Brilliant - robot fighting

Written by exmonkey on March 30th, 2007 with no comments.
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Kent vs Rest of the World

The drip drip of constant advertising that assailed me every time I opened a local paper or drove past an advertising hoarding, promised that this would set a new glittering standard in the history of food events. The “Kent vs The Rest of The World” food show, at the Hop Farm Paddock Wood, was going to raise the bar. Look out rest-of-the-world, here comes Kent.

The concept behind this annual event, according to the papershop posters, was to show off the extraordinary array of fresh produce, county specialities and local culinary talent Kent has to offer. I know it is to become an annual event, because the ads refer to it as the “1st Annual Kent vs Rest of the World show”.

So who is representing the rest of the world? What gastronomic ambassadors will be flying the brightly coloured flags of Ghana, Thailand and Peru? Well, none actually. The global food village was to be represented by two teams of French students. Still, I was sure that even a battle royal between competing chef schools, separated by 22 miles of dirty water would prove to be a real spectacle.

Wrong.

It was like ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’, but without the dubious charms of celebrity chefs and with a host who was struggling to find anything to say about the four small gangs of teenagers who were busy trying to remember how long to a cook pot noodle for. Plus, in ‘Ready, Steady, Cook’, the audience actually gives a damn.

The hapless cooks laboured away on a stage that rendered their efforts invisible to the audience, whilst a grizzled looking vagrant, wearing a white chefs’ coat and Madonna style cheek-microphone, prattled on about how exciting the whole thing was. Meanwhile the few people watching (who presumably wandered into the marquee to shelter from the cold wind) chatted amongst themselves and drank horrible tea from polystyrene cups.

The rest of the space was filled with a grim array of food stalls - a cross between a farmers market and a boot fair, which included a chocolate fountain and an Italian cake stand. I felt tears of pride welling up in my eyes. Or maybe that was a waft of traditional Kent ‘Curry in a Pitta Pocket’, available from a stall by the exit.

And that was it. Really.

Kent, the garden of England, was represented by a bunch of second rate food stalls, some teenage trainee cooks, two breweries (one was pretty good actually - The Nelson Brewing Company) and a bar that did not feature a single real ale, let alone one produced with Kent hops.

I never did see who won the teenage ‘cook off’- but I can tell you that the produce of Kent was the loser.

Written by exmonkey on March 26th, 2007 with no comments.
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the leviathan awakes

The new addition to my family, our 35 year old tortoise, woke up early.

After a week of listlessness we paid a visit to the vet, who said that he needed a heat/basking lamp. Hence my carpentry and electrical wiring skills were again tested.

Chippendale it ain’t.

technorati tags:tortoise

Written by exmonkey on March 19th, 2007 with no comments.
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My first meeting of the mid-kent bee-keepers association.

A thirty minute drive through dark country lanes, some scary oncoming traffic moments and finally, heart racing and white of knuckle, I arrive at The Bull public house for a winter meeting of the Mid Kent Bee-keeping association.

I was a bit late, so I walked in midway through a talk being given by Brian (a retired bee-keeper/lecturer) about how to breed queens.

After a trip to the bar (served by a cachexic youth, pink tracksuit chavette in attendance on a bar stool) I settled down to what I hoped was the tail end of a short lecture on bee-keeping techniques.

Two hours later, and I felt like a Vietnam Vet who had seen too much. Looking around the room I realised I was not the only one.

What did I learn? I now know that you can ‘De-queen’ a hive (or colony) and then put in a few young larva or eggs from another colony and the bees will bring them up as queens.
I found out that you need to remove these immature queens before they hatch or else the first one out will kill the rest.
I also found out that ‘de-queen’ is a euphemism for ‘kill’.

In fact it turns out that bee keeping is all about death. Death and manipulation. Maybe this is where we get out deep rooted cultural fear of ‘the men in white coats’.

Once the talk was over, I watched the various officials of the association (treasurer, secretaries etc) vie with one another to prove that they all knew more (or had more to offer) than Brian. This strange posturing was all done in a strangely passive-aggressive way: “Now, I am sure that Brian would probably know better but…”

Brian, I am happy to report, took all these challenges to his superiority with grace. Then he destroyed the pretenders to his throne with a couple of well chosen bee-related put downs.

I was left with the rather trite impression that the queen bee had fought a subtle battle, and won.

The most vociferous of his opponents left soon after with half a dozen members of the association to go and hang of the branches of a near by tree, before looking for a chimney to make a permanent home in.

Or not. Actually they called the raffle and all went home. You can, after all, take bee analogies to far.

Written by exmonkey on March 16th, 2007 with 6 comments.
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Milo helps out

Shameless paternal pride.

Written by exmonkey on March 14th, 2007 with no comments.
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Publish and be damned

I got something published (albeit in a free paper).

Below is what The London Paper (one of the ones they hand out at the station) printed on Wednesday in ‘The Columnist’ section.

Today is the twenty first day of an experiment to answer the question ‘Can I live without television’

Television has been my constant companion since I was a teenager. I have happy (well, not unhappy) memories of spending an entire school summer holiday watching back to back episodes of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. My dad recorded the series for me on our, top loading, steam powered VHS recorder. Each day I could watch the entire series twice. From this you can gather two things - 1- I am, to this day, word perfect with the first two episodes and 2- I had no friends.

TV has seen me through the boredom of my student days, the peaks of my first proper relationship and, inevitably, the troughs of my first proper breakup.
I am now 36 years old, have been married for eight years and have recently started having a nagging feeling that I may be watching too much telly. It’s safe to say that barely a day would go by (or even an hour of my non work life) without tuning in and switching off.

So my experiment is to see if my life would be better without the delights offered by Freeview. Would I be able to survive without UKTV History and the strange looking ‘almost made it’ presenters on News 24?

At first I struggled to find activities to replace the tube. Local news papers figured mightily in my evening routine - its amazing what they find to fill an edition of the Kent Messenger.
Just recently however, I have found that my wife and I have been having conversations. I am sorting out little jobs I would normally try and cram in at the weekend.

Without my daily dose of telly I have started feeling a strange disconnect. This feeling of being slightly outside of the bottom end of popular culture goes hand in hand with my sense of superiority over those who must keep their daily appointments with Eastenders, Loose Women and … actually I am now struggling to remember another popular program… Bargain Hunter?

Last night, for the first time, alone in the house and with the still, cold bulk of our unused box balefully staring at me from the corner of the room, I realised that it needed me more than I needed it. That I am, if not free, on the path to freedom.

Then I picked up the Maidstone Advertiser and read all about a brave pensioner and her battle with Tesco followed by a heartwarming story concerning a cat and two fish it didn’t eat.
The cat was called Mr Christmas.

Strange to say that some small part of my happiness might be bound to such things, but the SMS vote attached to each days’ column showed 100% of the people who felt it necessary to text their opinion to the paper, liked it!

Written by exmonkey on March 9th, 2007 with 5 comments.
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