Wowsers.. The Fishfingerbutty blogsite reached the heady milestone of achieving 5000 blog hits today. It started in December 2009 as a way of alleviating a bit of boredom whilst waiting for my CRB check to come through prior to taking my first nursing job. What initially started as a hobby soon snowballed in to a full-scale rant-a-thon of the things that have turned me into the grumpy old woman staring back at me in the mirror.
Reaching 5000 hits is a big thrill for me as I only ever expected it to last for a couple of weeks until the novelty wore off. Now, six months later and I'm still keen to write a load of bunkum for my friends and family's general amusement. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes a little reflective and sometimes it drifts into bonkersville.
And thank you to all of you who have taken the time and trouble to read the blog and leave comments. All of them (bar one slightly unusual blog reader with a keen eye on spelling and grammatical errors) have been gratefully received and are much appreciated.
So, here's to the next 5000 blog hits and don't forget to keep checking in and please keep the comments coming...
Just watching the finals of Britain's Got Talent and the young lad playing the drums has just wowed the audience. He drummed to Wipeout on a floating hydraulic platform and was pretty sensational. Drums for me are always one of the sexiest of instruments and when played well, are the heartbeat of the band making a good band sound fantastic. The drums gives the soul and beat to music and along with the bass guitar, they supply the rhythm singled out when strutting your booty on the dance floor. So good luck Keiran. If he doesn't win tonight's BGT final, I hope he gets himself in a great band to showcase his talent. Of course, he'll have to go some way to catch up to the talent of the greatest drummer of all time - Animal from the Muppet Show. Awesome skills and unblinking scary eyes made him a legend on his own drum kit. These guys weren't bad either....
John Bonham
Keith Moon
Stewart Copeland
Ginger Baker
Mitch Mitchell
Buddy Rich
Have I missed any?
Summer's here which means it's open season in the ice cream eating championships. Each year I break records. My number one guilty pleasure above all else is ice cream. I would quite happily sacrifice drink, chocolate, crisps, yorkshire puds, meat, fishfinger butties and midget gems if it meant I didn't have to give up ice cream. But, it's not just any old ice cream. Here's the run down on 'special' ice cream which delights me more than life itself..
Numero uno is undoubtedly from Notoriani's in Blackpool. It's been there years and years and hasn't changed a bit. It has an old-fashioned ice cream parlour serving Knickerbocker glory's to die for. The ice cream is a one flavoured variety and I think it contains Carnation milk which gives it a unique creamy flavour. It's served in an old fashioned way by staff who sculpt it onto a cone using a sort of spatula. Bewd-a-ful.
Followed closely behind are Haagan Daz cookies and cream flavour. Reminds me of going to the pictures and complements popcorn superbly. We luckily have another family-run ice cream parlour close by with Bonds of Elswick. Bonds make multi-varieties of flavours, all of which are excellent. My personal favourite there is English sherry trifle and strawberry flavours. Try getting parked there on a sunny Sunday afternoon.. impossible!
And lastly, I was fortunate to visit a little town called San Gimignano in Tuscany on previous holidays. If you read this and get the chance to go to SG, as well as being one of the most gorgeous Italian renaissance towns you'll ever see, visit the world renowned Gelateria di Piazza owned by the very lovely Sergio Dondoli. Orgasmic times can be had by a) entering the gelateria and seeing the selections ranging from pistachio flavour (sourced from Tuscan pistachios), blackberries and lavender, champagne and peach, and b) check out and sample the chocolate section. Oh My God. You just want to launch into the fridge display head first and not come out for week. And whilst you're waiting to be served, because the queues are VERY long, check out the photos on the walls of the celebrities who've visited Sergio's. I remember seeing signed photos of Bill Clinton, world famous footballers especially the Italians, Luciano Pavarotti to name but a few.
Ah yes. Thank you God for giving us the Italians who in turn gave us opera, Ferraris, art, style, fashion, food and wine, great football, culture, Vespas, films.... and best of all.... the ultimate ice cream. Grazie!
The news hits the back pages and no doubt gladdens the hearts of many a United fan... Rafa Benitez has left Anfield and Liverpool FC face an uncertain future of debt, team rebuilding and whether their tape of Gerry and the Pacemakers singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone' will hold out for another season.
The fans are always the ones I feel the most sympathy with. The scousers are a devoted and vocal bunch who have had to pay their hard-earned money to watch their team collapse into mediocracy through foreign takeovers and dodgy transfers. Huge wage bills and heavily-claused contracts which, with the exception of perhaps the 'big 4', are crippling the clubs financially. Benitez himself leaves the club with a £6m contract pay severence after a miserable season that came under scrutiny after finishing 7th in the premiership and making little progress in the Champions or Europa League.
Rafa will be remembered for winning the Champions League in 2005 in a barmy night against AC Milan. Perhaps unfairly, the win was attributed more to Houllier's legacy and the inspirational Gerrard winning the cup rather than Benitez's managerial tactics and skill. For all that, and I'm speaking as a die-hard Man Utd fan, you had to marvel at Liverpool landing the big one after being 3-0 down. Rafa also managed to poach Fernando Torres, arguably one of the greatest strikers to grace the English Premier League and perhaps even developed Gerrard into an inspirational captain that drove the team on to win games that perhaps they'd have lost otherwise. Gerrard's patience was later to run with his manager this season it has to be said. His capture of Pepe Reina also proved a great buy when he now could ply his goalkeeping skills in any one of the top teams in Europe.
