Extra long honkers

I've been looking at some of the search terms people have used to get to my blog.  Many of them are as you might expect - "home made cake," "lives in the woods,"  "extraordinarily talented unpublished authors of the twenty-first century" - but some are just utterly pure genius bonkers.

For example:

Elven tea.  As far as I know I have never offered recipes for any elven food or beverages, certainly not tea.  Perhaps I ought to start a cookery suggestions section for all the non-human races.  Elven tea.  Gnome quiche.  Orc battenburg.  Troll eclairs.  Fairy cakes.  Heh.  I do remember ranting about the bastard elves in Iceland who threaten to break your legs if you upset them.  Maybe that's what they were looking for.

god for harry.  Marvellous. I am attracting semi-literate people who are keen on Shakespeare.  Or Kenneth Branagh.  Or who are frantically researching Henry V for their homework, up against a deadline.  Either way, hello, non-capitalising culture fans.  Bet this wasn't what you were looking for, eh?

have a proper cold.  I like that this sounds like an order.  For goodness sake, stop sniffling and whining and just have a proper cold, can't you?  Sheesh.  No, blood pouring from your ears doesn't count.  Nor does the broken bone poking through your shin.  Come back when you have a temperature, blocked sinuses and a red shiny nose, not before.  Timewaster.

Yellow circles malta bird intrigues me.  I can't imagine what that person is looking for.  If it was you, please drop a comment and tell me.  I bet you were mighty pissed off when all you found were photos of my terrible tie-dyed sheets and some holiday snaps of Malta.  Fool.

Dalek blown up toilet seat is another mystery.  Dalek, yes.  Toilet seat, yes.  Both of those subjects have made at least one appearance on here.  Both together?  Unlikely.  Mental.

Extra long honkers.  This one made me laugh out loud, and I Googled it myself.  All I found out was that it refers to one of the magazines read by Scruffy the Janitor in Futurama, along with "Zero G Juggs."  Don't say you never learn anything here.  It could also possibly be referring to the many and varied duck/goose decoy honkers which I have commented on in the past.  However,  I prefer to imagine disappointed cartoon porn magazine seekers finding this blog, and becoming interested in cake and car problems despite themselves.




Look, the hilarious picture of honkers that I took waaaaaay back when we were in Maine last summer,  remember? Yeah you do.

In other news:  Business plans are gathering pace, to the extent that I am going to be in touch with an accountant next week.  More news once stuff is signed.  But it's all very exciting.

Holiday snaps part 2 - Maine and New Hampshire

Yes, more pictures.  But this time of Maine! And New Hampshire! So much travel, so little of America covered.

We left Boston on a cloudy Sunday morning, after a huge breakfast. We had been advised to use a small cafe down the street from the hotel, and their Eggs Benedict was superb.  

The trip to the airport to pick up the hire car was entertaining.  The courtesy bus, shared by three hotels in the area, was driven by a cheerful Jamaican man who was playing a Bob Marley cd.  He drove along, occasionally bouncing the minibus off small obstacles like crash barriers and kerbs as he tried to drive, sing, chat to his passengers and answer his mobile phone all at the same time.  He was most impressed that Mr WithaY and I had heard of Bob Marley.  So much so that I can only assume that most of his guests come from remote islands in the South Pacific. 

Delivered from the Jamaican rally drive champion 2010 we went to talk to the nice Alamo lady at Boston Airport.  She looked us up on the computer, checked that we had ordered a car, then looked us up and down quizzically.

"How far are you driving?"  she asked us.

"Oh, you know, up to Maine and back, then down to Cape Cod...around and about."

She shook her head sadly, and said "This car you ordered is no good...it's too small for you."  I wondered if perhaps we'd inadvertently booked a clown car.

"You need something bigger."  She looked at us again.  "Much, much bigger.  Tell you what, if you are willing to pay to upgrade one level, I'll upgrade you three."  We nodded.  She nodded.  It was a done deal.  Her colleague wandered over as we finalised the paperwork and she told him to take us outside and "pick them something nice" which I thought was very kind. 

