Blog
5 September 2010
I’ve had comments that all we ever seem to do – based on my blog posts – is eat, eat and eat some more. Perhaps I should just turn this into a food blog so that I’ve got an excuse to keep stuffing my face. Anyway, this is going to be another post about eating as Suzy and I decided to take a few days off work and enjoy a week of indulgence to celebrate one year of marriage.
“Confusion” Food?
We started the celebrations on Saturday night with a meal at Spice Market Cafe (371-373 Ecclesall Road, S11 8PF) which we’d recently discovered was part of the ever-growing Relax, Eat & Drink family of restaurants owned and run by award-winning Sheffield restauranteur Richard Smith. (Artisan is another one of theirs which we enjoyed a couple of years ago.)
We’d read some reviews describing the “East-meets-West” menu as being a “mish-mash” and “confused” but even Richard Smith says himself, “There’s no authenticity to this restaurant whatsoever – it’s Brit spice.” I guess some call it fusion food but my mum called it confusion food when I described the menu to her. Whatever you want to call it, Spice Market Cafe is probably a love-it-or-hate-it type of place.
Personally, I loved the Black pudding wontons served with sweet and sour cabbage and apple chutney and thought the Fisherman’s appetiser board (consisting of curried smoked haddock, crab spring roll, crispy king prawns, salt and pepper squid, salmon fish cake and SMC dips) was a great variety of fishy goodies for two to share. Our mains of Slow braised belly pork, crackling, noodles asian vegetables and miso gravy and Teriyaki cod, sesame long beans, noodles and crispy king prawns were a bit disappointing though. They weren’t terrible, but just seemed to lack something by comparison to our excellent starters. However, the desserts certainly made up for it. We were a bit spoilt for choice but decided to share Toffeed bananas with sesame seeds and banana sorbet and Chocolate samosas with orange dipping sauce. It was lucky we shared as both were so rich and sweet that I don’t think I could have eaten a full portion of either one. Mmmm!
Sunday Lunch
The day afterwards, we met up with my sister and brother-in-law and coincidentally went to yet another Relax, Eat & Drink establishment. (And no… this post isn’t sponsored by them!) This time, it was The Cricket Inn (Penny Lane, Totley, S17 3AZ) which we’d been to a few times before. Not only do they have top quality ales by the award-winning Thornbridge Brewery but they also have an excellent Sunday lunch menu. I had their huge Steak and Thornbridge Ale pot pie made with cheddar, thyme and grain mustard pastry, dripping roast potatoes, buttered vegetables and pie gravy and it was absolutely delicious but left no room whatsoever for dessert. As always, their specials boards and Sunday roasts looked great too. I can’t believe they still don’t take reservations at weekends though, so be prepared to wait for a table on Sundays (although we were lucky and only had to wait five minutes).
Whitby
We also escaped Sheffield for a couple of days and ended up in Whitby where we’d heard they had good seafood, fish and chips, and a nice clean beach.
When asking people where to eat in Whitby, you’ll almost certainly be told to visit The Magpie Cafe. With long queues outside the cafe (as forewarned) we decided to join the slightly shorter queue next door for their takeaway, where we got some lovely cod and chips.
After spending the afternoon walking along the beach, we had planned to go back to The Magpie Cafe for an evening meal as their restaurant menu looked great but the queues were still ridiculous and we were hungry. Faced with a number of seafood restaurants, we perused all their menus, read a couple of online reviews, and decided to try The Marine Hotel (caution: Flash website).
I enjoyed their Marine crab cakes made from lightly spiced cod and crab, served with a pleasantly hot and spicy sweet chilli jam, and Suzy had an equally enjoyable Lobster salad with a mango salad and dressing.
For main course, Suzy chose the Pan fried fillet of Sea Bass and chive mash with a prawn, parsley & lemon butter. With mussels being unavailable, I opted for their platter, which I didn’t realise at the time of ordering would include half a lobster, a fillet of sea bass, a fillet of sea trout, a whole mackerel, pieces of battered cod, king prawns and squid all served on samphire.
Needless to say, I didn’t actually manage to eat all that even after sharing some with Suzy. With both of us unable to face any of their desserts, we decided to walk along to the amusement arcades and let all the fish go down before grabbing a sugar donut and waffle with chocolate sauce and cream.
We stayed overnight at the excellent Heathfield Bed and Breakfast Guest House where Linda served up some Whitby kippers and poached eggs for breakfast the following morning that I think might have been the best kippers I’ve ever eaten. If you’ve only had the pleasure of boil-in-the-bag kippers, it’s worth visiting Whitby just to taste these!
