Mahinda’s Little World

Reading up from last year’s Cheltenham Mike-and-Pam-fest, I don’t think this year’s flavour was quite as interesting. Definitely fun, though!

So, Saturday morning. I awake, groggily as per usual. Not hung over, but only because I’d picked up a nasty cold and had spent the best part of Friday in bed.

Load up the car - as well as my overnight stuff and beer supply, there were Pete, Sarah and Rosy’s…and a certain amount of culinary equipment and ingredients to be carted down, too.

I picked up Si and Adrian, just about on time, and hit the M56 around 1pm. We made good time (I spared no horses) and got to Mike and Pam’s flat just shy of 3pm.

I had some anti-cold stuff and headed straight into the kitchen, where Pam and I knocked up some serious foodage:

• Thai-ish Chicken Curry
  Pretty much an Indian-style coconut-based curry, but with lemongrass, galangal root, ginger and fresh coriander. I made medium and hot versions, to suit all tastes.
• Pam’s Monster Chilli
  Standard chilli really, and nicely done. Served with taco shells, grated cheese, guacamole and sour cream stuff.
• Coconutty Carrots with Mustard Seeds and Turmeric
  Exactly what it says on the tin. Except that nothing came out of a tin.
• Saffron Rice
  Basmati rice. With saffron, a bit of ginger and some left-over coriander.

I think there were 13-15 people eating. Let’s see…

Pam, Mike, me, Si, Adrian, Jenn, Jonesy, Matt, Emily, Chris, Sarah, Kate, Linden and Rob

14. And Shifty had a huge plate of leftovers when he finally did arrive. It was the usual crowd of old friends, which is always nice.

Once food was out of the way, and the leftovers carried away by dint of The Kitchen Conga*, I finally got to drink some beer

* Can’t make friends with saa-lad [kick!], Can’t make friends with saa-lad [kick!]…

Beer was consumed, and we headed to the pub for more. Much conversation, once we’d rearranged sufficient furniture for two large tables of us. We talked about classic 80s (etc.) films that Dr.Kate hadn’t seen, and realised that I just don’t watch any American shows with monosyllabic titles, e.g. Spooks and Bones and Lost…until this was negated by Scrubs and Friends. Bugger.

CAMRA Amy and Olly (Oli? Olli?) turned up, which was nice. It’s great to see that Amy’s doing alright these days.

Eventually it was back home for much more drinking, away into the night. Colin and Nicola turned up, as did Pete, Sarah and Rosy, who’d been away at the Good Food Show.

Many of Pam’s am-dram mates turned up, and I seemed to spend lots of the evening chatting to randoms. I tend to do that, I suppose. There were two couples there who could have been brother and sister, so similar did they look - spooky, and nowhere near Norfolk! Mind you, not too far off from the West Country, so…

Some of the randoms had come from a (not very good, apparently) ‘C’ party, hence the lab-coat (chemist) and the two-cans-on-a-string (can-can). There was also a girl who had several silver rosettes stuck to her front…I was actually sad enough to recognise Cassiopeia straight off

People drifted off around 2ish, I guess, leaving us to look up the Ashes score on Teletext. Not good. About then, the cold really hit me and I had to get some rest. After some wise prompting from Pam, I headed off to the spare room to beg Emily for half a double sofa-bed. And a small double sofa-bed at that. I had to settle for a third in the end, pretty much sandwiched between Em (who moves around quite a bit in her sleep, it turns out) and Mike’s drum kit. Nice. The cold kicked in - hopefully Emily didn’t catch it - and I had an awful night’s sleep.

Also, I think I’ve blogged this before, but I’m really no good at sharing a bed with people. Just having someone sleeping that close to me means that I wake up frequently. It’s the same with sharing a tent. I suppose it’s because I’m just not used to it, being perpetually single and all that. Ho hum.

Sunday

After a few false starts, I decided to get up and get showered. I wasn’t going to get any more sleep. I left Emily sprawled across the bed, fairly asleep, and stumbled around the place. Everyone else was asleep, which is pretty unusual - I’m usually last up at parties like that, just because I’m usually knackered.

Demankification happened, and I joined the dead bodies in the living room, eventually finding "The Story of Football" on the shelves. It’s a GREAT book, being a pretty comprehensive history of the game up until the 70s. Plenty on Arsenal’s general sordidness and Tottenham’s glory (glory) years to keep me happy

I checked the Ashes score on my phone, expecting bad things, and was stunned to find that Pietersen and Collingwood had blitzed 160-or-so runs in a session-and-a-bit. Nice. There were even clouds spotted within a in time zone of Brisbane!

