Sparkles

Remember I told you about the glorious prize Mr Withay and I were awarded?  For our sterling efforts to introduce vegetable-based art to a wider audience? 

Yeah you do.

Anyway, here it is.  I ought to have provided a small red velvet cushion for it to rest on, and a series of artful, moody, backlit pictures by a professional photographer.  You will have to make do with the blurry amateur shots I have provided you with.  Hey, at least I didn't use my phone to take them. 

You're welcome.

Ooh, glitter!  All snowy and seasonal and beautiful!  But wait...what's that little object in the middle?  Wait for the swirling loveliness to subside.....

It's Belgium's most famous cultural artefact, of course, as befits a prize from Belgian Waffle.  Someone peeing.  In a glitter snowstorm.  Must be like being at a trippy 1960s music festival, in there. 

And there it is again, without the peeing.   Lovely.

Other news:  Went to see the family yesterday down at my lovely Mum's house.  We drove all the way through End of the World rain, which then kindly held off for much of the day, waiting only for us to begin our homeward trip. 

The floods!  The water running down the roads!  The spray on the motorway! 

It was all a bit scary, and once again I was glad I have a four by four with big chunky tyres.  Sod the enviroment.  When we drove through Salisbury at about 6pm, the water was gushing up through the roadside drains like fountains.  One particularly hardworking drain had a vertical surge of about 2 feet going on.  It would have been pretty if it hadn't been a sign of ground waterlogging, drain fullness and imminent flooding. 

We made it home safe and sound, although it took longer than usual, and there were several "spla-dooosh" moments.

Whilst down at Mum's, we went to the Christmas tree festival in her church.  They also had a temporary ice rink in there as part of the event.  The younger nieces and nephews flung themselves onto it with abandon.  It was great to see how they started off nervous, and gradually got more and more confident. 

Youngest Nephew was running at top speed round it on his skates after a few minutes.   Most entertaining. 

I liked the fact that the ice rink was sponsored.

And the church itself looked lovely.  Each tree was sponsored by a group or organisation, each one was decorated differently, and the individual and overall effect was impressive. 

These were taken on my phone, so apologies for the poor quality.  

Today I am mostly listening to music and keeping warm, as the weather is still shite.  Mr WithaY has ventured out in his Landrover, so hopefully will survive the floods, holes in the road and unexpected badger setts.  I once expressed concern at the size of the holes he was bumping through as we traversed a section of not-quite road.

"Please try to avoid the really big holes" I whined, fingers gripping the dashboard as my head richoched off the roof.

"I am!"

"No you aren't!  That one was HUGE!  It made me leave the seat entirely."

"No it wasn't....the really big ones are the ones that the whole truck fits in."

Apparently, in the past, people have been known to drive into what looks like a reasonable-sized crater, then the vehicle drops right into it and is effectively wedged into place and has to be dug and/or towed out.  Mr WithaY keeps an entrenching tool in the back of his Landrover for this very purpose.

The Final Frontier

I fear that Mr WithaY is in the grip of a strange and terrible addiction. Not drink. Not drugs. Not even sea fishing.

No, this is an addiction more terrible even than those.

He is carving vegetables like a man possessed. Look:



He's made a Spaceship. Out of a squash, mostly. It has chili legs, with little carrot footcups*, wings made of cardboard (so possibly an entry in the Office Stationery category of the Village Fete?) and engines made of champagne corks.

My personal favourite is the teeny alien pilot, made of a chili and some cloves.



It's mighty impressive, especially when viewed from the "Please spare our lives, o mighty alien overlords" position:



I was preparing supper last night, and listening out for my gorgeous guitar teacher, and Mr WithaY was pottering about near the vegetable rack. I went to have my guitar lesson, and an hour later, bam! There it was, on the side, looking tremendous.




*thanks to Futurama for teaching me the appropriate name for those.

Too much monkey business

Mr WithaY has been stung, yes stung, by the debate over the use if marker pen and cocktail sticks, and also by the suggestion that he has a fish fetish.

I hope this silences the doubters:





It has a maraschino cherry tongue! It's a great big green louche cocktail gorilla.

For those of you who fret about such things, we ate the marrow body and the courgette arms afterwards, but not the face. That was too disturbing.

Other news: Some pictures from the lovely, lovely party last weekend. As most of them are of the family, it seems rather inappropriate to put them on here, but I do like this one of Mr WithaY flaked out under the mighty erection, following his return from the woods on Sunday morning. What you can't see is the many small children and perky Jack Russell who were gleefully playing around (and sometimes over) him as he dozed peacefully in the shade.

The mighty erection in the garden:



It was a truly beautiful day, and the purple buddleia bush in the corner was alive with butterflies. There were Red Admirals, Commas, Peacocks, Fritilleries, white ones and yellow ones. Plus some brown ones I think may have been moths.