With our bellies full once again, we started our journey home, visiting the historical Whitby Abbey and the picturesque Robin Hood’s Bay along the way.
You can find more photos of Whitby on Picasa Web Albums.
Labels: food, photos, restaurants, travel
1 April 2007
It seems like everyone’s been to Prague, so Suzy and I felt it was about time we went too. Having booked four nights there a couple of months ago, here’s what we got up to after we arrived there on Monday. (And if you’d rather just look at some pictures instead of reading all this, you can view my Prague set on Flickr... although there are quite a lot of photos to get through!)
Monday
We flew with Thomsonfly from Robin Hood Airport for about £69 return each (including taxes and charges). We got extra leg room and the plane had leather seats. Other than that, the flight was the usual boring episode.
Having reached our destination, we bought two transfer tickets that allowed us to use both the bus and the Metro to reach the centre of Prague. One of the reasons we chose to visit Prague at this time of year was to visit the Easter markets in the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square which were taking place between 24th March and 15th April this year. So, after checking in at our hotel – Tulip Inn (Prague Terminus) – we walked to the Old Town Square market and had a pork baguette from one of the stalls before getting our bearings.
In the evening, we headed over to a restaurant that had been recommended by someone at work. We’d found it earlier in the day and decided to go back and eat there at night. By mistake, we ended up at a completely different restaurant, and the penny only dropped when I realised that all the food on the menu seemed to be French or Asian inspired rather than typically Czech... meaning we were in a nearby restaurant called Nostress which we’d also seen earlier in the day.
Described as being French Asian Fusion, most of the food on the menu was more Asian than French. For starters, I had Dim-Sum (a selection of Chinese steamed dumplings) and Suzy had Piquant Wonton Soup with Chicken Dumplings. For main course, I had Beef Peanut Curry with Jasmine Rice (since they had no Chinese noodles) and Suzy had Grilled Halibut Fillet with a Saffron Sauce and Roasted Vegetables. All dishes were excellently presented and cooked to perfection. Most Asian restaurants seem to be lacking good deserts, but I guess being a French Asian Fusion restaurant means you can serve whatever deserts you like, so Suzy had a Warm Pear Croustillant with a Chocolate Sauce and I had my trusty favourite Crème brûlée.
Three courses for two, including a bottle of wine and a bottle of still water cost 2115 Kc (about £50) – not so cheap for Prague but very reasonable by UK prices!
Tuesday
To get a better overview of Prague, we decided to take the 3½ hour Grand Walk (The Best of Prague) with Prague Walks which took us through the Jewish Quarter, Old Town, New Town, Wenceslas Square, Charles Bridge and up to Prague Castle. One of the advantages of going on a guided walk is that you’re shown things you probably would’ve missed otherwise and told what they are, like the hanging statue you can see here.
For lunch we tried to find a typical Czech meal and ended up at Hotel Cerný Slon. Mine consisted of pork knee, pork shoulder, pork sausage and bacon (and probably some more pork) with a selection of dumplings and cabbage. Suzy had roast duck with a similar selection of dumplings and cabbage.
In the afternoon, we went back to the Easter markets in the Old Town Square and after the meat overload at lunchtime, we decided to settle for pizza and pasta at a small Italian restaurant called La Scala.
Wednesday
In the morning, we visited Wenceslas Square again (managing to avoid Debenhams and Marks & Spencer) and went up the tower of the Prague Astronomical Clock and saw some amazing views.
Afterwards, we visited the Sex Machines Museum and saw some amazing... erm... mechanical erotic appliances dating back to the 1500s and watched a 1920s porno! (Some of the things in that museum are quite simply wrong and should not exist – but you absolutely have to go and see them if you ever visit Prague!)
Not quite in the mood for a huge bratwurst sausage from the market, we visited a small restaurant (which I think was called Bella Vita) where I got to sample 1kg of marinated pork ribs and Suzy tried a Prague cheese platter.
In the evening, we finally managed to eat at the restaurant we were meant to visit on Monday! Kolkovna describes itself as being “based on a combination of the tradition and uniqueness of the Pilsner Urquell brand and Czech cuisine fused with modern gastronomy.” The starters of Beef Tartar Steak and Beef Broth were both fair. Having had such a large Czech lunch, I wasn’t really in the mood for another large, meat-heavy Czech meal, so for main course I ordered the Rabbit in Garlic and Onion (roasted rabbit legs with spinach and roast potatoes with bacon) which was unfortunately accompanied by “garlic with spinach” rather than “spinach with garlic” and was far too salty, as was Suzy’s Moravian Sparrow (pieces of roast pork with garlic and onion, bread and bacon dumplings, white and red cabbage). The waiter wasn’t the most helpful and the service overall wasn’t great either. Sadly, both the food and service here was disappointing but 1222 Kc (about £30) for two courses, a bottle of wine and a beer seemed like a reasonable price to have paid.
