Macaron? Macawrong I say.

Reeking Lums assemble!

We have serious matters to consider.

One is shaped like a coroners slab, covered in chocolate, dessicated wood chip and is hard as a brick, another is a gaily coloured and fragrant sponge sandwich, that would look more at place in a bowl beside your bath, and the last looks like its been coughed up by a camel and left to dry in the desert sun, what am I talking about?  Macaroons, that's what,  and their obscure history and provenance.

Let the Reeking Lum untangle this holy mess with an in depth investigation of these so called Sons of Aroon, whoever he was.  “There can be only one” said immortal Highland Frenchie Christopher Lambert,  lets see if he was right

My investigations have taken me to the darkest corners of the web, it will take a long time to unsee some of the sights my eyes have had to endure, but as I try and make sense of it all, lets remind ourselves of the holy grail that is The "Lees Lees more if you please" Macaroon favoured in these parts, to prevent any confusion with inferior, less sturdy pretenders, I'll refer to it from here as The MacAroon. 

MacAroon: aka House Brick ( edible)

1931, to the east of Glasgow, a young grocers son, going by the name of John Justice Lees was experimenting with a new prototype confectionery bar,  if only he could perfect the smooth chocolate covered fondant, he would erase the disappointment his father felt when he flunked law school, "Michty me, I might be shite as a solicitor" young John Justice may have said " but by fuck, I'll be a passable grocer".  Time and again his trials failed,  the alchemy needed eluded him, until late one night, after a particularly disastrous attempt at making fondant icing with  sugar of all things (until then his experiments had used traditional mashed potatoes) ,  Mr Lees the senior visited him in the cellar, " What of all the fucks is going on doon here, ya useless wee tit? he inquired., "That Tunnocks bastard is over the hill cleaning up with they daft cocynut logs or whatever the fuck  he calls them, and your fannying aboot wi this, look at it, its brick cunting hard, it disnae even huv any tatties in it." With that he picked it up and to prove a point, threw it at young John Justice, hitting him on the temple and knocking him clean out and into a sack of dessicated coconut that Lees senior had won in a game cards.  Some hours, or possibly days later, young John Justice came round, starving and locked in the cellar,  all he had to hand was the rejected chocolate covered fondant slab, covered in coconut flakes,  He could have chosen to break down the door with it, or to bash his useless brains in as a final apology for all the disappointments his dear father had had to suffer, but instead he did  something surely only a genius would do, something so unlikely with an object like that, he ate a bit of it, and it wasn't bad, not as good as a Tunnocks Caramel Log, but nevertheless, edible, Quite unbelievably, an iconic legend was born, The MacAroon tolerated throughout the world and beyond.

All well and good, my beliefs had been reinforced with these discoveries, but the investigations had also thrown up suggestions of an older heritage, a possible lineage that stretched back to the old witch burning times.   This revelation had the potential to reset the clock of Macaroon evolution.  Simon Schama has nothing to say on the matter and Richard Dawkins would not even pick up the phone, so I had to search for answers myself.   

These ancient Google texts claimed that Macaroons have been around since the 8th Century, which even pre-dates the Ginger Nut.  They would have been baked by master baker monks in Venice, monks then, as now,  are prolific master bakers.  

 Macaroon aka Camel Phlegm

The secret recipe was then stolen by Catherine de Medici's pastry chef when she went off to marry the famous jousting Richard Stillgoe lookalike, Henry II of France.  And so sparked the the War of the Spatulas, a little documented confrontation between France and Italy that led to the catastrophic schism between the almond and coconut flavoured biscuit, as the Venetian monks knew it, and the camp  Macaron, with its soft spongy melt in the mouthiness, as the ponsy Frencheis liked to call them.

Later, two Nuns, fleeing the French revolution,  set up shop in Nancy and baked Macarons for the locals, they became popular and the Nuns sold so many they bought a house  and became known as the Macaron sisters, which by the way, isn't very imaginative.   I would have called them the Fancy Nancy Bitchin Baker Sisters.  All the Hipsters of the day would have went there probably, 

And that's how the Macaron became what it is today, well, almost, the Fancy Nancy Bitchin Baker Sisters Macarons had no colour or cream filling,

Macaron....aka BathBomb

they were basically a Farleys Rusk, but never mind, the cast was set for  all pretentious little cake shops that make fortunes charging £3.50 for a cup cake that has about 12p of ingredients in it and no obvious skill required to make the fucking things.