Buddleia butterflies:







This afternoon we're off to spend the weekend with some mates, which will be lovely. It's nice to feel that things are starting to get back to normal after the SSFH* of recent months.

Other, other news: Thing I have seen on my travels this week:

A huge articulated lorry turning a corner into Victoria street slightly too quickly, causing the large, expensive-looking motorbike strapped to the back to slide violently, detaching the straps on one side, then smash into the middle of the road. It hung there by one set of straps as the lorry driver leapt out of his cab swearing and panicking, his little dog watching quizzically from the open truck door as all the traffic in South London began to grind to a halt.

The guard on the train last night walking down the aisle, stopping as he got to where I sat, looking thoughtful, shaking his leg as if he had pins and needles, then picking up his keys from the floor and saying "Aha! I thought I had a hole in that pocket."

More roe deer than you can shake a stick at, leaping all over the fields in the mornings, making everyone on the train go "Ooooo!" at them.







*Shit storm from Hades

Village Fete 2009

Here it is. The post about the long-awaited, eagerly-anticipated WithaY entries for this year's Village Fete contest.

First, mine. It's called "March of the Penguins" and I think that if the BBC sent a specialist film crew to my kitchen, they'd save a lot of money on air fares for their next high-end nature documentary series.

In fact, I wish I could use Photoshop, because then I could add David Attenborough in one corner, looking at this touching scene, and you could all imagine him telling us about their feeding habits.

But I can't, so bollocks to that idea.







Awwww, so cute!

Mr WithaY, as one might expect given his track record, and fierce wish to defend his title from last year, came up with this:







It's a startlingly accurate representation of a lion fish, mostly made of sweet potato.

Check out the whole gamut of entries over at Belgian Waffle, but be warned. There are some seriously odd people out there.

Apart from us, I mean. We're just lovely and slightly off-beat. Not odd.

No no no.

Water on glass

Today it has been All About Rain. I see that the Met Office are revising their initial summer weather forecast from "Phew, what a scorcher" to "Fuck me, it's wet."

I was at home all day, and after a late night last night I slept ridiculously late this morning. I thought I'd have got home by 10.30 last night, but I hadn't taken into account the fact that the later trains do Different Stuff to the usual commuter trains I catch.

For example, the 8.20 from Waterloo stops at Salisbury, but instead of the FRONT three coaches carrying on down to Exeter, the BACK three do.

However, the announcements that they make as the train is sitting in Waterloo are a complete lie. They tell you that the front three coaches will continue after Salisbury, which is what the earlier trains do.

So, if you are a lady with many, many heavy bags, and a reserved seat in the BACK three coaches, and you move to the front after hearing that announcement, you would be mightily pissed off if after a couple of stops they then said that the BACK three coaches were going to continue after Salisbury.

She had to pick up all her many, many bags and drag them all the way back through the train, grumbling profusely. Can't say I blamed her.

Anyhoo, the point of this is that it takes much longer for them to sort the train out in Salisbury, so you sit there for bloody ages* till they finally decide that all is well and they can continue on their merry way.

In the end I was home by 11, but Mr WithaY was still up, watching TV and keen to hear how my exciting cosmopolitan evening in London had been. He is planning Great Things for the Virtual Village Fete, so I suspect this weekend we might have a flurry of creativity in the WithaY household.




*About 15 minutes

Horror story (PG)

We've been busy here today. Mr WithaY came home a day early from his dive trip to Plymouth so was at a bit of a loose end. And what does one do on a Sunday afternoon, when one is at a loose end?

This.



In response to Jaywalker's impassioned plea, he got busy.

I married a genius. A warped, disturbing genius, but a genius nonetheless.

And, because a stolen good idea is far better than having to go to all the bother of coming up with your own, a little photostory for you:

Tralalalalaaaaaaaaaa...happy little fishies out for a pleasant swim in tropical waters, enjoying the sunshine.



And hey, here are the guys! Guys! Hi! You're all out for a swim too? Excellent! Let's all mosey along together. Tralalalalalaaaaaaaaaaaa etcetera.



Tum te tum te tum....happy as can be, not a care in the wor.....uh-oh. Anyone else feel something really big swim by?



No? Must have been my imagination. Heh. Wow, what a great swim....what?? No! Fuck! Aieeeeee! Swim for it lads! Swim for your lives! Save yourselves!



Damn it! We never leave a man behind! Oh dear lord, look at it's TEETH! It's devouring Dave! Too late for me, but you can get away! Swim, lad, SWIIIIIIIM!!!



Bwahahahahaaaaaaaaa. My evil broccoli lure worked like a charm. Nom nom nom nom.




Thank you.

Village Fete Competition

I have created an entry for the fantastic on-line Village Fete , taking place on your computer over the summer.

I call it "Barbecue Carnage".

It belongs in the Vegetable Carving Category.







Thank you.