Thursday
On our last full day in Prague, I spent the morning on another guided tour – this time with Suzy Tours (aided by her Lonely Planet guidebook) – which took us back up to see Charles Bridge again. For lunch, walked back to the Old Town Square and had a bratwurst in a baguette and a chicken panini from the Easter market before doing a bit of souvenir shopping.
Sick of meat, dumplings and cabbage (despite having only eaten Czech food for two or three meals) we luckily found a fantastic Thai, Burmese and Indian restaurant called Orange Moon for our last evening meal in Prague. They did a great Tom Yam Kung soup and Thai Fish Cakes for starters and equally delicious Thai-Green-Curry-like and Pad-Thai-like main courses (although I can’t remember exactly what they were).
Friday
After checking out of the hotel, we caught the Metro back to Zlicín and visited the Metropole shopping centre (and almost went to Ikea but it was a bit too far away) before making our way to the airport for our return flight home.
Despite this post being a little on the long side (please accept my apologies) we didn’t feel like we actually did that much whilst we were in Prague, meaning we not only had a brilliant, well-deserved break but also that we can definitely go back again in a few years and see some different sights. Having said that, four nights is probably too much for a short break unless you’re really going to cram in the sightseeing, but I’d definitely recommend visiting Prague if you get the chance!
Labels: food, personal, photos, restaurants, travel
14 September 2006
After being away from my computer on holiday for a week, I’ve finally read the 94 emails and 808 feed items that were waiting for me, uploaded 120 photos of the holiday and can now post about some of the things we learnt during our stay in Paphos, Cyprus...
Accommodation
We stayed in the self-catering apartments at the Mayfair Hotel. After reading a few mixed reviews on various websites, we weren’t expecting too much so we were pleasantly surprised with what we found!
For a start, the cleaners appeared to work around the clock, which is probably why this appeared to be the cleanest hotel we’ve ever stayed in. Both pool areas were also very well maintained. On the three occasions we had the breakfast buffet, we were impressed by the choice and quality of the food we got for CY£3 each too. (Whilst we didn’t take part in any of the daytime activities or see any of the evening entertainment, they did seem to have a good programme for all ages.)
The Mayfair is no five-star hotel, but it’s in a great location (just 15 minutes walk to either the harbour, the main town or the Tombs of the Kings Road area), has helpful friendly staff and offers all the facilities you would need.
Restaurants
All the restaurants we visited served good food and were very reasonably priced – between CY£30-38 (~GB£35-45) for three courses, a bottle of wine and bottled water – but the best restaurant was undoubtedly “Chex Alex” Stefanos Fish Restaurant which is owned by a local fisherman and situated on Constantias Street, Kato Paphos. Their fish meze allows you to taste 10-11 different fish dishes (including prawns, mussels, octopus, cuttlefish, sardines, red mullet and sea bream) as well as the usual dips, salad and chips. Their menu says, “If you have not tried CHEZ ALEX FISH MEZE, you can not say that you have eaten meze yet!” And I’d be inclined to agree! If you don’t go for the meze, you can choose your own freshly caught fish from the fridge. (This is what was left of ours.)
A close second was deep Blue Seafood Restaurant, which is a more modern restaurant on Pafias Afrodites Street, near the church of Agia Kyriaki. (You can see it in the background of one of our photos.) Since many of the restaurants in Kato Paphos have been in business for up to 30 years, their tables, chairs, plates, cutlery, etc. have seen better days. Whilst this enhances their authenticity, it made a pleasant change to go somewhere that felt a bit more modern – and clean! Their fish meze was quite different to the one at Chez Alex but was equally enjoyable, including mini crabs, and swordfish and salmon skewers.
Other restaurants that deserve a mention are Thessaloniki and Othellos Tavern, both of which are on Constantias Street, Kato Paphos.
Bars
Most nights, we ended up around the corner from our hotel in the Full Moon Bar on Agapinoros Street. Their English staff serve reasonably priced local draught lagers (namely Keo and Leon), imported beers (i.e. cans of John Smith’s) and a variety of cocktails. But when in Cyprus, do as the Cypriots do and drink a few brandy sours!
They also seem to have a good range of entertainment, including quiz nights and karaoke. You’ll know that you weren’t too good at singing Don’t Stop Movin’ by S Club 7 when the DJ says, “That’s what karaoke’s all about ladies and gentlemen!”
Their full English breakfast is also pretty good and for CY£1.90 is great value for money!
