Crackerwax

The most recent of my woeful party adventures occurred about a year ago, at a house party organised by someone I hardly knew. He was a generous chap so unless you were a convicted serial killer, you got an invite.

My excitement at being invited to a party lead to my hasty – and in hindsight, rash – offer to wear a kilt.

Now, I love my kilts and I’ll wear them at the drop of a hat, everyone knows this. However women – for some crazy unknown reason – go a bit funny when they see a man in a kilt. I’ve experienced this before many, many times. I’ve gotten used to it.

You know the sort of thing, questions about what’s underneath it – which for the record is nothing – and such. Although I have often wondered what would happen to me if I approached a girl at a party, complimented her on her dress and then followed it up by asking if she was wearing any knickers.

I can’t imagine it would be a positive outcome. (more…)

Is mine! The story behind it goes a bit like this.

Restless Cheese and I went to see Pearl Jam in Manchester last night, in true fashion this was just a bit of an excuse for some hard drinking, although whether or not I’d call white russians hard I’m not certain.

So as far as it goes we arrived in Manchester around half five – after a completely dry train journey – checked into our hotel and then headed off out for a bit of dinner and a couple of cheeky cocktails. Queue the Revolution!

I’m quite a fan of Revolutions – the bars, not the uprisings – they’re generally pretty cool during the day and, if you time it right, not too bad at night either.

So we mosey on in and after a brief tussle with the menu and the outrageous offers we settled on a bargaintastic two for one burger deal (or mushroom-in-a-bap for Restless Cheese), along with some top notch two for one cocktails. Nice! Revolution had clearly lined itself up for a later visit.

It was at this, post Pearl Jam, visit that the coolest thing in the world happened.

Once we arrived back in Revolution the lure of shots was irresistible, the most amazing of which is or was the porridge shot. The porridge shot is a heady mix of vodka sugar and oats, and its taste is beyond amazing. Although some people, who shall remain nameless and who are clearly big mincers, think it’s foul.

Anyway this ambrosia no longer features on Revolution’s shot menu, undeterred by this I asked the lovely Duncan (best barman in the world by the way) if he had access to a secret stash of said alcohol. After a brief furtle in the cellar he returned with a bottle containing – what can only be described as – oaty dregs.

I of course jumped at the chance to consume this most delicious drink and immediately ordered two.

After retiring to a table Restless Cheese and I drank our white russians, interspersing their consumption with a shot or two from our ‘stick’. It was on about shot three that the magic happened.

Duncan approached our table and produced an entire bottle of porridge vodka from behind his back! How much was he asking for this delicious treat? Just £10. Ten stirlings for the most delicious drink in the world?

Did I want it? Yes I did!

Did I get it? Yes I did!

What I do have to say though is that I owe a great deal of thanks to Restless Cheese, for it was on his dollar that this bottle was purchased. Thank you, you are a great friend and I can’t wait to open it to celebrate the birth of your son and heir! I don’t care if that was a drunken promise either, you’re sticking to it!

It was with interest that I noticed today that Pizza Hut has become Pasta Hut. Weird, I thought. Best tweet it.

And tweet it I did.

Turns out everyone in the world seemed to know that Pizza Hut has rebranded to Pasta Hut as part of some promotional thing they’ve got going on. At least that’s what all my Twitter chums told me.

But wait! What’s this? A quick google seems to indicate that this may be a permanent rebranding exercise! At least this article from The Times would have me believe that to be the case.

It does beg the question though, why? What do they hope to achieve by retaining the the same style logo and the exact same restaurants by just changing the name. Even the font in the logo is the same.

Surely if, as The Times article suggest, they are trying to appeal to the middle classes they should have started anew, ditched the hut roof logo altogether and gone for something a little classier.

It just doesn’t work, they’re clearly trying to maintain a very dangerous course out there in the middle ground.

They want the unwashed, pizza chomping masses to still recognise that they’re, more or less, the same Meat Feast flogging chain they were before but at the same time let the yummy mummies, with their sad eyed children, know that, ‘Hey! We’re healthy now, look we do crayfish arrabiata!’.

I seem to recall that Bella Pasta became Bella Italia a few years back, didn’t seem to do them much good. Their food was still shit and the service still abominable. I once got served a 10″ pepperoni pizza with just eight pieces of pepperoni on it. The manager couldn’t offer me anymore as head office had decreed that eight pieces per pizza was the limit. Madness.

It looks like Pizza Hut are about to fall into the trap of believing that a lick of paint and a new menu will sort out all their problems. It won’t.

It’s not their logo I dislike, it’s not their name or the decor inside. It’s not even the menu, I happen to like the occasional Meat Feast and go there now and again to sample its greasy delights.

No, it’s none of that. It’s the staff I can’t stand. Any shit hole can be made bearable with the right staff. Ditch the students and the Saturday working school kids and get in proper staff for proper wages.

