In case you missed it

butterfly

Wills and Kate have a new daughter! YAY! My two favourite Kate-watching sites have excellent posts up about this.

The Cambridges Present Their Princess to the World!

William in Blue and Kate in Buttercup Yellow to Take Home HRH, Princess of Cambridge

Many more pics on the Daily Mail story – including many pics of a somewhat baffled George when Wills brought him along to meet his new sister, perfectly color coordinated with each other in navy blue. I love how Kate has made blue one of the signature colours of their family.

The new daughter is unnamed as yet. My guess for the name is Charlotte, but it may be a few days before it is announced. The family has already departed the hospital for home..

In Other News –

Here on the blog, tomorrow we start a new blog series. You will see two posts – the first telling you a little about the series and the second will contain the first post in the series.

On Wednesday you will see a couple of photos and videos from my candle burning area.

Also later this week I have a couple of how-to posts planned. One is for those on Blogger which will tell you how to add a subscribe to comments tick box, and the other is for WordPress which will tell you how to add a follow button to a self hosted wordpress site – and I might add in how to do it for a regular wordpress.com site as well, though that is a lot simpler.

Happy moments all round!

blog housekeeping, Happy Snoskred, The Royals, yay

A Truly Great Day

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A Sparkly Cow

Last week I had the flu, and I spent a couple of nights staying up so the other half could get an uninterrupted sleep, so my body clock is all out of whack again. Even so, we planned a few things for Saturday. I wanted to go over to Berry to take some photos of the place I’m planning to go to in the event of the Zombie Apocalypse, and I also wanted to drop into haven and space and Candleberries – two great shops you should not miss if you ever go to Berry..

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First we dropped into haven and space where we picked up a replacement coffee mug for one we had broken, and two new designs. These mugs are gorgeous and they last a very long time. Priced at $4.95 per mug, they are also great value. The candles pictured were $4.50 each.

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As it was past two, we decided to get a snack as well. We didn’t want too much as we were going out to dinner at 7. haven and space have opened up a cafe behind their new store called Sakana and I’d eaten there before when family was visiting, so we dropped in for a bowl of chips and a couple of iced coffees.

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The iced coffees arrived in these magnificent tall glasses with my favorite colour blue around the rim. If you are reading this post here on my blog, see how that blue matches my blue background colour? :) ——> over there?

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We dropped into Candleberries and picked up some wax melts and a new candle for The Other Half. Why yes, that melt set is scented salted caramel popcorn, and it does smell exactly like that. There’s also Home Sweet Home which will stay here and Black Cherry which will go off to my aunt in the next package along with the salted caramel popcorn. By the time she receives it, her cancer treatment will be nearly finished.

On the way back to the car we spotted these cows in a window. It is lucky the shop was not open, is all I can say.

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We went out to dinner at our usual Chinese restaurant with my parents, my Uncle and his wife, and two other friends my parents know from work. When we arrived at the bowling club there was quite an impressive band setup including a sound desk and a proper drum kit which said “The Villains” on it.. Little did we know at the time what an amazing performance would come to us as a surprise.

The club was absolutely packed with people – I think it is the last weekend of School Holidays here and it is always packed in school holidays but not usually to this extent. My uncle reported back to us after one of his smoke breaks that he was talking to someone outside and that they had said this particular band had people coming from places somewhat far away – they had groupies following them.

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Who knew Darth Vader was also a musician?

After dinner we could not get a seat out in the club, every seat was taken. We ended up in their function room off to the back, and we could see the band members in costume. They took to the stage a little after 8:30 and we all headed out into the room to see the band kick off with a performance of an Icehouse song called Walls which sounded more like a Pink Floyd song, it was just amazing. The sound setup was brilliant, the music was incredible, and the band was engaging and captivating.

The singer was dressed as The Riddler and he had a microphone stand with a question mark in it. I believe we had The Penguin as the keyboard player, The Joker as the bass player, The Devil as the drummer, and the most notable mention goes to Darth Vader as the lead guitarist. His costume must have been a total sweatbox, but he never removed any part of it, and he played in it for over 2 hours – with a short break in the middle. Plus instead of heading directly outside on his break, he took off into the crowd to let them pose for photos with him – and his lightsaber.