The car lot was packed with all kinds of huge cars, but the one that we both spotted immediately was a Jeep.  So, we set off to New Hampshire in a Jeep Patriot, which was comfortable, economical, had fab aircon and a decent stereo.  Kudos to the Alamo lady.

I thought it was quite a big car, till we came out of LL Bean later in the trip and saw what had parked either side of it. 

Anyhoo, the drive up to New Hampshire was fun, once Mr WithaY remembered how to drive an automatic, and that they drive on the right, the RIGHT, darling, other side, over there. 

The placenames in New England are eerily familiar.  Amesbury!  Salisbury!  But in America!  How thrilling. 

We drove up to see our mates in New Hampshire, where over the next few days we went out for lobster and steamers, saw a chipmunk, went for a long hot walk along the Marginal Way, visited many, many shops, ate fab food with our friends, and went to a graduation party with hogroast.  The man roasting the hog was using a giant steel machine, all rotating spits and charcoal which he'd designed and made himself.  It was called the "Oinkmaster 8000" and he was justifiably proud of it.  The roast hog was delicious. 

Look, a chipmunk.

One day we went up into the White Mountains, and had a trip on the North Conway Scenic Railroad, on a huge train with a cowpusher on the front.  Mr WithaY and I had seats in the Pullman coach, slobbing out in wicker chairs as we chugged sedately through the countryside.  It's very green, with a lot of mountains, as you'd expect, including Mount Washington, famous for having the worst recorded weather in the USA.

In the Ladies at the North Conway Railroad Station is this sign:

I was rather hoping they'd have a T-shirt for sale in there that said "My girlfriend went to North Conway Scenic Railroad and all she bought me was a box of personal hygiene products" but I couldn't find one.

There's a museum in Conway all about the observatory up there, where they have a mock-up of the shack that you can stand in while the windspeed goes up and up and up.

The shack shakes, the floor moves, the snow flying past the windows blurs into white lines and the noise is extraordinary.

200 miles an hour, eh?  Better get the washing in, I suppose.  The museum had loads of interactive exhibits you could poke about.  My favourite was the Vortex of Doom.

You could change the movement of the wind with your hand, man.  With your hand.  It was, like, awesome.  I dicked about with it for ages.

The highlight of the trip into Maine was the visit to LL Bean, long planned and much anticpated.  It's got everything, including a giant boot outside.

I liked these.  A selection of things that make duck noises, and not just any old honker, but a MAGNUM honker for those situations when you need that extra magnitude of honkage. 

They also had the DUCK COMMANDER for people who need to take command of ducks from time to time.

And this, which I just giggled at like an idiot while Mr WithaY stood a little distance away tutting and telling me to stop being childish.

Moving on.

When you go out for a lobster dinner, they mean what they say.  You get lobster, butter, sweetcorn and that's pretty much it.  Maybe some steamers as well, but it is usually all about the Lobster. 

I decided not to get this one, as it would have cost about $200, and instead went for something a bit smaller.

They have some stunning sunsets over there.  This one was going on as I champed and nommed my way through the lobster.  I expect it made an uplifting background to a frankly unedifying and probably repellant sight, as shell fragments and butter flew in all directions.

On that note, I will end, as I have a bazillion photos and I daresay you're a bit tired of them for now. 

Other news:  My ankle is recovering slowly, although I still can't drive which is tiresome.  We've got the loft insulation blokes coming tomorrow so I hope that we will be able to put all our stuff back in the loft soon.  I think a car boot sale might be in the offing, as there's stuff in the loft we've not used since we moved into this house, over 8 years ago. 

Oh, and we have started harvesting carrots from the garden, and very nice they are too. 

Holiday snaps part 1 - Boston

Hello!  Back in the USSR home once more, in heaving rain and tempestuous winds.  Oh, and yesterday there was some End of the World stylee thunder and lightning.  So hurrah for British weather.  Bit of a culture shock, leaving the clear (mostly) blue skies and solar-flare temperatures of New England, but at least it means I can stand outside barefoot without feeling as though the soles of my feet are frying.  Well, I could if I could stand up for any length of time.  Which I can't.