Entertainment
On the Wednesday evening, we went to the cabaret night organised by Thomas Cook / JMC / Sunset. Since all proceeds from the night were going to the Variety Club children’s charity and our holiday rep was the compere, we could hardly refuse. They promised a ‘night to remember’ and that’s exactly what we got... although perhaps not for the reasons they intended. The ‘professional’ Thomas Cook entertainment team were certainly entertaining and a couple of them had excellent voices. (I think the others were just making up the numbers though.) Whilst we had an enjoyable evening, the highlight of the night was an X-Factor contestant from a couple of year ago being sat at the end of our table. (Sorry, I can’t remember his name or find it on the Internet, but I’m sure he sang something by Anastacia.)
Something else I noticed is that almost all the bars in Kato Paphos have chipped X-Box consoles to keep the kids entertained. With all the latest games copied to their hard drives, it costs 50 cents to play for 15 minutes, after which it effectively disconnects the controller to stop the game.
Places of Interest
The entire town of Paphos is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, which means there’s lots of interesting sites to visit. These include the Tombs of the Kings, churches, baths, catacombs, mosaics and various other ruins dotted around Paphos without any plaques to tell you what they are. (View our photos.)
We also went on a Jeep Safari (in a Land Rover rather than a Jeep) into the Troodos Mountains, visited the Kykkos monastery and went to the highest point possible on Mount Olympus.
Miscellaneous
- They drive on the left with right-hand drive cars (like in the UK)
- Road signs all look like English road signs.
- Number plates on taxis all begin with the letter T
- Number plates on hire cars all begin with the letter Z (and usually have a red background)
- Make sure you apply plenty sun-tan lotion to avoid getting burnt – and if you use P20, it may stop working if you sweat too much
- If your suitcase gets damaged when you go on holiday, get a complaint form from the airport before you leave
And I think that’s just about everything. Any questions?
Labels: food, personal, photos, restaurants, travel
24 July 2006
Pick your mate up from the train station. Park your car whilst you grab some lunch at the Common Room on Devonshire Street. Forget about buying a parking ticket. Get a £30 parking fine. Pay your parking fine within 14 days to avoid having to pay £60 instead.
Cover your barbecue with a piece of wood. Give a couple of good friends a golfing umbrella and get them to stand in the rain, keeping it alight until the sun comes out:
Using the Guinness Surger that The Rileys gave you for your birthday, experiment with open vessels containing different liquids just to see what will happen. Here’s a good example of what happens when you ‘surge’ a bottle of Stella Artois:
(Warning: Don’t try this at home without a chemistry doctorate being present.)
Put your head down for a well deserved nap whilst the cleaning fairies come and tidy up after your party:
Wake up the next morning around 06:00 wondering where everyone’s gone and take a look at the photos to try and remind yourself what else you got up to...
Labels: personal, photos
11 July 2006
Can any of you guess what we found in our garden on Sunday night? No, it wasn’t another new Google service (although they do seem to be popping up all over the place recently) – it was a hedgehog!
By coincidence, I’d seen a hedgehog house in B&Q over the weekend and suggested to Suzy that we should buy one in case we ever got a hedgehog in the garden. However, since we’ve never even seen one anywhere near our house we didn’t bother, only to find this little fella wondering around our back garden when we got home:
We were a little concerned for its well-being as hedgehogs usually only come out when it’s dark and it was still daylight. We already knew we shouldn’t feed it bread and milk, but didn’t know what else we could do to help it. After searching the Internet for a local rescue centre, we found the Voluntary Rescue Centre for Birds and Wildlife website and phoned them for some advice.
Although this hedgehog was quite small (4 to 5 inches long) it could still have been old enough to have offspring, for which it could have been foraging for food. As a result, Midge (who voluntarily runs the Rescue Centre with his wife) suggested that it would be a bad idea to rescue it in case it was going to find its own way back to its family. So, we bought some cat food (no fish varieties allowed for some reason) and put it outside on an ice-cream container lid along with some water.
The hedgehog quickly discovered the food and then ran pretty quickly around our fence into next door’s garden, then right across the middle of their garden into the corner next to their shed. We assumed it was going back to tell its family that it had finally found some food!
After waiting for a family of hedgehogs to return and chasing off a couple of cats, I decided to build a little hedgehog house out of a cardboard box and weigh it down with some bricks so that the cats couldn’t get to the food overnight...
When Monday morning came, the ice-cream container lid had moved towards one of the doorways I’d made and half the food had gone. We assumed some clever cat (or other animal) had managed to carefully put its paw inside the box and dragged the food nearer to the door so it could eat it. Our poor, hungry hedgehogs!
