The Time Bubble

It seems I can't open a newspaper these days without finding yet another article about how bad sugar is. Yes, it seems that sugar is this year's public enemy number one. We just can't be left alone to enjoy our lives can we? It seems to be one thing after another. One minute we're a nation of binge drinkers. Next salt is the silent killer, oh and keep off the coffee too. Then the focus is on fats - good fats, bad fats, let's confuse the hell out of everyone. Now it's sugar - and great the paper is telling me there's 5 teaspoons of sugar in every banana - one of the few "healthy" things my children enthusiastically ask for. Thanks for ruining that for me. Then there's 23 spoons of sugar in a can of drink and 86 in a chocolate bar. OK I'm exaggerating now, but even so the amounts quoted seem ridiculous on some of the things. Does all this scaremongering do people any good? None whatsoever - all it does is confuse and annoy them and give t...

When I was about sixteen I used to go to friend's house parties. This was a time of great excitement for me. For a start I was at an all boys school so these parties tended to be full of females who were full of novelty value for me as I just didn't have that much interaction with them at the time. But I wanted to - wow, did I want to. Those hormones were running rampant at the time, I'm sure if you think back you'll remember what that was like - it was the same for all of us, wasn't it? Aside from girls, the other exciting thing at these parties, which was considerably easier to get my hands on was the booze. At that age we were too young for pubs and booze wasn't that easily accessible, so most consumption took place at these parties, which happened maybe once every month or two. Alcohol was new and illicit and exciting. And also dangerous. You could guarantee at every one of these parties there would be at least one attendee who would over do it and end up ...

So it's a new year, and it's time for me to put on my somewhat eccentric thinking cap and come up with some exciting new ideas for innovation in the sausage world! Since being chosen as Love Pork's official sausage taster last year, I've taken my responsibilities in this area very seriously. I mentioned in the last entry that I had some big ambitions for 2014, well one of these is to make it big in the world of bacon, ham and sausages. I've already been offered a feature in Pig & Poultry Marketing magazine, but for me the ultimate dream, and the culmination of my life's work would be to gain the legendary status of Hambassador with Love Pork. How can I achieve this? Well, as long as I keep writing and promoting all things pork product via this blog, who knows what might come of it. Hambassador aspirations apart, sausages aren't the only things that get awards in the Pork world, and if there is some bacon or some pork pies to be judged in the months a...

This New Year's Eve was quite unusual for me, because for the first time in eight years, I was not DJ'ing for the evening. This has always been a lucrative night for me. DJ's, like taxis, charge at least double, more in many cases, but this year I decided I would take a break from it. New Year's Eve assumes a special importance in our family, because it is also my wife's birthday. We have been together since 2006 and in all of that time she's had to traipse around after me wherever I happened too be working for the evening. That's OK if we are local, but that hasn't always been the case. Anyway, I decided it was about time that I treated Claire to a birthday night out so I rejected all offers of DJ'ing and thought about what we should do. Now I thought at first maybe we should do something really special, but then I thought perhaps we will put that on hold for another year. You see Claire was 29 this year and she has the big birthday coming up at...

Well here we are on Christmas Day and I thought it would be a great idea to share my Christmas log with all of you... No...don't worry, it is not that kind of log, I could never bring myself to be so unoriginal as to utter that joke that has been done to death millions of time the world over ever since William Shatner first uttered the words "Captain's Log, Stardate xxxx.x" way back in 1966. Though a former work colleague of mine if he reads this (Hello Dave!) will chuckle, as the subject of me producing a Christmas log every year seemed to put him into hysterics. So Dave, I thought I would mention it just for you. Speaking of originality, this is the first time I have ever managed to squeeze out a log (sorry!) on Christmas Day before, and the last thing I want to do is bore you with a potted account of the day's proceedings as I am sure there will be nothing in there that you haven't done yourselves on countless past Yuletide occasions. Instead what I hav...

I am sure it will come as no surprise to any of you who have been following my sausage story closely that my favourite bit of the Christmas dinner is "pigs in blankets". If there is anyone who does not know what pigs in blankets are, well firstly, shame on you, and secondly here is the definition: Sausages wrapped in bacon. What an amazing invention! My second favourite food of all time wrapped in my first favourite food of all time! It's hard to even begin to describe the levels of excitement this generates in me. If you can imagine finding the two most attractive people you have ever fancied in your life all wrapped up in a Christmas stocking on the end of your bed on Christmas morning and you might be somewhere near approaching it. Pigs in blankets have grown in popularity over the years and I don't recall them being as popular in my youth and certainly not as readily available as they are now. Like various other components of the Christmas dinner such as stuff...

A recent review of one of my books on Amazon compared me to both Alan Partridge and Karl Pilkington. It wasn't the most flattering review I've had - it was a 3 star one, but it was in-depth and that's got to be a good thing. I think it is also good to be compared to people, and I've no problem with being compared to Alan or Karl. Unique as we would all like to believe we are, in a world of 7 billion people that is quite a challenge and most reviews you read in of books, plays, films, you name it make comparisons to others in the genre. As for the two named, well I guess Alan must have had some sort of influence on me as I've always been a big fan. I've been known to quote many a "Partridge-ism" in conversation - "This Country" being my all time favourite. My review referred to Partridge style rants in my book - I'm not sure if this was intended as a compliment or not but I've decided to take it as such. I certainly didn't intend...