I mentioned the sprained ankle, yes?  Look, here it is in swollen, revolting glory, just after we got back from Nantucket and I had peeled off the acid-covered, burning, sticky bandage from HELL.

Makes your stomach turn, doesn't it?  It does mine, but then I know what it feels like.

I just looked up "Sprained ankle recovery time" on the Internet and apparently I have another 3-5 weeks of this to go, then anything up to 3 months of "continued instability".  I assume they mean the ankle.  The swelling is going down, and the truly stomach-turning purple bruises that covered the side of my foot and lower leg are going green, so are less conspicuous.  Gah.

Other than that, though, things at the WithaY household are going well.  Mr WithaY has popped out to collect the fish to put back in the aquarium.  Hopefully they will all still be alive after a month at the Fish Hotel.  I also hope they've not been running up huge room service bills, having lavish parties and watching porn movies.  You never know with fish. 

We are dog-sitting today for some friends, our little hairy guest is asleep in the hall downstairs, having worn himself out chasing his hide chew all over the house, growling at invisible enemies in the garden and being told off for trying to get on my lap on the sofa.  We love him really.

Anyhoo.  Photos.  I took over 1000 pictures in America. Who'd have thought there was that much to look at, eh?  Some of them, I admit, were taken purely for the fun of posting them on here.  See if you can guess which ones they were, readers. 

I made my very own LOLpic, too.  I'm so hip and happening.

I expect all the American readers will be thinking "Bah, that's so old," but it made me laugh.

Holiday pics from here on in, so if that sort of thing bores the arse off you, maybe go and get a cup of tea or something and I'll see you later.

Boston was the first stop, so here are some touristy shots of the city.  I like it very much, especially now that the Big Dig is finished and that hideous flyover that cut the place in half has gone.

This is the iconic shot of the city from the harbour.  We did a boat trip.

This is the captain* of the boat we were in.  He is chilling out, eating an ice cream and steering with his feet.  We didn't crash into anything. 

Look, here we are on the boat.

This is the view from the top of the Prudential Center, the Skywalk Observatory.  It's jolly high up.  Our hotel was on the left hand side of that long straight road, easy walking distance from the Center.

We had our first proper meal in America in the food court of the mall at the Prudential Center, and very nice it was too.  I recorded it for posterity.  Lobster rolls, clam chowder and oyster crackers.  Nom nom nom.  Mr Withay managed to feature clam chowder in almost every meal he ate in Boston, apart from at breakfast. 

This is the Christian Science Plaza, which has some funky fountains and this reflecting pool.

I like how this man looks as though he is lying in the water.

 

This sign at the reflecting pool caught my eye.  It says "no swimming or wading" but it is quite hard to read unless you get into the water to see it.  I had to use my zoom lens. 

Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. I think there is a law that every single person in Boston, man, woman and child MUST own and wear at least one item of Red Sox clothing whenever they go out in public.

 

The New England Aquarium is well worth a visit.  The outdoor seal tank is great, there was always a huge gaggle of families watching the seals swimming about.  I was very taken by the penguins, particularly this one who looks like an overweight heavy metal fan giving it some in the front row at Donington. 

There were many fish, jellyfish, seahorses and sharks.  We were in there for ages, not least because it was air-conditioned, and it was a boiling 30-odd degrees outside. 

 

I spotted this sign in their gift shop.  Sound advice for us all, I think.

 

We found a place to eat in Quincy Market, where I packed down the largest plate of fried scallops in the Western Hemisphere.  Mr WithaY had clam chowder with his.

 

We tried to book seats on the Codzilla speedboat trip, but it was fully booked, so we watched from the shore as the over-excited passengers boogied to AC/DC while the large, ultra-cool CodMeister watched them with a benevolent eye.

 

Next time, Codzilla.  Next time.

This is the front of the v big, v posh looking Colonnade Hotel, where they provide teeny eco-cars for the guests.  Our hotel had an ice machine. That was fine by us. 