After setting it up again last night, it looks like our hedgehog might have been back, as this time the lid was licked clean!
And everyone lived happily ever after. The end.
Labels: personal, photos
20 April 2006
Back in November 2002, we went to Blackpool for the day and visited Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks. Some of the waxwork models were so poor that I couldn’t resist taking photos of the best (and worst) examples to put on my website. I soon created the Waxwork Quiz which has now had almost 500 people attempting to complete it – but only 6 people have managed to guess 12/12 correctly!
Just over two years later, in November 2004, I was contacted by the producer of ITV’s Today with Des and Mel.
I work on Des & Mel – I came across your website which I enjoyed. I thought the pictures of the wax works were very funny and would love to show them on the show. Did you take the pictures? Would it be OK to use them!!!!!! I think Des would love them. Please let me know
Of course, I obliged, but only on the condition that I got a name check, a link to my website from theirs and a signed photo of Des and Mel. The photos appeared on the show on Friday, 26 November 2004, but it was a total disaster. Not only did they call me “Tony Roscoe” but when they tried to get the studio audience to guess who the waxworks were of, someone in the audience managed to guess every single one correctly! (I can only assume that they’d either visited my website before or had been to Louis Tussaud’s themselves!) To add insult to injury, they then said that I’d emailed the photos in to them! Honestly – as if I’d be so sad as to email photos into a daytime TV programme. Their producer had practically begged me to use them!!! A few weeks later, I finally received my “signed” photo. I say “signed” in the loosest possible sense since it was a digital print of a photo that had been signed. What absolute rubbish!
Anyway, I’d just about managed to get over that episode in my life and then all the bad memories came flooding back to me today when I was contacted by a researcher for a new Channel 4 “comedy panel show” who also wanted to use my photos! Again, I’ve obliged, but this time they can’t give credits for any pictures (apparently). But after last time’s efforts, that’s probably for the best.
The show is called “Best of the Worst” (or something like that) and should air towards the end of June 2006, so keep you eyes peeled in case my photos make it to the final edit!
See also:
Labels: personal, photos, ruscoe.net, tv
7 April 2006
As always, Chris is right. I’m a part time blogger! Admittedly, there are a few things that have grabbed my attention over the past couple of weeks that I probably should have blogged about, so I’m going to cover them all now to try and keep him (and you) happy.
Chris has already blogged about the stupid (or maybe clever) woman who was in front of me in HMV yesterday lunch time, so there’s no need for me to cover that again. What he says is all true so just go and read it on his blog. What he doesn’t mention (presumably because I never told him) is why I was in HMV in the first place...
I went to HMV to buy a copy of the St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion) single by 80s rock legend John Parr which is being sold in aid of the Help A Hallam Child charity. He agreed to re-release the single after Hallam FM’s Big John contacted him and persuaded him to do so. (At least that’s what they’ll have you believe.) Anyway, in order to make sure that as much money as possible goes to the charity and not to Columbia Pictures (who own the rights to the original recording that featured on the soundtrack to the St. Elmo’s Fire film back in 1985), he re-recorded the track from scratch, promising to make it sound as close to the original as possible. And he did a pretty good job. (Even he struggles to tell the difference, apparently!)
At this point it’s probably worth noting that despite what some people think, Help A Hallam Child doesn’t raise money for the poor kids who can’t afford to go to a proper university and have to put up with the nearby special needs uni; it’s a real charity that helps children who are sick or live in situations of abuse, neglect or deprivation.
If you’re ever near Torquay in Devon and want some good fish and chips, visit Hanburys Licensed Fish Restaurant & Seafood Takeaway. They are (or once were) one of the top three fish and chip shops in the UK! We ate in their characterful restaurant but I assume you still get the same high-quality food from their takeaway next door.
We’ve finally got a new bathroom (with a proper door so that you’ve no need to be paranoid about someone peeping through the gap at you).
And finally, if you’re after a couple of funky gadgets, check out this grass chair and these crazy keyboards. [Via Boing Boing and Chris Chris.]
Labels: food, gadgets, links, music, personal, photos, rant, restaurants
3 January 2006
I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions, mainly because I’m totally incapable of keeping them. Previous years have seen me try to stop biting my nails (several times) and give up kebabs (which is actually impossible). This year, however, I’m going to try and do a couple of things: chew my food more thoroughly and post to my blog more frequently. Only time will tell whether I’ll keep to either of them, but since it’s the third day of the year already, it must be time I posted something to my blog. (Especially since the extra food chewing hasn’t been going too well over the last couple of days...)
