Big hittin' pickled onion flava
Mood:  cheeky
Now Playing: A football match in the background and the rustle of empty packets of Discos
Topic: Stephen Says
*Phew!* Not wanting to rub it in, but we went to our first Barbequeue (Damnit! I forgot how to spell that word. BBQ forever more!) yesterday and took in a rugby match on the tele.

The really big news, though is that we went for a walk along a part of the canal that we never go along and have finally found a proper pub. A friendly pub that conforms to our narrow minded view of what a British pub is supposed to be like. One with a nice, big beer garden and children and a mix of people. not filled uniformly with pikeys, students or telemarketers/real estate agents who are trying to act like they're in Straw Dogs. This pub is much more Wicker Man.

We'll be there next Sunday - it's the canal boat festival where everyone dresses up their canal boats & sails them to the pub. Pictures will be taken, etc.

We must get out now & enjoy the weather.

The perverse sexual lives of British men and other issues for a Saturday morning
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: The flip, flip of Elisabeth filing things.
Topic: Stephen Says
Hmm, whats new? I got my 1st good haircut in the UK by Uncle Junior yesterday. Now that the weather's nice, Yobbo's out in full force screaming obscenities at minorities and acting like the scrawny bald psychopath that he is.

So onto this topic's subject: British men & their sexual fantasies. According to Elisabeth (via Red Magazine- she got a free bag with it), the 7th most important thing British women should know about their men is that "He shall have an unhealthy obsession with nurses. It is here that ye code of ye genders be truely cracked. For my husband hath told me that men think that all nurses have a secret method of making them ejaculate by sticking a finger up their bottoms. This, apparently, is the Holy Grail of our menfolk [...] the sex act at it's most sacred."

Ok, Elisabeth's said that I've opened (not for the first time at least) myself up to ridicule because I just don't get it. Is it because nurses are clean? Someone please explain. Or is it just than British men are filthy, weird and perverse?

And another thing, whenever I get my hair cut, at the end of the session, after they've used the floppy white bush on my face & back of my neck, they always give me a square of tissue paper. All of a sudden I feel like I'm in that scene in Scarface where he's given the orange water and, instead of cleaning his fingers in it, he eats the orange. What do I do with the tissue paper? Normally I make a polite wipe of my forehead, back of my neck, maybe wipe my nose and then pocket it. What am I supposed to do with it?? Help!

And another thing, why do so many grown men over here wear sweat pants? The only time you wear grey or navy blue sweat pants is when you're exercising or under the age of 13. Not when you're with your wife shopping at the Peacocks Center. Look, I don't mind that I come across as slightly yobby/chavvey or dodgy by the way I dress, but 40 year old men in sweat pants is alright? Are they intimidated by the fact that I've mastered the button fly? Beause men in sweats aren't intimidating because of the ease with which you can pull down their pants? To me, a man in sweats says 'not taking his medication.' Pointe finale.

Blogging? What blogging?
Mood:  mischievious
Now Playing: A selection of Irish short stories
Topic: Stephen Says
Damn, there's a lack of interesting things going on that I can blog about. Heaven forbid that E or I have lost interest in blogging! Can it be that we have, at long last, acclimatized to living in Britain? It's St. Patricks day and it's 20 degrees celsius outside. What's in like in Canada, suckers? If this is acclimitization, then it ain't so bad!

The dance piece that we saw the other day was okay. It made me pine for the cooless that is Usine C where the performance pieces are much more challenging and contain far greater amounts of nudity. Anyway, here's a link to the show that we saw: Link. It was alright but too tame and easy to get.

Must... blog... more. Maybe.

What Really Happened
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Andrew W.K. (Because Elisabeth isn't home)
Topic: Stephen Says
After all of Elisabeth's predictions as to what we were planning to do with our weekend, let's see how many came true... Trip to London? Cancelled out of laziness. Voyage to Guildford? Nixed due to the train service being down & out so that we would have had to have paid for a train ticket and taken the bus. Please see previous anti-public transport rants. We went to the pub, instead. Outting to see a dance piece? Postponed due to insanely inflated ticket prices (However we've book tickets to see something a little more avant-garde tonight for 1/2 the price and triple the prospective enjoyment value.). Instead, we've had a very relaxing few days, cooking lots of food, baking cakes (2 last night), eating out (A nice Chinese restaurant has opened near us) and watching movies. So without ado, the Movies reviews.

Zatoichi: Holy crap this movie's cool! Samurai's & ninjas! Kick ass fight moves! Digital blood! Transvestite banjo playing hookers! Blind super hero masseurs with reverse-polarity eyes! They break out into song and dance! And more slapstick comedy than you can shake a bamboo stick that's really a sword at!