Next time:  Maine - the saga continues.

*I edited his face as I don't want him to get fired or anything.  I suspect he was doing it for effect.

Moose cookies

The visas have just arrived!  Hurrah! 

We have our passports back, with rather handsome US visas laminated into them.  It says the visa lasts for ten years, so I assume when I renew my passport next year I can just take the old one with me to show Customs, or Immigration, or Homeland Security, or Michael Moore, or the CIA or whoever that I have jumped through all the requisite Embassy hoops.

Flaming hoops.  With broken glass around the edges.  And a big tank full of flesh-stripping leeches underneath.  Yeah, that's how it felt. 

I'm going to buy myself a new suitcase this weekend.  We'd put all the holiday plans on hold after we discovered we needed visas*, so I feel like I can start looking forward to going now. 

We need to book a hire car to get us around New England.  We fly into Boston, home of the most mental traffic system ever, and stay in a hotel there for a few nights, then we're off to New Hampshire, Maine and Cape Cod to see various lovely mates.  There is also, hopefully, going to be a boat trip to Nantucket to see the whaling museum. 

We went to Nantucket before, but the museum was shut for the summer, which the woman who sold us the boat tickets "forgot" to mention, so we spent a wet, warm day mostly sitting in cafes, or peeking through the windows of expensive antiques shops.  This year, though, we are determined to see the harpoons. 

We're also going to go to the LL Bean store.  Last time we went there we bought a smoker.

And a moose-shaped cookie cutter.  I might make some moose cookies at the weekend. 

I'm all excited now.  We're going on holiday.




*Yeah, Shitstorm from Hades, you guessed it

That'll do nicely

Today was interesting.  Mr WithaY and I were up at the US Embassy for our visa interview, to see if we would be allowed to go on the holiday we booked before realising we now* need a visa to go anywhere even slightly exotic.

We've spent several hours over the last few weeks negotiating the obstacle course that you must complete to get as far as the Embassy.  I'm fairly sure it was designed by the same people who develop those logic/warfare computer games, where you have to solve complex riddles and hack scaly monsters with cleavers to progress and achieve points. 

There are confusing electronic forms that you have to fill in, after which you wait for a reply to let you continue to the next level of form-filling.  If you tick certain boxes they send you links to more forms to fill in. 

You send them scanned copies of relevant documentation so that they can decide if you are allowed to continue the process. 

You have long, long telephone conversations with them (at £1.20 a minute) during which they tell you to do more, different, form-filling.  During these conversations you have to go into painful detail about the reason why you now need a visa.  They are not unsympathetic, they probably hear stuff like that dozens of times a year, but it still smarts to have to justify yourself to a stranger as if you are a criminal. 

Degrading.  That's what it is.

One of the forms you fill in has to include a scanned passport photograph.  They decide online, as you are filling it in, if the photo is acceptable or not, and if it is you get to submit the whole thing.  If it isn't, I assume that they send a painful electric shock through your keyboard while a disembodied voice tells you to start again at Level 1, back with the smaller monsters and slightly easier riddles. 

Finally, FINALLY, they email you and tell you to phone them (still £1.20 a minute, remember) to arrange a date for your interview.  You do so, and the fact that it clashes with a long-planned training course that your husband has been booked to attend for the last three months is a mere bagatelle.  He arranges to arrive at the training event a day late, and you both book a day off work to trek up to London** for the interview. 

The US Embassy has VERY strict rules about what you are allowed to take into the building.  You can't take mobile phones, Blackberries, iPods, laptops, or keyfobs with electronic clickety things to open your car while you stand far away***.  We assumed that guns, knives and sharp sticks would also be frowned upon, so left all those at home. 

If you turn up with any of the banned items, you will NOT be allowed in and your interview will be CANCELLED.  You will LOSE your fee of $131 (about £80) and have to make a NEW appointment which you will have to pay for AGAIN. 

They use a lot of CAPITAL LETTERS to make this point in the emails they send you. 