I have for you a short video clip of the Darth Vader guitarist. :) This was taken during Down Under by Men At Work. You will notice he is marching, despite being wrapped in much quilted fabric. This is some serious costume dedication right here.

When they took a break, we talked about leaving because one or two had an early morning the next day, but we all decided this band was too good to leave. And in the latter half of their show, even The Other Half got up and danced which happens so rarely I cannot recall another such incident!

I completely understand why they have groupies following them, and I could see myself doing the same thing. They are due back at our club in August and we will definitely be there. None of the videos on their website do true justice to this band. You have to be there in person.

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When they left the stage we were among the very vocal crowd shouting for an encore, and they came back on with two band members in white coats and performed “She Blinded Me with Science” – a bizarre choice but we all loved it.

The final song they played was Underneath the Radar by Underworld, a song I have always disliked, but they made me love it. And that speaks many volumes. Most of the music was songs from the early 80’s and music I had on records, back in the days of records, music we played on Saturday mornings to clean the house, and music my friends and I used to create dances for.

They played music from bands like Depeche Mode, Madness, Split Enz, the ever wonderful and unforgettable “don’t you forget about me” by Simple Minds made famous by The Breakfast Club movie, and even a song from The Cure! It was one of my favourites too, Inbetween Days. There were a couple of newer songs, most notably Pretty Vegas which I knew from Rockstar: INXS and Mr Brightside by The Killers.

By the time we got home, I was so tired I went to bed at a reasonable hour for the first time this week. And can you believe, entry to the bowling club is free. We pay the tiny amount of $11 each year to be a member, and that allows the member many benefits, such as using the boat ramp, the courtesy bus, and various other awesomes.

General Chit-chat, Happy Snoskred, Home, music, Snoskred hearts

My Magical TuffSteel Roaster

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The official name is the Tuffsteel Forge 32cm Roaster Pan. 32cm is the interior dimension – with the handles it stretches out to nearly 39cm wide.

I love this thing. Seriously adore it. At the moment I use it every second day – my meal plan has been planned out that way, so I can use the next day to get it in the dishwasher and clean again. I’m actually planning to buy a second one of these for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is in case anything ever happens to the glass lid. Glass and Snoskred is not a very good match.

Some of the reasons I love this amazing cooking unit include –

– Keeps all the cooking inside the roaster dish.

– Whatever liquid you add eg wine, lemon juice, chicken or vegetable stock, just plain water, steams up and cooks the food faster.

– Whatever liquid you add circulates through the food beautifully.

– Keeps the oven clean – we’ve had issues before with cooking food in a regular ceramic baking dish and having a mess all over the oven. This way all the mess is safely contained inside.

– I can make entire meals just using this one pan.

One Pan recipes I have cooked inside this roaster pan –

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– Chicken Mini Roast & Potatoes
– Chicken kievs, potatoes, cauliflower
– Chicken kievs, cheesy baked potatoes
– Chicken filos, broccoli, pumpkin
– Roast Beef, potatoes, pumpkin
– Roast Pork, potatoes, sweet potatoes
– Pasta Bake
Fake Lasagne
– Quiche
– Bacon and Leek Mac and Cheese

Soup recipes that use more than the roaster pan – eg you take the roasted items out, pop them into a plastic container, add chicken or vegetable stock and milk or coconut milk and whiz up to make them into a soup.

Roasted Red Capsicum and Potato Soup
– Roasted Potato and Leek soup
– Roasted Potato, Leek and Pumpkin soup (recipe coming soonest!)
– Roasted Cauliflower Soup

I am planning more soups for winter. :) Especially a mixed veg one with swedes, turnips, pumpkin, potato, sweet potato, capsicum, leek, and anything else I can fit in the roaster pan.

I found this roaster pan at DFO in Canberra while I was looking for yet another ceramic baking dish. We’d had multiple bad experiences with ceramic baking dishes cracking and breaking, and I’d just lost our most recent somewhat trusty Ikea ceramic dish, leaving us with only one baking dish large enough to cook the things that we regularly cooked.

This roaster pan was found in one of those kitchen stores with every possible thing you might ever use in the kitchen and I figured – at least it can’t crack and break – I’ll give this thing a try. It has seriously changed the way I cook in our kitchen.

