Survival of the fattest

Good news today! Great British crisp brand Golden Wonder has been saved from extinction by Irish salty snack favourite Tayto. There's something pleasing about learning this; it's like the little boy with his finger in the dike, holding back the oppressive force of water.

I suppose we run the danger of always gunning for the underdog, irrespective how their quality compares with their bigger competitors. Big is seen to bad, but if the quality is good, or better than the alternative, then so what. But Golden Wonder ARE nicer, I'm convinced of this.

All this fuss over something that we shouldn't be having anyway.


The great travel to work triathalon
The new multistorey car park has finally opened at work, ending 18 months of park and ride misery as most of us were chucked off site during its construction.

It's a lovely car park - HUGE, with fabulous sweeping slopes and generous parking bays. No tight corners to catch your car on, oh no, this place is a beauty. There's just a slight problem. It has been built to provide parking for a massive hospital site and it is on the furthest possible part of the site from where most people work, so there's a ten to fifteen minute walk to or from your desk. The car park is so far away from any of the clinical areas that there's even a shuttle bus service to take patients and visitors around the site.

Walk? Yes, Tina, it's that thing you do when you go to the bar.

That's progress for you.

Lovely car park though.


A series of unfortunate typos
The standard typewriter keyboard is a weird thing, all the letters being jumbled up so as to prevent proficient early typists become too fast and mashing up the typewriter keys. A consequence of this is the positioning of the letter 'U' next to the letter 'I'. With a name like "Tina", this can result in the unfortunate typo of me signing off e-mails as:

Best wishes,

Tuna


A series of unfortunate skin complaints
I am in my mid thirties and I am still suffering from terrible pustulous boils on my face, and now neck. My latest spot is right on the margin of my top lip and it hurts like a complete bastard.

You'd think that I'd have learned by now that my spots are never really that good for squeezing, but I still always give them a go. They're just agonisingly painful for a few days before disappearing, so I suffer the idnignity of disfigurement as well as the pain, but rarely get to experience the pleasure of splattering one out against a clean mirror.

Life is a constant let down.


Pancake day
Tomorrow is Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday (or Mardi Gras if you're poncy). It's something to symbolise Jesus's 40 days and nights in the wilderness while he found himself. It was just as well he'd nipped into that Little Chef before he went. It was there that he enjoyed a plate of delicious pancakes with maple syrup and ice cream before he wandered off. The calorific value of 15,000 was just about enough to see him through his ordeal. A few of the facts may be a bit hazy there, but that's something like how it was.

I love pancakes, but I only tend to have them on Pancake Day. Like they say, everything in moderation. But since I like virtually everything, there has to be a trade off whereby I can only have certain things once a year (McDonald's, Pizza Hut, pancakes, sex, etc).

I was surprised to learn that my Muslim colleague would also be enjoying pancakes and that she wouldn't turn her nose up to a hot cross bun. The cheek on it! I don't know, Muslims complain about westerners' lack of understanding, but they constantly confuse us and shift the goal posts: it's OK for them to do Easter and Christmas things, but ask them get you a sausage barm when they're at the canteen, or offer them a pork pie and they're up in arms, burning your duffle coat!

I don't know, you just can't win with some people.

Anyway, back to pancakes. In terms of fillings, despite generally going for the savoury alternative for most things (nuts, popcorn, etc), I prefer sweet fillings for my pancakes. The absolute BEST way to enjoy them is with a sprinkling of sugar and drizzled with lemon juice - simplicity and perfection. Of course, I wouldn't turn down maple syrup and ice cream, or oranges in Cointreau syrup, but lemon and sugar does it for me just fine.

So today's burning question is:

How will you be having your pancakes?