People awoke, and it was off to a trendy champagne bar, Bentley’s, for lunch. The sort of place that’s frequented by monied oiks of a Saturday night, but decent enough during the day. Soft drinks were consumed.

Headed back to Mike and Pam’s eventually, bumping into Cassiopeia and Can-Can on the way - most of the others had no idea who they were - and hit the road. Si, Pete, Rosy and Sarah were in the MahindaBus (MkII) this time, with Adrian fortunately getting a lift with Cattac.

Got home, and pretty much headed to bed. After watching much hot lesbo action courtesy of Torchwood, of course. Lovely.

Two weeks now, and no updates. Sorry, folks.

That’s not to say that nothing much has happened - there’ve been a few parties in MancLand, badminton, hockey, pub, another superb weekend in Cheltenham, and general illness.

*sniff*

There’s also been much busyness at work, and at lunchtimes, so the usual updates just haven’t been typed.

Service as usual (i.e. somewhat sporadic, but better than this) may be resumed in the near future.

Last week saw the "UMIST" (AKA "University of Manchester Campus North") Beer Fest. Of course, this was the first beer fest I ever went to, back in 1996, when it was in a tent. It was also the second…and the third…and possibly the fourth as well

It was always a bit of a social event back at UMIST, and as such is very different to your average beer fest - for a start, it’s much more like a club night out, with music and atmosphere, and it also features a much younger crowd. "CAMRA for young people" as Howell put it.

This year was my tenth. It had been on a downward slide for the last few years, as the Students’ Union did all it could to prevent it happening…allegedly. Apparently they’d raised £3000 for charity by the Friday night.

So, the downward slide. Some of the late-90s fests featured nigh on 200 beers, lagers and ciders, with casks racked up all around the Underground. Last year had just over 50, I think, with a handful of ciders, bottled beers and vodkas. And what was there was pretty badly kept, unfortunately - seldom have I had so many bad pints at a beer festival.

Fortunately, Barney (MUGSS crew stalwart) had a hand in this year’s event. He got Dave Hallows (CAMRA stalwart) involved, and the beer was, well, pretty much spot on.

I moseyed on down for the Thursday and Friday evening sessions, and had a lovely time drinking with friends.

Thursday

The Thursday sesh saw lots of MUGSS types, as well as Howell, Antony and Housemate Paul. Plenty of beer left too, although the rugby club had been on Friday and polished off the Old Tom and Skullsplitter. Given that it’s something of a tradition of mine to have some Old Tom at every UMIST Beer Fest, I was pretty miffed.

*shakes fist at rugger buggers*

Hopefully they all had killer hangovers on Friday!

Howell, Paul, Mia, Malcolm and I tried to go on to East Z East for a high-class curry after the fest, but it was closed. Cue kebabs for Paul, Howell and I instead. Ho hum.

Howell managed to leave his festival pint pot in Abdul’s, after almost falling asleep into his kebab. I donated mine on the bus home…which he smashed between the bus stop and his place! We have no idea what happened to Paul’s.

Friday

Pete, Adrian, Linden, Rob, Kate and Housemate Gillian turned up, which was nice. Matt, Amy and Richard kept the CAMRA U30 flag flying too, and I’d not seen them for absolutely ages.

Lots of beer was running out, unfortunately, and I was left with only the lighter ales left. More 6’s and 7’s, rather than the 8’s and 9 that had featured on Thursday. Yes, I score my beer - it’s a memory aid for the next day! No, I don’t record them in a database - that’d just be tragic.

After that, it was on to Sam’s place for his birthday celebrations. Definitely a fun little party, and Sam’s mates-from-home (Blackpool) were a friendly bunch. The highlight of the evening was Housemate Gillian looking at Sam and exclaiming:

"That man is a RAVING homosexual!"

Well, he was wearing a fluffy pink cowboy hat and doing the typewriter dance to Nine to Five at the time.

Beers

So, the beers. I had 17 in all, although I suspect there were one or two more towards the ends of the evenings that I’d not noted.

Sod it - I’ll list them all!