And so, my investigation into Macaroons was complete, apart from one curious side note, In Puerto Rico, Macaroons are called besitos de coca, or little coconut kisses.  My mind immediately jumped to kissing a coconut and an old girlfriend, which tells you all you need to know about her. 

Lang may yer Lum Reek. 

Attack of the Vapours

Lums,

I stopped smoking about a year ago, I turned to the vapours to do that and its worked, I've successfully replaced my nicotine delivery vehicle with a much less harmful one, though there is some ongoing debate about how much less harmful.

That debate seems to be kept going by the tobacco and drugs firms who stand to lose  business from those no longer buying their death sticks or supporting their expensive nicotine rackets.  Big tobacco shouldn't get worried just yet though, its hard to believe but cigarette smoking is still on the up, one in 3 smokers in the world are Chinese and they love it.

Also, there are people who disapprove, non-smokers normally,  not happy that their measured and wise decision not to smoke has been undermined somehow and of course its one less opportunity to just be super smug and superior about choices made and risks avoided.  They see us cheerfully puffing away like the Vital Spark with no apparent deadly consequences and think we are cheating at something. So they will grasp any of the flaky studies by obscure research bodies that indicate vaping is even worse for you than smoking, there will be horrible repercussions, diseases with names such as popcorn lung and the children,  think of the children, these vaping things are just a bridge to hard core Woodbines. They'll say sniffily, " but your not really kicking the habit, are you" so what?  Its not the habit that does any harm.  I just think its like getting snooty at a recovering alcoholic because of all the coffee they drink, The Reeking Lum says, Gie me peace!

Thats not to say being a member of the vaping community does not have its challenges,  you are often forced out into the smoking pens for a puff, which is like asking that same recovering alky to drink his coffee only in a pub and there is the vaping shops, the place you go to replenish your fluids.

My own personal dealer...I mean supplier...er...storekeeper, works out of a little single fronted shop in a street where I think the rent is probably reasonable, if you get my drift.  Its tiny, but he has a large, old and battered chesterfield sofa in there where patrons can sit and relax and vape away the hours if they wish, chatting slackly about rigs and tanks and voltages and all the things that pass for hot topics in this particular sub-culture.
That means when you go in, its taken on the feel of a back street opium den, full of a thick sweet smelling fug and typically populated by a variety of characters.

Oooft,  this Witches Tit is fresh.

You'll have your lounging dandy students who fancy themselves as Oscar Wilde incarnate, or dangerous looking trunks of men that may have just stepped off an oiler from Murmansk or that uniquely Glaswegian creature, growth stunted by his mothers habits, 8 stone wet, the build of an empty track-suit and dressed head to toe in grey marl.

These fellas, very rarely women, and I will be in there choosing their poison, and this is when it gets weird.   My particular shopkeeper mixes his own and so gets to give them names as well, so I'll find myself asking for 30mls of unicorn blood, or "give me another bottle of Enter the Dragon", and "do you have any Mothers Milk left?"   Actually, I don't,  I normally say, " can I get a wee bottle of that dark purpley one"  "What" the shopkeeper will say, "Witches Tit?"   He should just wear a starry robe and a wizards pointy hat to complete the fantasy and be done with it.  Its better than smoking though, all you get from that is the joy of parting with a £10 every day, stinking clothes, yellow fingers, complaining teeth and gums,  disappointed kids and the promise of an early breathless demise.

Lang may yer lum vape.

What is TX3TW? who cares? What day is it? Are you here with my dinner?

Calling all Lums, a message from the Reeking one.

Yes, I know, they are infrequent, but productivity is down right across the country, haven't you noticed?

Anyhoo, how are you both?  I'm assuming any remaining followers are still here because they have either lost their wits or have passed away alone and the body hasn't been discovered yet, though if that is the case, there will be 5 months of milk on your doorstep, so it seems unlikely.  Madness it is then, that should make things easier.

Despite all that time away I haven't come up with any new or original ideas so I'm going to float this as one, its called my Three Things This Week column, or TX3TW column, see how clever that is, and I've called it a column, like a a grown up newspaper has columns and indeed columnists, a Reeking CoLUMnist even, this is worthy of a BAFTA or something.

So, here we go, Three Things This Week;

1. Burger King deliver.  
I'll say that again, Burger King DEE-LIV-ERR!  

Not here of course, but not solely in the most whimsical corners of my own imagination either, but in Madrid.  I saw it with my own eyes, the Burger Kings little pawns, scooting about the city on little electric magic monkey bikes, there panniers jammed full of Chicken Royales and big Whoppers on their way to the hungry masses, keeping the restive populace happy,  the ground  less likely to catch a spark of a flame grilled revolution that could threaten The Kings bundom.  But why Madrid and as far as I can tell, only Madrid? Did Cortes bring the ancient ways back with Inca gold?  Who knows, but I want burgers on a bike coming up my street. 