Unfortunately it is not so easy to find online. Deals Direct do stock it but it is presently out of stock. According to other sites when it was in stock it retailed around the $45 mark. Mine cost me $80. At that price, I might even buy two extras and put one away for later on.

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You can get roaster pans with a lid that is not glass – however I do prefer to be able to look inside and see how things are going without having to open the oven and take the dish out. Plus, our convection microwave is a Solardom which uses a halogen heater to cook and that does not work very well if the food cannot see the “light”. The pan has a true non stick coating. As in, nothing ever sticks to it, for reals.

The oven in this house has never been used by us due to absolute dirtiness from the previous homeowners. Seriously, I turned it on once and it smelled so bad, ew. The design of this house means cooking smells congregate in the main bedroom, walk through robe and bathroom, so using the oven again was not an option. The landlord has finally agreed to replace it and I intend only to use this roasting pan in it – that way I will never have to clean the oven.

Do you roaster?

cooking, food, Happy Snoskred, Home, yay

30% Off @ Spotlight

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So, yesterday, I was watching Judge Judy on Channel 10 at 3pm, as I sometimes do when it seems like the wait to 6pm double episodes of Judge Judy on Arena is too long to wait..

I should point out that I had my little cordless headset on, and I was actually in the kitchen trimming up 1kg of bacon which was purchased on the weekend. I guess that is more like listening to Judge Judy. I got 5 lovely packages of bacon bits, 1 package of bacon bits for dinner that night, and 2 packages of offcuts which we like to grill up in the oven till they are super crispy.

One of the downsides of not watching a lot of free to air tv is missing out on local ads. Sometimes they are not very interesting, but today I heard that Spotlight was having a 30% off sale. My little ears connected with my shopping brain, and the message I heard was THIS SALE SEEMS NICE!

I did some maths in my head, working out that 30% off takes $9 off a 29.95 candle. I should go to Spotlight and buy some Yankee Candles, I thought, as I drove to my 4pm appointment to see my amazing psychologist.

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And a couple of hours later, I did go, because Spotlight were open till 8pm. They told me that in the ad too. I got a couple of the “medium” candles in Black Cherry and Vanilla Lime and 4 wax melts, 2 Mango Peach Salsa and 2 Pineapple Cilantro.

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Apparently the 30% off is for Tuesday as well, in case you did not catch an ad and you want to go get yourself some Yankee Candle, or something else.. :)

Happy Snoskred, Home, shopping, yay

The Package

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My excellent friend Sephyroth sent me an awesome package this week. Interestingly, it arrived just one day after I had been at the post office sending my own package – not to Sephyroth and on this occasion I would have much preferred to be sending it to him. I was sending a package to a very much loved Aunt, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer..

I had an idea that I could put together just a few things each week while she is having both radiation and chemotherapy. I can’t be there in person because she lives in Adelaide, but maybe I can put a small smile on her face each week and remind her that all the family here are thinking of her.

For the first package, I made sure to include a few ginger treats that another good friend of mine swore by during chemo. There was also some Chai tea, some pawpaw lotion, some amazing mango scented anti-bac hand sanitizer that smells exactly like you just rubbed an actual mango into your hands, and a few other bits and pieces. I have already picked up a couple of items for next weeks package.

So what was in the package Sephyroth sent to me? Let us take a look.

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Some shower gel and handwash from my favourite Bath and Body Works.

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Some cup-a-soup and some loom bands.

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Many chocolates!

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These things are SOOOOO tasty! I love wild cherry flavoured things. :)

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Some wax melts – I bought Yankee Candle two wax melts for my next package to my Aunt.

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A lovely Wisconsin calendar!

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There are actually 2 bottles of 265 antacid tablets. These things do not taste like chalk like Australian Quick-eze does.

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A shoe bargain which we chatted about on the Kakao Talk while Sephyroth was in the Adidas clearance store near him.

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Another view of the shoes.

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Some potato chips of awesomeness.