What they don't do is send you a list of what you need to take.  That would be handy, if any of the Embassy staff are reading this.  A checklist of everything, all the various forms, passports, associated documentation and additional passport photos would be helpful.  Oh, and please ask the reception and security staff to use the same terminology when they talk about the forms, that would avoid a lot of confusion when they ask you if you have brought them with you.

Anyhoo.  We arrived at the Embassy building, a veritable fortress in the heart of London, and went through the first two perimeter checkpoints.  Unfortunately, when they put my handbag through the x-ray machine they saw my headphones, which I had forgotten were in there.  The list of BANNED items didn't mention headphones.  But they are banned, apparently.  What made it especially annoying was the fact that we had already travelled halfway across London to my office to drop off the car keys and my iPhone in my locker, to ensure we complied with the rules.  

I was within an ace of saying "Just throw the fucking things in the bin then," as I was exasperated and stressed to the eyeballs, but the security guard told me that there was a pharmacy down the road which offers storage for contraband (for a small fee).  I legged it down there, handed over my headphones, got a cloakroom ticket in return and made it back in time for the 11am appointment. 

That pharmacy must make a small fortune renting locker space. 

The lady on the main reception desk told us we only needed one appointment ticket as we had an appointment for both of us at the same time, so we took it, and skipped upstairs cheerfully. 

That didn't last long.

When you open the scarily heavy door to the Visa Room, there are about 400 chairs set out in rows on either side of the room, facing the screens in the middle.  It's like a very, very depressing cinema, or a squalid airport departure lounge from the 1960s.  It also made me think of something out of Brave New World, or possibly 1984.  There is a palpable atmosphere of despair and anxiety.  I felt myself ageing by the second.  

They were announcing ticket number 274 as we walked in.  We were number 440.    Fuck.

We sat and waited till they called our number, then went to the bullet-proof, axe-proof, dragon-breath-proof window.  The girl there checked our documents and said "Can I have your additional passport photos please?"

What?  Seriously? 

We hadn't brought additional passport photos, as the online application process had said our pictures were fine.  But no.  They weren't fine at all, so we had to pay another £4 each to have new pictures from their machine.  She then told us we needed another ticket, which Mr WithaY ran down to reception to fetch, and we were asked to go and sit down again and wait to be called to the next stage of the interview process. 

She gave us another form to fill in, in case we were getting bored.

The form she gave us warned that we should expect a wait of "some hours" for this next part of the process to pass.  Fuuuuuck.  We sat on the horrible hard chairs, along with dozens of other stressed, nervous, miserable people, and we waited.  And waited. And waited.

One bright spot was a chap who had just bought some food from the snack vending stall at the back of the room.  He had been there a fair while, the same as us, and had obviously decided to have some lunch.  He had literally only just started to unwrap his Cornetto****, and they called his number.  He walked out laughing to himself, his Cornetto in his hand. 

I hope he sat and ate it while they interviewed him.

So.  The long day wore on; we eventually got summoned to the Room of Delinquents and Scamps to explain to a very nice young American chap exactly why we needed a visa.  That was lovely, as you can imagine. 

He was very professional and polite, and very very thorough.  After we had explained all the horrible, depressing, nasty circumstances he said "I am not going to punish you for this, it doesn't seem fair, so I am authorising your visas."

I could have hugged him.  If the bullet-proof, axe-proof etc glass hadn't been there.

We had to queue up in yet another long line, and do a bit more paperwork before we were allowed to leave, but the end result is that we should be getting our envisa-ed passports back in the next few days, and will be able to go on holiday as planned in June.

Hoo-fucking-ray.

This week I am mostly going to be looking for a lawyer.  I think the police ought to be footing the bill for all this, at least the money we have had to spend, if not the additional time, anxiety and indignity of it all.  I'll let you know how I get on. 






*Thanks to the Shitstorm From Hades

**To be fair, they did also offer us Belfast.  Very helpful.

***I forget the technical term

****That's not a euphamism.  A Cornetto is a type of ice-cream in a wrapper, non British readers.

Incentives

I have bought myself a new bag.  It's very lovely. 

