office phoned me back saying that I had filled out the wrong forms and I had to submit them in person.
This was on the 2nd, and on the 3rd they closed for Easter, so I had to go down on the 7th and get the forms back and make an appointment for the 8th to submit them. This left me only the evening on the 8th to get them all filled out.
This is all doable, though it is very difficult if you have a job. They are only open 10am to 4pm and because they are busy during elections, you have to go down and speak to them if you want a response. When I tried to phone them back on the number they had called me on I got an automated message saying that the number was Leeds City Council, but you had to phone the “published number” and then hung up on me. The problem is they do not publish any numbers. I had to go onto their live chat to get their number, and then the number said it was going to be over 20 minutes before they answered it.
Again, none of this is impossible. However, it is difficult if you have a job. I am quite lucky that I work in Leeds and my current client is fairly flexible. However, there is clearly a lot more that could be done to make the democratic process open to ordinary working class people.
Al fresco dining has returned to our household for another year! Actually, it was still mightily cold out on our balcony, but not cold enough to keep us inside any longer. We celebrated with a sea food day.
Fried cuttlefish with mixed leaf salad and cajun fries. That ink does not come off your hands. Luckily, it’s edible, so it doesn’t need to.
Elina also knocked up some awesome milkshake slash smoothies. They were milkshakes, but so heavy on the strawberry and milt that we couldn’t actually fit much ice cream in.
Dinner consisted of a dover sole that I was mostly successful in gutting, alongside some soy sauce mash (an accident, but turns out to be awesome) and freshly prepared sea urchin.
Turns out that sea urchin tastes pretty horrible. Slimy and salty.
Without the years of training we spent playing Tetris, how will the next generation cope with grocery deliveries?
Turns out, that the three bird roast isn’t the only “thing of a thing” roast you can do.
This is an east coast red mullet, inside a mackerel, inside a halibut. It does not work as well as birds, because you cannot get as a big a cavity. The other problem is that it is difficult to get the stuffing (which I made with sausage meat, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper) to cook as quick as the fish. I felt it was rather uncooked, though Elina thought it was fine, and we haven’t died, so it seems to have been okay.
Elina thought the haddock had a rather defeated look on his face.
I’ve done all the recipes I want to do from Hugh’s Veg Every Day book, so I’ve started going back over them while combing in extra ingredients that I have found lying around during the Saturday inventory.
This one was the new potato, tomato and boiled egg salad. I swapped out the mustard in the vignette for honey and mild chilli powder. Then I (and by “I” I mean my sous chef Elina) fried up some turkey that we had marinated in some kind of substance. I think I put sunflower oil, freshly-ground black pepper, Jamaican jerk, lemon pepper, cayenne pepper and smoked paprika.
It’s been ten months since the last edition of the guide was published, but the drought is over. This edition features 14 brand new reviews and is available now in the Amazon Kindle store.
Added
- Almost Famous
- Bem Brasil
- Bird & Beast
- Buca di Pizza
- Bulgogi Grill
- Bundobust
- Byron
- Cabana
- Griffin Hotel
- Kerala
- Meat Liquor
- Teppan 260
- Tharavadu
- The Man Behind The Curtain
About a decade ago Worfolk Online was running a series of web portals that brought a lot of lovely content together from across the web and put it in one place so that we didn’t have to go through that tedious process of typing in the first few letters of URLs before auto-complete finishes it for us.
One of which was Frinks. Then, years later, it closed down.
Since then many people have asked if and when it would return. I mean, they didn’t exactly state it per se. However I could see it in their eyes, hear it in the intonation of their voice, and feel it in their embrace.
Well never fear, because Frinks has indeed returned. It is mostly syndicating large pictures of my face at the moment, making it largely only of interest to Elina, but I hope to expand the content in time.
Oh, where did it all go wrong?
Last week Elina took me out to Everyman Pizzeria where we were scheduled to have our usual: duck pizza for me, pepperoni pizza for Elina, and then sharing a boozy sundae. I’m nearly 30, I have simple needs but am too old to change now.
However, Everyman Pizzeria have rolled out a whole new menu. And it’s not as good.
They have replaced the pizzas with ones that look fancier, but that does not necessarily make them taste any better. My pulled pork pizza was good, but not great. Elina had to get the veggie burger instead which despite listing what we thought was all the ingredients on the menu, came covered in onions.
Finally, when we got to dessert, we found out they had scrapped their menu and now only had a make-your-own sundae. This did not have enough options to re-create their previous range, so we decided to leave it.
The staff were friendly and attentive as always, so no problems there. However, I have written to Everyman Cinema management to request that they send all future changes to me to be approved in writing.
Dune. Arrakis. Desert planet.
Dune is a 1965 novel by Frank Herbert. It is gripping. I usually make it through a novel. It’s rare when I actively seek out extra time to get in reading. However, this was one of those novels. Intricate and interesting, yet not overpoweringly complicated.
It has also aged very well. Despite being 50 years old, it did not sound out-dated. Herbert died in 1986, coincidentally the same year as follow science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard.
It does mean however, that I now have five sequels to add to my reading list.