SIX - drinkable, but not quite there

• Coachhouse - Gunpowder Stout
• Highgate - Fat Catz
• Highgate - Fox’s Nob
• Holden’s - Black Country

SEVEN - I’d happily have a few

• Fuller’s - Chiswick
• Hanby - Cherrybomb
• Highgate - Old Ember
• Hyde’s - Stormtrouper
• JW Lees - Great British
• Robinson’s - Double Hop
• Wadworth - Bishop’s Tipple
• Wychwood - Dog’s Bollocks

EIGHTS - mmmmm

• Couchhouse - Honeypot
• Hopback - Entire Stout
• Moorhouse - Black Cat Mild
• Young’s - Winter Warmer

NINE - seriously, there aren’t many of these!

• Orkney - Dark Island

The Hanby Cherrybomb was absolutely full of cherries, but a bit sweet for my taste.

Of the 8’s, the Honeypot was pretty good, with a lovely honey aftertaste, but a bit lacking in body or it might have pushed for a nine. The Entire Stout had some lovely coffee tones, and rated a very high 8 indeed!

Orkney Dark Island is, of course, one of my favourite pints. In perfect nick, it rates a 10. However, I think it was approaching the end of the barrel when I had mine, so it was "only" a nine.

Incidentally, I don’t subscribe to the "7’s average" school of ratings. A distinctly average pint of Bombardier or Landlord in a standard local would probably get a 5 or 6. A 4 would indicate a pretty bad beer, while 3 means that there’s probably something wrong with it. 2 would be "off, but need a second sip to make sure", while 1 is instant "this one’s gone; could I have another please?"

Last year’s fest would have featured several 3’s, 4’s, and perhaps even a 2.

Actually, there’s a point - I can look it up on this very blog! Here, in fact. Rather than the scathing write-up it deserved, it got a slightly dismissive paragraph or two. Must have been in a good mood

Roll on, next year - hopefully this won’t be a lone blip amongst a sea of mediocre UMIST Beer Fests.

I’ve just eaten my cobbled-together lunch. Sort of like a risotto-based jambalaya with tuna undertones. More about yesterday’s meal later, dear readers.

While blitzing said concoction in the office microwave, I was chatting to Maxine, the new girl. She commented on my lunch, so I replied that it was just, well, slightly altered leftovers from a meal I’d cooked for the housemates.

At this, she looked confused. I looked confused that she looked confused.

Max: "You have housemates?"

Me: "Yes - I live in a shared house. There are five of us."

Maxines looks confused, still.

Me: "You look confused."

Max: "Someone told me that you had five children."

Me: "Erm, if I have, I don’t know about them!"

Of course, it’d be odd for someone to have five children yet live in a shared house. Unless it’s some sort of hippy commune, of course…and tie-dye just doesn’t suit me.

It’s been unusually quiet for me, this last week or so.

Spooky Stuff

Last Monday, Howell and I went to Spooooooooky World. Basically, it’s a farm on the outskirts of Warrington that, buoyed by the success of the "Amazing Maize Maze" (can you see what they did there?) over the Summer, has diversified into a bit of October moneyspinning.

It was all rather provincial, and probably much better for small kids. We did get chased by a yokel with a chainsaw, and a demonic tractor, and there was a pretty cool haunted house sort of thing - a long winding tunnel with various ghouls and ghosties, including a couple of staff leaping out at you from the dark. Oddly, the scariest one wasn’t one of the big lads who jumped out from the dark in front of you, but actually the rather diminutive witch who crept up on me from behind and ran her fingers down my back. I jumped about a yard!

Ceilidh

Another Wednesday, another Manchester Ceilidh. Fun fun fun. Still missing a lot of the old regulars, but lots of fun new people. It’s just such a friendly atmosphere.

I managed to lose my front bike light, which doubles as a rather handy torch. It must have fallen out of my bag, I reckoned, so I went back (having only realised when about to get on my bike) to have a look for it. In the dimly-lit hall, I didn’t have a chance. Just as I was about to give up, I spotted it - someone had picked it up and stood it on a ledge, in full view. How honest is that?

Badminton

We had our first weekly badminton session on Thursday, over at Belle Vue (it’s IMPOSSIBLE to get courts at Didsbury or the Armitage, it seems). Two courts, and we had me, Pete, Kate, Adam, Adrian, Jo1 and Jo2.

A quick pint at Hardy’s afterwards rounded off a fun session. The next one’s tonight, at Moss Side.

Essex and Fireworks

For the weekend, I moseyed on down to see Maria in deepest darkest Essex. Got to Maria’s place at something like 11.30pm on Friday night - we had some of that Icelandic vodka and chatted for while.