Mark my words the first high street, down market eatery that serves half way decent food and employs adults on good money won’t be able to keep people away.

That I promise.

Ladies and gentlemen I present the photos from Andy’s stag do.

It was very good of Andy to let it go ahead.

This man is getting married.

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So, much against his will, he had a stag do.

The pictures will appear here soon.

Well it finally happened and here are the pictures to prove it. I really do need to say thank you to everyone that came along, you all contributed to my having a fantastic day. Thank you all very much.

I learnt many wonderful things over the course of the night. For example Sambuca comes in regular, black and flavoured varieties, some drinks can be referred to as pure filth and there are more germs on a slightly dirty glass than there are in a bin!.

For those that couldn’t make it you can PayPal me the money you owe me, just click the button below. That includes you Purdy. By the way, this isn’t a joke, you all owe me £25. So pay up.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking…

You go girl!

Yay! It was Ian’s birthday on Saturday (well Monday, but no one goes on the lash on a Monday) and we duly trotted off to Nottingham to celebrate in style.

After a dodgy start involving nail appointments and me getting stroppy it all went reasonably smoothly.

After hitting Ask for a pizza we trotted around town, ending up the Alley Cafe Bar, a fine little bar although their website is somewhat over engineered. Anyway back to the night out.

Everybody enjoyed themselves, I had many an interesting conversation with Des and what’s most important Ian seemed to enjoy it. It did get a bit, well, fruity towards the end of the evening but that’s what booze does!

Without further ado, here are the photos of the event. By the way I could do with some help naming names, I was drunk, it was dark and I didn’t have a pen…

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Oh and if you really want the good shit, wait until tomorrow. That’s when Ian’s dancing gets a public outing!

Ok, looks like I’ve been co-opted. The stag do is now open to all my friends, ladies included. This means Kate can come, although one hopes after her last trip to Birmingham she will be better prepared for the rigours of The Lash.

Additionally the plan has once more also been revised. Slighty.

It’s Birmingham now. It’s still the 25th of August and the itinerary should hopefully go a little something like this:

• Arrive Birmingham
• Check in to a hotel (£66!)
• Go out for drinks and food
• Back to hotel, get changed into evening clothes
• Onto streets once more and to Jongleurs
• Jon gets duct taped to a lampost. In his pants

Anybody like the sound of that plan?

The stag do will be taking place in either London or Manchester. Plenty of opportunity for nefarious doings either way.

While the final venue might not be known, what is known is that it will be taking place on August the 25th and is that it’s open to any bloke that knows me. Including you Smith, so get your finger out!

Sorry ladies, but unfortunately, you’re going to have to sit this one out.

So if you’re interested let me know, I’ll be booking hotels once I have an idea of numbers, so far I have seven. Any advances on seven?

It’s even tastier when it’s the strawberry flavour!

We all tried it on Saturday night and decided it was very, very tasty what’s more according to Ian it’s the beverage of choice when one is up to their nuts in rain and mud at Glastonbury.

Quite what Glastonbury is I’m not sure, I’m lead to believe it’s a ‘happening’ that all the youngsters go to in the summer to catch popular beat combos, plying their filthy demonic trade, corrupting the youth and generally being a bit outrageous.

Anyway, we like the cider as you’ll see…

Went to bingo tonight with Suzanne, Andrea and Stuart. As far as I can tell bingo players are all a combination of the following:

1. Dole scum.
2. Female and overweight.
3. Male and malnourished.
4. Toothless.
5. Single parents.
6. Mentally sub-normal.
7. Chain smokers.
8. Ugly.

Well, that might be a little bit unfair, but bloody hell it’s a fucking nightmare. The whole experience costs you about six thousand pounds and once you get in there you can’t see from one side of the gaudily lit shit-hole to the other for cigarette smoke.

You go in, buy your bingo sheets from the world’s least customer focussed person, who when asked how to play tells you that you just mark off the numbers. Wow. Really? Fucking hell is that it? Bad experience right off the bat there. Great.
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Pizza, alcohol and a stay in a top notch hotel, what could be better? Nowt, that’s what.

Also seeing Andy so shit faced he could hardly stand was slightly chortlesome, I won’t deny it.

Now, don’t worry I’m not going silly. I know it’s been ages since Halloween but this is the first test of my new image handling for this, the amazing and new crackerwax v2.0.

Let me know what you think!

Went to Birmingham with Tor, Nicki and Kate on a bit of a bender. It was blinding.

We met a Texan called Levi who was really cool, a yam-yam who was out with his mates celebrating the birth of his kid (same guy then proceeded to try to get Tor’s phone number), Kate lost her cash card in the receipt slot of a cash machine and we all ended up getting proper ripped off in curry house. Beautiful.

I could do it all again.