Straw Dogs: Sam Peckinpah's classic. The harrowing true tale of two Canadians (played by Stephen & Elisabeth Allin) who move to an isolated hamlet in Surrey named Englefield Green. Things turn ugly when they try to integrate into this closed off community which is naturally suspicious of strangers. Or something like that. It was banned in England for 18 years for good reason - the most relistic portratal of the real England outside of The Wicker Man.

Yesterday we started a massive spring clean of our flat (Which we'll probably stay at for the next year - The flat, I mean; not the clean.) and got a bunch or errands taken care of - Elisabeth has, at long last, bought a new pair of glasses which will rrive in two weeks and I've gotten my ring resized (I've lost 2 ring sizes since moving to England. *sigh* I still remember the good old days when I was fat.). Elisabeth's been to the doctor this morning for an ear check up & is taking pictures of the big department store that has gone out of business. It's weird to see an abandoned multi-level store with little pockets of discounted crap and vulture-like customers buzzing around them, picking them apart in the off chance that they are able to buy something they really don't need at 70% off. And me? I'm blogging because I'm suposed to be spring cleaning some more. Must go, now. Elisabeth will be home soon.

Rosie O' Grady Went to Town
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Nothing
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
Top o' the mornin to yuz all!

Yesterday we went into town riding on a pony and did some grocery shopping. We also rented some DVDS:

HEAD OF STATE (Chris Rock)
STRAW DOGS (Dustin Hoffman)
ZATOICHI (I don't know--it's Japanese)

If you want to find more about this selection, please visit: www.imdb.com

For dinner I made steamed cauliflower, brussel spouts & leaks with a Red Lentil Bolognaise sauce. It was extremely filling, but too healthy. So we made a meringue cake together. It involves three 8" discs of meringue sandwiched together with a fresh raspberry creme fraiche icing. Fresh raspberries to decorate. In fact, here's a picture:

And this is the picture that Stephen would prefer that I use:

The difference being the "flying dead monkey" of course.

Well we feasted last night and watched "head of state" which I enjoyed, but Stephen thinks pales in comparison to Bullworth. But I think Chris Rock has balls to make a funny entertaining movie about US Politics in the year of Bush's re-election. It's old-school comedy, with a new millennium edge.

Right, we've had our potatoes & egg breakfast will be making big Pan Bagna baguette sandwiches to take with us to Guildford, where we hope to do something new...and yes, we're taking the camera.

CONTEST: There are still 3 jars of Whiskey Marmalade to win (yes yes Sean & Jenn, you're prizes are still on their way ...)

QUESTION: What is a chav?

Until next time...over and out Roger.

Honk Honk....The Curse of the Tooting Trains
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: John Gaunt Radio show....
Topic: Elisabeth's Entries
You can now rest assured that Stephen has not done me in...I am alive and living in this noisy hell called England. There is no peace! There is too much transportation in this country...always a plane overhead, always a train rumbling in the distance (or mostly on the other side of our apartment wall), and so many cars (esp. here in "Greater London") that they travel in a never-ending stream down every road, always the same distance apart, like zombies. Of course, that is until there are too many cars trying to fit into the street so that they aren't able to move forward at all. Bah! And the trains are such a noisy, overpriced waste of time...it took me 1 hour and 45 min. to get to work, which is only 7 miles away. I was in tears, cursing openly on the platform as train after train was delayed, cancelled etc... I am so irritated with spending 5 pounds to travel 2 stops on the train (equivilent of spending $12.00 CAN to travel from Dorval to NDG return-for those of our Montreal readers) and on top of that, to not provide a train for an hour, when there are at least 6 trains normally scheduled in that time frame!). RANT-OVER.

Thankfully, I have a bicycle, and it has stopped being icy, and all the broken spokes are fixed, so I have been gleefully escaping the trains and cars, and instead zipping down the tow-path of the Basingstoke Canal. Just this week I decided to start bringing the camera, and here are some pictures:

I am now off of work for the next 5 days, and will post more blogs...hopefully without any whinging!

Sods Law
Topic: Stephen Says
Or at least that's what Elisabeth calls it. I call it What the...? On Monday I got hired for this job that will start in 4 to 6 weeks and I've just been re-hired over at the book store starting in 2 weeks until I start my other job because they're short staffed.

Also in the What the...? category, does anyone else have alot of trouble sending out e-mails through Hotmail? I receive them just fine but can't seem to send anything until after about 12 million tries.