I ordered it yesterday lunchtime, it was delivered by the postman this morning.  That's what I call service.

It came from here.  Take a look, I can recommend them wholeheartedly. 

The new bag is a reward for me.  I have decided to take affirmative action about being a fat porky bastard, and have joined a slimming group.  Mr WithaY and I refer to it as "Fat Club."  And the first rule of Fat Club is that we don't talk about Fat Club.

Even so, I will just tell you about it now and then shut up about it for a while.

I intend to lose about 4 stone, which will take me back out of the "Morbidly Obese, Likely To Need A Fire Crew And Specialist Haulage Equipment To Get You Out Of The Bath Soon" category.  The bag is my reward for having been brave enough to sign up and go along.  It's a big deal for me, and I am feeling really positive about it. 

I want people I know to come up to me and say "Have you decreased in mass?" after a few more weeks.

I have made a list of other things* I plan to use as incentives.  Pedicures, manicures, getting my hair done, going to a nice spa, buying a pretty, proper girlie coat rather than the huge, comfy, warm, practical shooting coat I currently wear everywhere.  I will give myself a reward every time I lose half a stone (7lbs, American readers.)

By the time we go to America in June I intend to be noticably slimmer.  Mind you, the food over there was so superb when we went before that I will probably come waddling back even fatter than I am now.  I shall crash through that bridge when I come to it.

*None of them involve chocolate.

Holidays

Ah, Sundays.  Lazy days for staying in bed till gone 10, drinking tea and reading John Wyndham novels.  Well, that's how my morning went, anyway. 

It's been a very pleasant week, one way and another.  Wednesday was an especially grand day.  To celebrate my lovely Mum's birthday, we had a huge family get-together* where went out at lunchtime for a Chinese meal.    There were ten of us, almost the only customers in the restaurant, and certainly the noisiest.  The food was superb. 

Several of us ordered the special toffee banana for pudding, and the nice lady brought out a platter heaped with large sticky balls of toffee-covered goodness for us.  We watched as she dropped each one into a dish of cold water, making the sticky toffee harden instantly. 

There was a lot of oooh-ing and aaah-ing as the hardened toffee banana balls were piled onto plates, then delighted shrieks** as a second heaped platter appeared and was also given the iced water treatment.  My word they were tasty.  Despite the enormous meal we'd crammed down, we managed to get through pretty nearly all the toffee banana balls. What heroes we are.

Everyone kept saying "It's a bit different from last year," which it was, thankfully.

I was especially amused by my youngest nephew, aged 5, gleefully telling his 12-year-old cousin "Ha, you got pwned by an old Chinese lady!"


He pronounced it "owned" but I knew what he meant.


A slow stroll in the glorious afternoon sunshine back to the car, past an unexpected little grassy area covered in purple crocuses*** and then home for tea and medals.

Mum came back with me to stay for a few days, and we did a lot of not much at all, which was lovely.  The weather was nice, despite many parts of the country getting hammered with more snow.  Mr WithaY came home from work one afternoon and told us there had been blizzards.  We'd had clear skies and bright sun all day, about 5 miles away.  Very odd.  It's cold though.  I expect tomorrow it will snow, in time to make my trip to work even slower and more tiresome than usual.  Bah.

Other news:  The cleaners came on Friday, and did their thing, leaving the house tidier and smelling fainly of Mr Sheen.  One of them asked: "Where did you get that from?" pointing at the bulb of garlic hanging up in the kitchen. 

"Just from Morrison's I think," I said, bemused.  "Why?"

"Oooh, I've been looking for one of those!  It looks so smart with just one garlic there, not lots of them.  I wonder if there are any more in the shop?"

"Um.  When we bought it there were lots of garlic bulbs on it.  We've just used them all up except that one."

She was most disappointed. 

Also, we have booked our holiday.  We're off the US of A in June, and will be progressing through Boston, Cape Cod, New Hampshire and Maine for the best part of a month.  Hurrah.  We didn't really have a holiday last year, other than a few days over in the South of France to see mother-in-law WithaY, and as it was a few days after the SSFH**** broke over our heads, showering us with unmitigated shit for the next 6 months, we weren't really in a holiday mood. 