Anyway, it seems fitting that my first post of 2006 should review what happened to me in 2005 – i.e. all the things I probably should have posted about at the time but couldn’t usually be bothered.
Warning: anyone with a low boredom threshold should probably stop reading now as I’ve just read the post before publishing it and I have definitely rambled on a bit too much...
January 2005
I’ve been researching my Ruscoe family tree for around five years, but over the last year or so I’ve started to take it more seriously and decided to visit Shropshire Archives in January 2005 to help fill in some blanks. Whilst we were in the area, I took the opportunity to have a look at where my ancestors would have lived back in the 1800s. If you’ve got the Ruscoe surname in your family tree, you might want to look at my photos from the trip, my Ruscoe Family Genealogy website and the Ruscoe Family Genealogy Google Group.
February 2005
I received a letter from a popular men’s magazine threatening legal action against me unless I removed photos of two TV celebrities. The images showed how the celebrities looked before and after they were photoshopped for the magazine. I received them by email and made them into Flash movies so that you could hover over each to see the differences. Needless to say, the magazine’s legal team didn’t like this, so I kindly agreed to remove them. I now get hundreds of disappointed visitors looking for the photos on my website each month.
I also made a gingerbread house for my sister’s birthday and Suzy helped me to build a snowman.
March 2005
We managed to get some tickets to go and see The Games being filmed in Sheffield for Channel 4 and watched a few celebrities compete in Olympic style sporting events. The line up included Craig Charles (comedian/actor/presenter), Princess Tamara Czartoryski-Borbon (model), Danny Foster (former member of Hear’Say), Kirsty Gallacher (presenter), Mel Giedroyc (comedienne), Chesney Hawkes (singer), Lisa Maffia (singer), Jonathon Morris (actor), Philip Olivier (actor), Kevin Simm (member of Liberty X) and Anna Walker (presenter). There’s not much else to say about this really. Chris posted an equally brief description at the time.
April 2005
We went to see Richard Herring at the Lescar. I’m not really a fan of his but I thought he was very, very funny. Chris Hill covered it at the time, so there’s no need for me to say any more.
May 2005
During the first Bank Holiday weekend, I built myself a brick barbecue in our back garden. It’s something I’d had planned ever since we moved into our house and, even though we only got to use it three or four times, it was worth the five trips to Wickes, sore arms, aching shoulders and the sunburnt neck!
I also finally updated my website (again) to use XHTML & CSS, moved my three-year-old weblog to use Blogger and was kindly given a Flickr Pro account, which I really should be making more use of. (Maybe that should be another new year’s resolution...)
June 2005
I travelled more in this month that I’d travelled in my entire life. First of all, we went camping in Malham, North Yorkshire for Andy’s birthday (like we did the previous year). Then we went on holiday to Florence for a week, also visiting Pisa whilst we were in the area. About a week later I then made a business trip to Montréal, Canada. (You can read a bit more about these escapades in my Around the World in 25 Days post.)
July 2005
Chris and Dawn tied the knot and I had another birthday, which was when I played Singstar for the first time. (Sadly, this was when we also introduced Chris Riley to the game and he now takes it quite seriously...)
August 2005
A surprising number of rather large spiders made an appearance in this month. I’ve not seen many of them since then, so I can only presume that they’ve been beamed back up to the Planet of the Rather Large House Spiders by their mothership.
September 2005
Suzy and I visited Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur Park in Devon with Lil and Chris (see my photos) and I got to feed a lemur for the first – and probably last – time!
Google released their Gmail button for Google Toolbar, which enabled me to figure out how to add custom search buttons to the toolbar. They then released Google Blog Search which would later result in my website traffic increasing considerably as people found my blog posts much more quickly than they would through the normal Google search.
October 2005
October was an exciting month (for a geek). First of all, I wrote a script to check for Google Subdomains and found a few that people hadn’t seen before. One of these was purchase.google.com which might have inspired the folks over at WebmasterBrain.com to dig a bit deeper, resulting in them discovering the Google Purchases (AKA Google Wallet / Google Payments) sign-up pages. Incidentally, almost three months on and this new service from Google still hasn’t been released yet.
I decided to run the script again after reading a comment by Wouter Schut and discovered the Google Base subdomain. What happened in the days following my post about this discovery was remarkable. Within 24 hours, Google-watchers all over the world were discussing a new service that they didn’t even fully understand. As screenshots started to appear on the Internet, people were speculating what the new service would be capable of, which caused eBay’s stock to reportedly drop by as much five percent at points during the day! The Guardian and The New York Times – amongst many others – referenced my website and I was even interviewed by Business Week magazine! Incidentally, the title I chose for my post – All your base are belong to Google – was used all over the Internet, with some people even posting it to their blogs without even knowing why they were doing it!