Then there's Rafa's downfall... His truly awful signings. Luring Robbie Keane after he failed to land Garth Barry and then selling him back at a huge loss was hardly his greatest hour. Add to the list Lucas, Babel, Ngog, Voronin, Pennant and it's not great reading. Losing Alonso to Real left Liverpool vulnerable and they never seemed to recover. His zonal marking, his ill-advised post-match rantings and his at times, questionable substitutions were also the nails in his coffin. So, where next for Rafa? It has to be the Italian Serie A doesn't it? His stock value has probably gone down in the Spanish League and Serie A will probably suit his managerial style. The club itself are in debt and failing a miracle, I can't see them holding on to Torres, Gerrard, Mascherano, Benayoun or Reina. Barca, Jose, Sheik City or Chelski will be circling like vultures with their chequebooks at the ready.
As for who will be the next manager? The fans are calling for Guus Hiddinck. Can't see Guus would fancy the prospect of a selling club, in debt and having a questionable attraction to the big players. O'Neill possibly, but he'd be leaving one American-owned club for another without too much chance of available funds. Hodgson doesn't travel well up North and his accent is better suited to West London.
For me, Mark Hughes would be a great choice. He did a fine job at City rebuilding the club before the money came in for a quick fix. Players like him and want to play for him. Whether the fans will accept an ex-United stalwart is another matter...
There's always Ian Holloway, but we'd like him for just one bonkers season at the seaside if that's ok? And then there's Keegan - I'd love it if he went there...LOVE IT.
It's been a tragic and inexplicably cruel week in the news. Firstly, the awful news of three prostitutes being murdered and dismembered once more in the Bradford area a place synonymous with the Yorkshire Ripper. The man being held for the murders is a criminology student studying for a PhD. Once again, prostitutes, so easily the target for brutalization are murdered in dreadful circumstances. Today, sees an apparent quiet and unassuming taxi driver called Derrick Bird going on a shooting rampage around sleepy villages and towns in Cumbria before turning the gun on himself. Twelve people are dead and at least twenty five are injured, some in a critical condition. Sadly, the town of Whitehaven will be as notorious for all the wrong reasons in the same way as Hungerford and Dunblane. Tonight, many families will be mourning the loss of loved ones made all the worse in the pointless and nonsensical way in which they died.
A friend of mine contacted me earlier and suggested that as a psychiatric nurse, I'd probably have a good insight into the possible madness which drives someone to commit a shooting rampage killing innocent people without any provocation. Well the simple truth is, I don't. I doubt anyone could begin to work out what pushes a person who lives 'normally' and the suddenly snaps with such devastating consequences. What's similar in these two tragedies, and in the case of most multi-killings, is the way neighbours and friends describe the perpetrators. Invariably male, they are described as 'quiet', 'a bit of a loner', 'shy and polite', and 'normal'.
The awful truth is, they may look normal but their actions are a million miles away from normal. And here's a prediction without the benefit of psychiatric insight... it's almost inevitable that more prostitutes will be murdered callously, and a quiet and polite loner will pick up a rifle and kill his neighbours randomly and indiscriminately until he turns the gun on himself. And we will once again ask the question... why?
Did anyone watch last night's Britain's Got Talent with gaping mouth and eyebrows raised. My eyebrows have taken a full 24 hours to return to their normal position. This week sees the acts who passed the audition stages ready for next weekend's BGT final. The winner from that programme (chosen by ITV1 viewers) gets to perform for the Queen aka Madge at the Royal Variety Performance.
I've missed quite a number of the auditions, so last night's acts were new to me. Firstly, we were treated to Kevin Cruise a 40-something camp man who works as an entertainer on cruise liners. The video intro filmed Kevin talking about his 'journey' and strangely went into planet la-la with him walking around his local shopping centre dressed in a natty captain's hat saying coooo-eeee to bemused and frankly scared young men. His persona is completed by a blond wig and ridiculously fake tanned face. And then came the performance... it was how I'd imagine what tripping on LSD is like. It was manic, camp and very, very strange. The crescendo led to Kevin stripping off his trousers to reveal two things of hideousness - lycra shorts and a popped out testicle. A little readjustment and that old showbiz saying 'the show must go on' and Kevin admirably carried on whilst I was gagging on my marshmallows. I can't even look at another plum after that.
And it got worse. We were then treated to a middle-aged man dressed in a Richard the Lionheart straight from the Crusades costume. His act? Chopping wood into kindling. I kid you not. Chopping frigging wood whilst singing the Robin Hood theme to new lyrics... 'chopping wood, chopping wood, chopping through my wood'. This went on for two gruesome minutes until you're begging for two things to happen.. For those three f*ckwits to press their reject buttons, or better still, Mr. No-Talent chops his hand off with a slip of his chopper. Sadly, neither happened.
They were they worst acts. Not far behind was the token young girl singer with flicky hair and tooth brace singing about unrequited love and heartbreak. Like you'd know at 14? You know about texting, GHD's and saying things like 'OH MY GOD, that's soooooo AMAZING' repeatedly.
Fortunately, a really good gymnastics/dance routine got through who were genuinely talented and watchable. I shall still be watching this week for more acts destined for summer season at Pontins....