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And my Guaifenesin. :)

Thank you many millions my excellent friend! I will organise a package for you soonest, I already have some stuff put aside to send. :)

Happy Snoskred, Sephyroth, Snoskred hearts, yay

No Bake Cheesecake

cheesecake
My earliest no bake cheesecake attempt in 2015

Just secretly, behind the scenes, I set myself a few goals for 2015 which I did not share with you, because hello what if I fail? This recipe represents the first of these goals which I have achieved and am now ready to share with you. What was the goal?

Perfect a no-bake cheesecake recipe.

I started with a recipe from The Annoyed Thyroid – Kit Kat No-Bake Cheesecake – you’ll note there is no gelatin which is perfect for me because I am terrible at using it and once I found out what it actually was, I was not a big fan of using it in recipes anyway..

I tried that recipe with the following changes –

– no kit kat, because my other half is a bit allergic to chocolate

– I used scotch finger biscuits for the base

– I put in brown sugar rather than caster sugar

– I also added some cinnamon because I always do.

I took it to my parents for dinner and it was hugely popular. We ate it with tinned black cherries and said we thought tinned raspberries would work well with this too.. The one thing we all felt was that the cheesecake part was a little heavy.

Then I thought.. could I add more cream to lighten it and would it still set? And maybe I might like a little touch of gingernut biscuit in the base. So cheesecake #2 was created – this time I used 300mls of cream instead of 50mls, and a mix of gingernut and scotch finger in the base.

I made it just for us here at home, and it was delightful. It did set, though not quite as well as the first one. I thought maybe I was done tweaking, but never say you’re done, because you won’t be.

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The next time I made it specifically because family was coming in from interstate, and I used 250g of regular cream cheese, 250g of light cream cheese, and still 300mls of cream. I also used a base purely of Anna’s Swedish Thins – which you should definitely try as a biscuit if you have not, and Ikea make a version almost identical which they call Pepparkakor – these biscuits are fantastic with cheese especially bitey vintage or blue cheese but they are even more fantastic as the base of a cheesecake.

This was totally the best version of this cheesecake yet. The ginger from the base seemed to transmute itself into the cheesecake itself, adding an amazing flavour. Done, perfected. I achieved my goal and ate several cheesecakes in the trying, which was awesome. Each shopping trip, I’ve added the ingredients for this cheesecake to our shopping list, and it makes enough that we have a small piece for dessert nearly every night.

But then, a happy accident happened when I went to recreate my perfected version. I’d seen this recipe over at Domesblissity – Mini Choc Hazelnut Cheesecake Cups – and I’d bought some spreadable cheesecake, intending to give this recipe a try and perfect it.

I was in the middle of making the no bake cheesecake while listening to The Celebrity Apprentice on my cordless headset – the base was complete and in the fridge – when I discovered all my cream was no good. Seriously, this happened on the 26th of January and *two* 600ml thickened cream tubs had use by dates into February. I suspect foul play of some kind and I definitely smelt sour cream. But I had this spreadable cream cheese (250g) in the fridge, and I thought.. ok, give that a try in place of the 300mls of cream.

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Here now, I present to you, my final no-bake cheesecake recipe.

The base –

150g Anna’s Ginger Thin biscuits – 50g Butternut Snaps – ground into a fine crumb.
80g unsalted butter

Combine the biscuit crumbs with the butter in a bowl and then press into a baking paper lined baking pan – put this into the fridge to cool while making the base.

The Filling

250g regular cream cheese
250g light cream cheese
250g spreadable cream cheese
(I use Manhattan from Aldi)

90g brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Recipe Notes –

You can also add 50-300g thickened cream if you like to make it lighter, and the cheesecake will still set.
Leave the cream cheese out at room temperature for an hour before you begin mixing for the best results.

Make The Filling –

Mix the brown sugar and regular cream cheese first, until smooth.. Add in the vanilla and cinnamon during this stage.

While the mixer is going on a light speed, add in the spreadable cream cheese. Then cut the light cream cheese into small strips and add that in. Mix on high speed for a few minutes until perfectly smooth. If adding cream as well, add that in last.

The Density Of My Cheesecake Destiny

It is a density thing, why I say to mix the things in this order – the time I accidentally mixed the straight out of the fridge regular cream cheese with the cream, it was almost impossible to get that smooth. So learn from my mistake and mix things of a similar density with each other. :)

The Final Step!