November 2005
I finally went to see The League of Gentlemen live in Llandudno (as I’d mentioned earlier in the year) and the show was absolutely excellent, completely exceeding my expectations. It was well written, well performed and well worth the wait. My only real gripe was that it wasn’t long enough; the two 45-minute acts just went far too quickly! For any League fans didn’t get to see it, I’d definitely recommend buying it as soon as the show is released on DVD.
I also held my school reunion and bought myself a PSP. I actually posted an update around that time, so you can read more about all that if you like.
December 2005
T’was the week before Christmas and my sister gave birth to a baby girl, making me Uncle Tony and ending the year perfectly.
The End.
If you’ve read all the way to here, you deserve a medal! Please accept my most sincere apologies. When I started writing this post, I only intended it to be a brief look back at 2005 but then I got blogorrhea and I couldn’t just hit the delete button after spending so much time on it...
Happy New Year!
Labels: gadgets, genealogy, google, personal, photos, psp, ruscoe.net, theatre, travel, tv
18 December 2005
I am now an Uncle! My sister finally gave birth to a lovely 7lb 12oz baby girl at around 09:05 on Saturday, 17th December, 2005. As a result, she will be sharing her birthday with Chris, who celebrated his 25th birthday on the same day. (He actually seems to be quite happy that he’s sharing his special day with my niece, but I guess he’s really thinking that I’ll never be able to forget his birthday...)
For all my broody readers – and there are at least two or three that I can think of – here are some photos:
My new niece is the most lovely, cute, contented, perfect little baby that I’ve ever seen! Congratulations our kid – I’m well proud of you!
Labels: personal, photos
16 December 2005
I’ve got a bit of a reputation for eating kebabs. I love them. In fact, I’ve been known to eat them when sober from a few specially selected “five-star” kebab shops. In my first year at university, Damo challenged me to eat three kebabs in a row. Easy-peasy! I’ve even tried frozen kebabs from the supermarket (which were OK) and packet kebab meat (which was a bit nasty). Naturally, when I saw a new kebab-based product on one of the shelves in Asda, I simply had to try it!
Kebab Attack is part of the Hunger Breaks range from Crosse & Blackwell. On the surface, this obviously sounds like an ideal snack. Beans are great. Kebabs are great. Therefore, beans and kebab meat must be mega-great. This is simply not so. The kebab meat might look like the doner kebab meat you get down at your local kebab shop but that’s where the similarity ends.
The “Beans” (36%) are fine. They look and taste like baked beans – not Heinz Baked Beanz, but baked beans nevertheless. However, the kebab part of the “meal” is actually made from “Chicken Doner Kebab Pieces” (17%). Now, I like chicken and I eat it quite a lot. I’ve had a lot of chicken kebabs too. However, I don’t eat cardboard – and that’s what this tasted like to me. Little squares of compressed cardboard pumped with water, rusk, chicken fat, potato starch, salt, wheat starch, ground spices and stabilisers. Yum.
So... to summarise:
Make: Crosse & Blackwell
Range: Hunger Breaks
Product: Kebab Attack
Weight: 410g
Price: £0.99
Allergy Advice: Contains Wheat, Gluten and Cardboard
My advice? Don’t bother.
Labels: food, personal, photos, rant
31 August 2005
Dear God,
My friend Chris wrote to you recently regarding possible flaws in your design of the rather large house spiders that seem to be invading Sheffield.
The one in the photo decided to scare the living shit out of me whilst I was watching this week’s episode of Lost (which, by the way, almost does that job perfectly well on its own).
So – to quote Chris – “This isn’t bloody Australia, it’s Sheffield. Sort it out.”
Cheers,
Tony
P.S. Unlike Chris, I didn’t kill mine if that makes any difference...
Labels: personal, photos
12 July 2005
Well, not all the way around the world – but I have been travelling quite a lot recently... which I guess is my poor excuse for not having posted much recently. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to:
Firenze (Florence), Italy – 16th to 23rd June 2005
Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore
It had been three years since Suzy and I had been on a holiday abroad, so we decided to take advantage of the cheap flights to Pisa being offered at the nearby Doncaster-Sheffield Robin Hood Airport and book our accommodation via Venere.com.
Before we went, we’d been told by several people to visit a restaurant called Il Latini. If you’re planning a trip to Florence, I’d definitely recommend trying to get a table there. And when I say try to get a table there, that’s exactly what I mean! We’d been warned that this was a popular restaurant but we were still shocked to find a crowd of probably more than 50 people waiting outside at 19:00 – and they don’t even open the doors until 19:30! Be prepared to share your table with other people as they really do cram their customers in; the food is well worth it though!
