Lawnmower Tutorial

Heston Blumenthal in search...

Heston Blumenthal, chef extaordinaire, the creator of egg and bacon ice cream, and sausage and mash Cornetto, is in search of the perfect Pot Noodle. Blumenthal has discovered that the best pot to pour the boiled kettle water into would be one crafted around the time of the Chinese Qing dynasty. Although he has conducted trials with Ming dynasty earthenware. And decided that a dynasty somewhere between the two would have designed something better. Archaeological digs, he hopes, will prove fruitful.

The dish should be ordered in advance at his restaurant, The Fat Duck. Twenty four hours is usually proficient, although it is as well to enquire about successes on recent excavations.

In Tepid Today:

Much Ado About Nuffink

Jordan has recently published her novel 'Crystal'. Not exactly Shakespeare you might suppose. but you would suppose wrong. Shakespeare also possessed a pair of massive jugs (albeit man jugs), but critics eventually learnt to take him seriously.


Much of Shakepeare's first draft scripts also bear an uncanny resemblance to passages found in 'Crystal'.

Take for example, this from Romeo and Juliet, which Shakespeare later ponced up a bit in Elizabethan twang:

'She went to the bog next door to the bedroom and she done a shit but it didn't smell or nothing. And he never noticed nothing neither while he was waiting in the bedroom for her on the bed. Or he soon forgot about it, whatever, because she come out right away wearing what she called her dirty knickers.'

The scenes are remarkably similar except Shakespeare, in his final draft chose to locate Juliet's bathroom away from the bedroom, halfway down a corridor.

In Tepid today:

A Cheeky Tribute

Not much has been heard of the Cheeky Girls for an alarmingly long time now. Are they going solo? And if so, which of the identical twins will be most solo?

The natural conclusion is that the Cheeky Girls are about to mark the twilight of their career in the tradition of the great composers, such as Handel and Mozart. The Cheeky Girls Requiem, like other requiems, will be the choral celebration of a life. Undoubtedly in remembrance of a precocious sibling. But, the level of expectation is high for them to produce what should undoubtedly prove to be their crowning achievement.

However, the cocky auteurs will find themselves propitiously poised, as an adaptation of the Cheeky Song will prove. Thus, altering the tense will conjure:

We were the cheeky girls,
We were the cheeky girls,
You were the cheeky boys,
You were the cheeky boys etc.

In Tepid today:

The Cheeky Girl Records

'We are the cheeky girls

We are the cheeky girls

You are the cheeky boys

You are the cheeky boys

We are the cheeky girls

We are the cheeky girls

You are the cheeky boys

You are the cheeky boys'.

Many of us have paraphrased The Cheeky Song (otherwise titled 'Touch My Bum' in A Flat Major), but little until now was known of the record-breaking bibliography underpinning the number. Among 247 sources listed are the following:

1. Sereny, Gitta, Albert Speer, His Battle With Truth (Macmillan, 1995).

2. British Banking Statutes and Reports, 1832-1928 (2 vols. 1929).

3. Papke, David Ray. Myth and Meaning: Francis Ford Coppola and Popular Response to the Godfather Trilogy. Legal Reelism: Movies as Legal Texts. Ed. John Denver, Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1996. 2-22.

Bob Crowe?

Never mind people talking about other people at some time or other. Everyone's talking about Bob Crowe. Which look will he go with next?

The smart money was with the 'La Paz, Bolivia' look. The bowler hat and skirts. But quite recently, he's gone with the flat-capped New Yorker. 'This guy's got balls. Bob T. Crowe they call him. T for trouble. Troubles' his middle name. I tell yer, he ain't happy unless he's in a major dispute.'

But there's more to the look than glitzing up for the trades union leader pull-out of Hello magazine. All the indications are that Bob Crowe is 'trading in' on a far longer association with the North American continent. The clue is in the name. Sitting Bull, Bob Crowe. Everything points to Bob Crowe being the offspring of illiterate Native American parents. The surname spelt incorrectly. There's a clue. That's like spelling sparrow, 'sparrowe'. And then there's the grammar. What was that animal doing? The bull was sitting. Presumably the crow was bobbing, like a bird that has settled in undulating water. So, what's the next look Bobbing Crow?

Editorial Comment

It was just the other day that I reflected on picking up plastic bags and how our attitude to that activity can be a blueprint for the way in which we conduct our very lives.



That day, just an ordinary day it seemed, I felt the need to pick up a bag. But in the act of swooping, failed to engage. Our natural reaction, the one I succumbed to, was to swoop again, quicker this time before recovering an upright posture. Again I failed. Panic, frustration, merriment (sometimes, although rarely): these are but three of the emotions that swarm our heads in such situations. Can we sustain this half-crouch and lift the bag? What happens? We try another desperate lunge. The fourth time I caught it. But, consider as we should in life, how things could have been so different had I chosen to regain my posture and regroup after the first swoop? I wouldn't be recounting this story had I.

Editor's Note: Has anybody been enriched by any other experiences like this?