Saturday saw brunch at a posh café sort of place - tasty but a bit overpriced, really - and then a bit of a pub crawl along the Leigh-on-Sea waterfront. Had some fresh cockles (and, in my case, seafood medley) and smoked eel between the last two pubs, and then it was back to Maria’s place to grab warmer coats before the fireworks.

Think it was almost a two mile walk from Maria’s to Leigh…and then back again…and then back again to get the train towards the beautifully-named Shoeburyness for fireworks.

Good fireworks display, but it cost FIVE WHOLE POUNDS. And there wasn’t a bonfire, which is rubbish.

Back home, via train, cab and (mediocre) curry, and we scared Maria’s mum (she’s pretty old, and lives with Maria) by not being able to get in - the door wasn’t unlocking properly, so we were rattling it a bit.

Sunday…stayed in, watched some of the rugby, then I headed off to Harlow.

Thanks to the evils of the M25, I got to Harlow just after 6pm, having caught the end of Spurs-Chel$ki* on 909. Got to Zenobia’s house, where she gave me a cup of tea. She’s in her first year working as a labmonkey for Glaxo, as are her housemates - Tom, Penny (whose family run a beef farm in Somerset - they’ve recently named a pedigree calf "Zenobia") and Anneka (who actually does look about twelve).

* WE WON! 2-1! YAY! First time Spurs had beaten Chelsea in the league since 1990! To make it EVEN better, Arsenal had lost (to West Ham), with Wenger losing his rag in high comedy fashion

Zenobia’s someone I really only know thanks to Manchester Ceilidh (he says, cunningly bringing the post almost full-circle), but also through Alsion and the fact that she gatecrashed my birthday party (and MUGSS pre-show) a couple of years ago. I never seem to know anyone through normal links, these days!

Anyway, we headed off to the local park for more fireworks, and another 20-minute walk. Got there early, so wandered around the funfair - one of the rides had a picture of Terry Henry in a Spurs shirt…very odd. The bonfire was lit, which was nice - finally, a proper fire! Eventually, the fireworks were let off - not quite as impressive as Shoeburyness, but pretty decent.

See? It’s not really Bonfire Night unless there’s a bonfire!

Walked back to Zen’s place, then started the monster drive home (M11/M25/M1/M6/A556/M56/A5103) at almost 9pm. Ouch.

Got home the wrong side of 1am, to find that I’d missed all semblence of Spurs highlights

Ended up satisfying my football desire with a match report on t’interweb instead, and went to bed knackered. Knackered, but happy.

…iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…

My ears are ringing. I went to a gig last night - The Cooper Temple Clause, in fact. It had been ages since I’d last gone to a gig, so I’m pleased it was a good one.

I didn’t actually know any of their songs, save for vaguely recognising their last encore number - Pete had dragged me along, with the promise of lending me an album or two a bit beforehand. I’d forgotten to chase this up.

The best way to describe them is sort of rocky guitar-based indie stuff with a hint of 80s Gary Numan style synth. It works, strangely enough, and featured a proper Rock Bassist. You know, the type who’s got the charisma of a frontman as opposed to skulking in a corner doing the bassist head-nod thing. You know what I mean.

That actually rounded off a pretty cultural few days…

Whores

That’ll get my blog some in-ter-esting hits

Thursday was Whorehouse day. I went to see the SMAOS production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, in the studio at the RNCM - the same venue as for Rock Trial, i.e. a 100-cap studio space rather than a proper auditorium.

It was good, and worked pretty well. I can see why some people I know don’t regard it as the best musical ever, but it was definitely fun. SMAOS’s plethora of pretty ladies definitely helped!

Who else was there with us? Linden, Sam, Pete, Jon H, Gill, Kate, Ads, Jon D, Liz and Gesine were with us…and Steph came along as well. In an amusing turn of events, Ads asked me a few days later how long Steph and I had been going out - Jon D had somehow picked that one out of nowhere.

But I digress. The MUGSS bunch were rehearsing in the RNCM that evening too, so everyone got together in the bar afterwards for a few drinks…which spilled into Font bar and then SubSpace. All in all, a pretty fun night out!

Snow

Informer…or maybe not.

Fuelled by a very strong recommendation indeed from a workmate, Linden and I headed to the Lowry on Friday night, for Slava’s Snow Show.