This link comes from my wife and addresses the White Hell (sort of) that has rocked this country. Sort of. We're close enough to London to experience the "London Effect." This basically means that all bets are off when it comes to forecasting the weather in and around London because, uh, erm, uh... it's London?

They Said it Couldn't be Done pt.2
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Stephen Says
Ok; first things first. If you're having a hard time accessing this blog, you're not the only one. I've been pestering Angelfire and have gotten assurances that everything's fixed. They gave me a lillipop, patted me on the bum and have sent me on my way. That said, I won't be changing servers util I start reaching my upload limit.

And, yes, I got a job. Here's a link to the organization's web site and suffice to say, it was my 1st choice for jobs. With luck, our income has just doubled and that barrier called debt that's keeping out of Canada will be knocked down soon enough. The only downside to all this is that the job won't start for 4 to 6 weeks (Please refer to past gripes about how long it takes to find a freaking job in this country) but at least it's a job that requires casual dress, will streamline my carreer path (In a good way - not one that leads to chains & shackles in Telemarketing Hell), and be a worthwhile use of my time that will also result in a livable wage.

Nothing's really new, otherwise. Elisabeth has found that it's more useful to get to work earlier than work late (Hence why I'm typing this at a quarter to eight). She says that she'll (yeah, right) blog sometime soon and she wants to know why the only time that I don't refer to her by name on this thing is when I write about her while she's cooking and, in that circumstance, call her 'my wife.'

Anyway, it's a busy day today - 2 days of slacking off = lots of laundry & chores & shopping & cooking to do. But before I go, hearty congratulations to Mrs. Dr. JC and the joy she's going to have over the next few years, getting paid to do her PHd! Wowza Mowza!

Blurgh!
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: The News
Topic: Stephen Says
{Edit: Elisabeth has pointed out that, most likely, no one will have any idea what I'm writing about in this blog entry. So, since it's Sunday morning, my wife's cooking pancakes and I'm ripping an Oscar Peterson CD; I've decided to annotate this entry. Annotations are, duh, in bold.}

Okay, so here I am on a Friday evening {First off, I'm imitating the 'rap' style of the guy in The Streets; the rap group that I mention later. In fact, this whole blog is sort of modelled after his whiny, pointless style.}, waiting for my wife to come home but she's working late on the day that they announce that the average Londoner works an average of 8 hours of unpaid overtime a week and there's opposition to raising the minimum wage to slightly over 5 pounds an hour {This is fact, as confirmed by the BBC.}because, of course, if you happen to make more than 5 pounds an hour, you'll become a multi-millionaire inside of 2 years and be able to marry your transvestite lover and become Queen-I-mean-King {This is my own snarky supposition that also contains reference to past blog entries where I inferred that Charles & Bowels are both men. I know, I know, Charles? A man?!? For someone who spends so much of his time in a skirt, it's probably hard to beleive that he's a man, bt he is. How else can you explain the attraction that Bowels has towards him?} of this Sceptered Isle. {This Sceptered Isle is a reference to an audio book that I sold while working at the book store. I don't even know what it's in reference to, but seems, to me, to be a funny name to call England.}

Oops. Or maybe it's the 5 cans of cider speaking and that there could be good Job News on the horizon but I don't want to say anything to jinx it except I just did so Whoops! {This is foreshadowing for a future blog entry.}

The album to listen to right now is A Grand Don't Come For Free by The Streets. It's fuckin' terrible but has some good beats and is supposed to be ironic except that it tells the life story of the average Yob/Chav/Youth in this Sceptered Isle so it's actually kind of depressing and sad. But it has some good beats. Don't buy it, download it. But get all the tracks because it's a concept album so, unless you subject yourself to 45 minutes of the worst white-boy rap ever, you won't 'get it.' Or whatever. Did I mention the good beats?

It used to be soooo eeeeeaaaaassssssyyyyyy..... {This is a reference to the ultra-lame refrain from the Street's first track.}

I really want to say something more interesting but nothing's coming to mind. I'm wasting away because there's no one here to make my curry. {i.e., Elisabeth - it was her turn to cook dinner.} It used to be soooooo eeeeaaaaasssssyyyyyyy..... {This is a reference to the ultra-lame refrain from the Street's first track.}


I must go. I'm going to chop some vegetables in the hope that the smell of chopped pepper,onion, garlic, potato and whatever else will bring my wife home earlier.

And maybe convince her to post a blog.

It used to be sooooo eeeeaaaaaassssyyyy..... {Ibid.}

HOLY FREAKING MOLEY IT'S SNOWING RIGHT NOW!
Ok, it's ended now.
And they were only flurries, really.