Pour mixture into the lined baking pan with your base. Smoosh with spatula, until presentable. Cover with alfoil or glad wrap and then put this back in the fridge for a few hours, or overnight if you have the time and can resist the urge to eat it.

Can You Guess?

What my next cooking goal might possibly be? And do you like a cheesecake, will you give this recipe a try?

cooking, country life, food, Happy Snoskred, recipes

Before and After

So you might recall my clock post, and my paperweight post. Here is how the area looked before..

before

And here is how it looked after I used a table runner to cover the top of the cupboard. The golden sleigh was a Christmas present and I am going to use this to keep all my whiteboard markers and scissors in one place.

after

This is the area just inside our front door, and it leads into the kitchen. There is a large whiteboard which we probably need to redo from scratch as we made it back in the days we had other people living with us and we used it to track where everyone was going to be each day. what the meal was going to be and who was going to cook it, etc.

I still use the whiteboard for meal planning and we use it to write in things like appointments. I am a huge whiteboard nut, I love the things. I just bought my fourth one, which I will also share with you as a surprise shortly! ;)

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The blue bowl I made myself in Ceramics a long time ago. I presently use it to hold the wax melts once I’ve used them in the oil burners several times but they still have some scent left, so I don’t like to throw them out right away.

About Snoskred, Happy Snoskred, Home, Snoskred hearts, yay

My Paper Weight

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During a family visit a few years ago, we went to this little shop called Global Contact in Berry. It is the kind of shop you’d recognise by the smell, which is a blend of sandalwood and patchouli and various incense scents..

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You are either a person who loves that kind of shop, or you hate this kind of shop. My Mother is the only person I know who does not love a shop with incense, crystals, jewellery but I assume that there are other people who are not related to me who also may not like this kind of shop. :)

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Berry is this quaint little country town with a shopping strip, all different kinds of shops. You can find everything from cuckoo clocks to sausages, from candles to teatowels, from artisan wool to artisan gelato. It is an absolutely delightful place to wander for an afternoon and window shop, but if you have some money to spend it is even more awesome.

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For some reason I was drawn to this paperweight. Well, if you know me well enough you’d instantly know why I was drawn to it – because this thing marries two elements I very dearly love. Cobalt blue, and gold. You’ll note the blue is almost exactly the shade of blue which makes up the background of this blog.

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It is not actually scratched. I had just cleaned it before I took these photos and I have gone back and double checked it since seeing these photos, and there are no scratches. Weird! But I do think some of the bobbles you can see here are caused by the liquid on the glass wipes I used.

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Anyway, while I was cleaning this area I noticed that the top of this cupboard is stained from the whiteboard eraser which has sometimes rested on top of this cupboard. So, I decided to re-do this area and I’ll post about that another day. The photo you see below is after a *lot* of cleaning.

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I’ll head over to Berry soon and take some photos and write an actual post, or even a series of them, because Berry is the perfect driving distance from Sydney for a day trip. You can also catch a train there, and the main street is a very walkable distance from the train station. Bring a tote bag in case you shop up a storm, though!

And to end this post on a weird tangent, Berry was the location for Village Vets Australia, which was a fantastic tv show on the Lifestyle Channel on Austar, and if you missed it, the episodes are sometimes on youtube for a couple of weeks, until they are taken down again..

The show was awesome for so many reasons – I learned a lot of new things about cows. They did a rumen contents transplant on a cow which was absolutely fascinating if terrifying for a germophobe. But be aware the show does contain some surgery on animals, and some very sad moments, in among the great moments of which there are also many.

Australia, Berry, Happy Snoskred, Home, New South Wales, Snoskred hearts

Going Back In Time

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I mentioned recently that an item on my to-do list was to go back through the oldest posts on the blog. I know there are plenty of dead links and videos which no longer work and I’m fixing them if possible – finding another video of the same thing, or finding a similar link which still works..

In my review, I stumbled upon – This message may come to you as a surprise.. – where one of my clocks had fallen off the wall while I was at work. I said in that post that I would love to get a clock like the photo above..

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and I look up from the laptop and see this – it turns out, I did get one exactly like that – it has the same model name and everything! Not a floor clock like the one above, but the clock I did get was a smaller wall version of the floor clock. It was an insane bargain when the store decided to clear that brand out. I think it retailed for over $300 and I got it on clearance for $30 or even cheaper.