So, we've booked the flights, the airport parking and the hotel in Boston  for a few days when we arrive.  We need to sort out a hire car and possibly a hotel room for the night before we fly home, and the rest of it we will wing. 

I am so excited.  We will go to the New England Aquarium, which is excellent, we will eat clam chowder, and I want to do a Duck Tour. 

Anyone with suggestions for nice places to go in that area, please stick a comment in and let me know.  Unless you're a mad optician, of course.  Then you can fuck right off. 




*A large number of people, as opposed to a group of enormous giants.  Although, we are pretty huge as well, to be fair. 
**Mostly from me, I seem to recall.
***Croci?
****Shit storm from Hades

Smokin'

So, stuff I wrote about last night before Blogger decided to do some creative editing for me:

Watched The Big Lebowski with Mr WithaY the other weekend. He'd never seen it before, and thoroughly enjoyed it. That's just as well, means we can stay married.

When I got back from my trip to Sussex on Saturday evening, I was greeted by the melodious tones of "Blade" at full volume. It seems Mr WithaY decided to have an action-packed vampire movie-fest while I was out. There is nothing quite as relaxing after a long drive as a really loud vampire fight, I think.

We had some mates over for dinner on Sunday night. As it was a nice day, MrWithaY decided to get creative in the garden with his bargain smoker.

Did I tell you about the smoker already? If I did, feel free to skip this bit.

When we went to the States last time we decided to go up to Maine and visit the LL Bean store. I like their clothes (long-enough jeans for a tenner! T-shirts that keep their shape and colour after 3 washes! Shoes that are a bit odd!) and Mr WithaY is a huge fan of the various huntin' shootin' fishin' kit they stock. So, we left Cape Cod and drove up to Maine, having an adventure for a few days.

Well. We spent all day there. It was great fun. Like a theme park for shopping.

I bought some clothes, and some cookie cutters in the shape of a moose. Mr WithaY spent house and hours and hours looking at fishing tackle, eventually buying a selection of tiny rubber squiddy, jellyfishy things for luring unsuspecting fish to their doom. Lures, I think they're called.

All was going swimingly so far. Then we looked around the outdoor pursuits section. Tents, garden furniture, torches, sleeping bags, camping gadgets a-plenty. It was very interesting and entertaining*.

Anyhoo, as we were heading out towards the exit, Mr WithaY spots the "Bargains" area. Nestling in the middle of the bargains area was a smoker. Not, as you might imagine, a bloke with a fag on, but a large metal container with handles, a lid and some dials and gauges on the front. Well, to be honest, missing one gauge, hence it was a bargain.

It was reduced to something ridiculous like 25 quid. If youy try to buy one over here they cost about 200. We looked at it. We took the lid off. We put it back on again, noting the excellent fit. We poked the knobs and dials. We walked away and conferred out of earshot of it. We came back and estimated how many chickens would fit in it**.

We had to have it.

LL Bean are tremendously helpful. We spoke to the sales assistant, who slapped a SOLD label on our smoker, and told us to go and talk to the shipping team. The shipping team was a lovely lady from the next town, who was delighted we had come all that way to visit.

All of the shipping team were older people, all were completely charming. I got the feeling that LL Bean is probably the major employer in the area.

We did all the paperwork, chatting cheerfully. She was delighted to hear that we had plans to use our new smoker as a barbecue and smoker, and wanted to know what we planned to cook in it. We told her, 8 chickens. Because we can.

Finally, all the paperwork was done, she wished us a very happy journey back to the Cape and onwards home again. We waved goodbye with a little tear in our eyes. Expect the smoker in about 6 weeks, they told us.

We counted the days.

Finally, it arrived. With a Customs label on it saying we had to pay an import tax. I think the total cost of the smoker plus import tax was about 200 quid.

Still, it smokes a wicked chicken.


*We don't get out much.

**About 8.