Another restaurant we’d highly recommend was Golden View Open Bar at Via dei Bardi 58r. (Their website’s in Italian and the menu is crazy – but don’t let that put you off!) Bored with the usual restaurants offering the same menus, we crossed over the Ponte Vecchio and stumbled across this place by accident – and we’re glad we did! The atmosphere was perfect, the food was outstanding, the service was great and the prices were very reasonable (and it seems that many people on the Internet agree)!
You can view some of the more scenic photos on Flickr:
Some more personal photos are available on Blueyonder Photos.
Montréal, Québec, Canada – 29th June to 6th July 2005
Rue Sainte-Catherine, Montréal
This was my first business trip abroad. I say "business" but perhaps that’s a bit misleading as I managed to work it over a long weekend, as Canada Day was on the Friday. Not only that, but the International Montreal Jazz Festival was also in town for the week I was there!
Most of the signs are in French, people speak a mixture of French and English (or Franglais), they have an underground city of shops and restaurants for when it gets cold (i.e. -20°C to -30°C) and all prices are displayed without tax (which means you have to add on around 15% to get the "real" price of something)! Eating out is cheap, the bars are open until 3:00 in the morning and (as I kept being reliably informed by my colleagues over there) all the women are hot! :-) Montreal truly is a fascinating city.
Again, you can view some of my photos on Flickr:
(As you can see, I was very busy in the office!)
Wetheral, Carlisle, England – 9th July 2005
Not quite as impressive as Florence or Montreal, but a nice place nevertheless, we visited The Crown Hotel in Wetheral to attend the wedding of Mr Chris Riley and Miss Dawn Nelson. (If you want to see photos of the stag do, they’re here.)
The weather was perfect, the hotel was picturesque, Dawn looked stunning, Chris looked stunned (© 2004 Andrew Stewart), there weren’t any major disasters (as far as I’m aware) and all-in-all the day (and night) was a lot of fun!
My photos of the wedding are available on my website:
For more photos, see The Best Man’s blog.
Congratulations to Mr & Mrs Riley and thanks for a wonderful end to my trip around the world!
Labels: food, personal, photos, restaurants, travel
8 June 2005
My mate Dave (yes, that’s right – the one Papa Lazarou always talks about) introduced to me to The League of Gentlemen (not literally) when I was in my 3rd year of uni. Their 2nd series was airing on BBC2 and I’ve been hooked on their work ever since. In January 2001, I visited Hadfield to take a tour around the real life Royston Vasey. When you walk around Hadfield, you really do feel like you’re in Royston Vasey; the local butcher even sells special stuff sausages...
Earlier this year I came across The League of Gentlemen Scripts and That book, which was released ages ago but wasn’t really very well promoted. I bought it Dave for his birthday hoping that he’d already have a copy so that I could keep it. (He didn’t have it, so I had to buy it again for myself.) It contains all the scripts from the series, biographies of each character, and loads of pictures. It’s an ultra-heavy hardback book that every TLOG fan should own.
At the moment, The League seem to be pulling out all the stops. Not only have they just released their first motion picture, but they’ve also released The Complete Collection DVD Box Set (all three TV series and that disturbing Christmas Special) and a new special edition of their Live At Drury Lane DVD, featuring five minutes of new footage from their hugely popular "Local Show for Local People". They’ve also got another live show planned for later this year titled "The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You" which I’ve just booked some tickets to see at Llandudno’s North Wales Theatre.
Until very recently, they didn’t have an official website (there were, of course, hundreds of "unofficial" fan-sites popping up all over the Internet) but with The League now moving from cult to mainstream, it’s not surprising to see official sites starting to appear. For anyone that hasn’t managed to track them down, here are the ones I’ve found:
And in case you’ve never been to any of the unofficial sites before, here are some of the better ones that have managed to survive:
Labels: books, film, links, personal, photos, theatre, tv
23 May 2005
Suzy’s special birthday tea
It was Suzy’s birthday today and Debbie asked me earlier if I’d be making something special for tea. When I replied with, "Suzy’s having Sausage Tonight," she obviously thought I was being rude. This photo is to prove three things: (i) I wasn’t being rude at all – Suzy really did have Sausage Tonight; (ii) I actually put birthday candles in the sausages, just as Debbie requested...
... and (iii) I really know how to treat a lady!!!
Labels: food, personal, photos
1 February 2004
I saw a big rise in hits to my website recently and figured out it’s all due to this: my appearance on TombRaiderForums.com! There are some very good comments about my legs on there! Check it out!
Labels: personal, photos