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You probably are wondering what is that thing in front of it – tis a paperweight. I’ll write a separate post just about that item, where I got it, and what it means to me.

An interesting side effect is – going through my old posts is like going back in time through my mind. It also shows me how much I have learned about blogging, which is a post for another day. :)

About Snoskred, Happy Snoskred, Home, Snoskred hearts

So Anyway….

fawlty

Recently I was reading So Anyway…. by John Cleese.

The book was a fantastic read and there was much silent giggling from me because I like to read before going to sleep, and the other half likes to just go to sleep.

The trouble with silent giggling, while it is silent, it has a great tendancy to shake the entire bed. I tried very hard to control myself, but there came a section of the book where I totally lost any ability to keep it together, and twas so bad, the other half half-woke, looked at me, and mumbled something like he dreamed there was an earthquake. Oh, there was an earthquake, all right!

I covered my mouth to prevent an explosion, and I had to quietly and quickly leave the room. I sourced a pillow to giggle into, and the giggling continued for a multitude of minutes, until I got the hiccups.

I hope that John Cleese would not mind my quoting the section which caused an earthquake in the other half’s dreams. There are sections in the book which are even funnier but something about this one really got me giggling. Here tis –

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When I got back to London I was contacted by my old Cambridge friend Alan Hutchison, who had just returned from a long trip abroad that had taken him to places as far-flung as Japan and South America.

Alan’s travels had proved far more exotic than mine. At one point, after spending some time in Tokyo, he had decided to visit areas where Westerners had not yet trod. Realising that from now on his English was going to get him nowhere, he asked a fellow traveller to teach him the Japanese for ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but could you tell me where I could find accommodation?’ Then he set off.

Immediately the weather turned against him: rain bucketing down, thunder and lightning, the full works. Fortunately, a few rather small dwellings came in sight, so he approached one, knocked, and when the door opened, repeated his Japanese phrase. The householder looked very surprised, gathered himself, smiled, bowed three times and closed the door.

Mystified, Alan decided to try again at the next cottage, with the identical result. By now he was soaked to his skin but since he had no Plan B all he could do was to keep on and on, repeating the scenario, until at last he found a woodshed where he spent the night.

The next day, to his relief, he stumbled on a Japanese-style youth hostel, where the owner spoke some English. Alan asked him if he would translate into English the phrase that he had so carefully learned. The owner agreed, listened and explained that it meant ‘May I take this opportunity to wish you goodnight?’

How dismaying it must have been for those poor people to have been roused from their beds, to find, standing at their front door, towering over them, the first non-Japanese being they had ever set eyes on, a creature probably of aquatic origin, and moreover one who had chosen to make a special excursion to their home in the midst of this torrential downpour, simply in order to wish them goodnight.

In fact so implausible must this have seemed, that, as they lay tossing in bed, these Japanese can have only come to the conclusion that extraterrestrials were busy reconnoitring their neighbourhood, and, under the cover of offering blessings and asking, ‘May I take this opportunity to wish you goodnight?’, were estimating the strength of their defences. It says much for the legendary politeness of the Japanese that they did not band together to hunt Alan down with hoes and pitchforks.

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I sincerely doubt John Cleese would find my little blog, but if he did I would like to say thanks for all the laughs. Out of all the laughs I have had in my nearly 40 years, I would have to say that at least 20% of them have originated from Basil Fawlty. It does not matter how many times I watch the show or how well I know the lines, I still enjoy it just as much as the first time I saw them, possibly even more so. I have loved Fawlty Towers since I was a child, and I will always love it.

I have given the gift of the Fawlty Towers box set several times and on each occasion it was a case of my giving a gift I really wanted for myself. Somewhat bizarrely, I still do not own it, nor do I have a digital copy of it. The pay TV channels here are extremely generous in replaying it so regularly I can always seem to catch an episode when I feel like a laugh.

Of course I loved Monty Python too, and I have enjoyed everything I have ever seen John Cleese do. This book is a lovely addition to my book collection. I highly recommend So Anyway…. I greatly enjoyed it. :)

books, e-reader, funny, Happy Snoskred, television shows