It was very much a spur-of-the-moment thing, and I grabbed one of the last 20 or so tickets. It was billed as "Cirque du Soleil but with snow and clowns"…so not built up at all, then.

Now, the girl on the end of the ticket line was very helpful indeed - it seemed that she’d already been in to see it, and she sold me on some "restricted view" seats that she reckoned would actually be far better than the leftover ones on the back row. Cheaper, too

We got there, and the seats were pretty good. Next to a follow-spot…and therein lay the problem. Shortly, an usherette (or whatever the PC term is!) came up to us, checking that we were in the correct seats. We were. She went off to check stuff.

The usherette returned, saying that she’d have to move us. She left again to consult the house manager.

The show started. A clown* shuffled on, attached to a big rope. He looked very much like Howell, who was supposedly in Canada. Hmmmm.

* This was presumably Slava, the Russian clown who wrote the whole thing.

The usherette returned, and asked us to follow her. We were taken to the house manager (a bald and humourless chap), who told us that we’d be moved into the stalls. We had to wait a few minutes before we could go in, and never found out to what the other end of the rope was attached

Eventually then, we were given seats about 15 rows back, right in the middle of the stalls - BONZER!

The rest of the show was pretty good, but nowhere near as good as it had been made out to be. Quite slow-paced, and pretty stunning visually, but just not all that great. Maybe it was the Friday night audience - too much random clapping at everything from a minor sound effect upwards, and the clowns played up to this. Hmmmmm.

At the end, giant balls (maybe 3m in diameter, and lots of smaller ones too) were thrown around in the audience…which was fun, with everyone in the stalls standing up and having to watch out! I got bopped on the head from behind a few times…I suppose I’m just not used to having balls come at me from behind. Linden was fine, however…

It’s only the people in the stalls who get to bounce the balls - lots of riff-raff from the cheap seats tried, but were turned away by the bald and humourless house manager. We left after 10 minutes or so…apparently the bouncing goes on for up to half an hour or so after the rest of the show has finished

As a first date (which, thankfully, it wasn’t), it would have been a disaster. Linden was hungry, we couldn’t find decent food during the interval, she talked about weeing alot, and ended up with seriously cheesy onion breath. Nice.

We joined the SMAOS bunch in the RNCM bar afterwards, and ended up going for a curry.

Punjab

The aforementioned curry was in Punjab, which seemed to be under new management. I was VERY disappointed. The food was nice enough, but Punjab was one of the few places left which stood out as being a bit different - their dishes had a different character from the generic Rusholme pap, and they did fantastic dosas as starters, which no-one else on the Curry Mile does.

Or at least, they did. They’ve gone generic. ‘Twas a sad sad day. Next time, it’s back to King Cobra.

I’m off to see Maria this weekend, and she drinks neat vodka, so I thought I’d get her a bottle of something nice - Zubrowka sprung to mind, of course, so I popped into Oddbin’s to check out their price. £17.99 for a litre, as it happens. However, I then saw this new stuff, Reyka, on offer - it was from Iceland, and I’d never had Icelandic vodka before:

Reyka is Iceland’s first ever [legally produced!] vodka.

The word derives form the Icelandic word for steam; it is geothermal steam that powers the distillery. They also use perhaps the purest water yet used in the production of vodka - drawn from a 4,000 year old lava field, it is so pure that it requires no treatment or demineralization, which most other distillers have to do.

Apparently the water used for Reyka is so pure that Volvic has a content of dissolved solids that’s five times higher than Reyka’s - Evian’s level is nearly 15 times higher.

Intrigued, I asked if I might have a closer look at the bottle.

"Of course" replied the chap behind the counter, and passed it over. His mate then pointed out that there was a freshly-opened bottle for tasting purposes. It seems that they have quite a large stock of spirits for that sort of thing.

Anyway, I was then handed the bottle and a wine glass (!) and told to help myself. I kept to probably just less than a shot (although it’s hard to judge), and gave it a swirl. The aroma was lovely, and the taste was even better - one of the fullest-bodied vodkas I’ve ever had, and definitely the smoothest I’ve ever had. I’m not a straight vodka drinker in general, even when it’s chilled, and this was at room temperature.

Oddbin’s bloke hadn’t sampled it either, so he had some too. We agreed that it was great. Very tasty and UNBELIEVABLY smooth.

Needless to say, I bought a bottle. £13.99 well spent.

I might visit that particular establishment more often!