2. Old people's playgrounds are Da Bomb.  

In the middle of Madrid there is a beautiful park called the Parque De El Retiro,  it appears to be, to be fair, a monument to Spains bloodthirsty colonial past and measles spreading but nevertheless, a lovely place to spend a few hours.   I did,  I sipped coffees and watched the beautiful people of Spain meander past on there way to  lie down somewhere else other than the place they were lying down before.  All that lazing about is OK for the young, the workers charged with keeping the economy parping along, but the oldies, they get to work out in geriatric jungle gyms.  Its great to see, special playgrounds for old folk to get some gentle exercise, I saw some old ladies sitting on a bench chatting away , probably about the good old fascist days,  but pedalling away on some cranks cemented into the ground and an old man, who might have waved The Armada off from Cadiz winding a big gear, like he was raising a bucket of gold from deep inside an Incan tomb, there were balance beams and little flights of stairs, no more than 3 steps, for them to climb.   It didn’t look the greatest fun, but Spanish pensioners looked fit and happy and I bet would beat ours in a race if it came to that.

3. There are worse places than Luton.

As well as magical Madrid, I also visited lovely Luton for the first time recently, I say lovely like a compulsive liar might say it when he really feels the urge to lie about something.  Its not great,  though the taxi driver said it was OK, there are worse places he said, and who could argue with that? Not me, there are planets that if you set foot on, your lungs would boil and your eyes would shoot out your head like a chameleons tongue before the contents of your body cavity rapidly expressed through your arse, propelling you like a shit powered rocket into a low and uncomfortable orbit.

I think Luton is well known for something, is it Bedford vans?

I don’t know, anyway, first of all the airport is a chaotic building site that extends beyond the arrivals area all the way out to the car-park, you get funnelled along between temporary plaster board walls, spat out into the concourse and funnelled some more between temporary fencing to the teeming bus stops, by the way, Luton is like the entry point for  millions  of Eastern European joiners and plumbers, I can only suppose that none of them have learned enough good English by this time  to offer to get the airport finished for a very reasonable price.  The Welcome to England experience isn't over yet though, the  Heras fencing is like a see through maze and it takes no little wits to find the taxi rank and when you do its not clear if you are at the back or the front of the queue.
The airport also seems to be the place where the Arnold Clark of private jets has set up shop.  There is a big Gulfstream place there with dozens of billionaire buses parked like second hand cars for sale minus the bunting and porta-kabin.  Big Trump size ones and tiny little ones like you might buy from Argos, well not that small, but small.
Things got better for a while, I was staying at Luton Hoo Hotel, very nice with grounds so large, when I left, the taxi meter had gone to £5.60 before we had even reached the end of the drive.    I got dropped off at a forgettable train station in what looked a forgettable town centre, circled by the usual retail park filler and hashed by the standard one way systems. There will be worse places no doubt.

More TX3TW next week, maybe.

How was that?  Apologies for the no doubt countless spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, or flourishes as I like to call them, it is 1am though, but, It might get better, I'm ever the optimist.

Lang may yer lum reek

Wikipeadia Roulette, like chat roulette with less cocks

Hello Lums, here I am, infrequently blogging.

I thought it was about time for a return of your favourite game, the one harder than kidnapping a chubber, yes, its Wkipeadia Roulette.  That's where I select random articles on Wikipeadia and count how many I go through before I hit something I have a vague, possibly imaginary, knowledge of.  I never said it was fun.

Ah, prostate massage,
I remember  why I married you now. 

Anyway, here we go.

1. Erivelton  Gomes Viana, aka. Erivelton. He's a Brazilian footballer I've never heard of, doesn't mean to say he's good just because he is Brazilian, I still remember Raphael Scheidt, the unfortunately named Celtic defender, who really was. 
2. Raymond Couraud, aka, Capn Jack William Raymond Lee, a French soldier and gangster who did some soldiering in the war and some gangstering after it, an interesting fellow no doubt, but alas, I was ignorant. 
3. WJLD, is a radio station in Fairfield, Alabama. It plays something called "urban oldies" music which just doesn't sound right to me. I always thought the letters in US radio stations actually stood for something and in this case they do, W J L Doss was the original owner of the station, but I only learned that in the last 20 seconds, so onwards. 
4. Las Tres Perfectas Casadas. (The Three Perfect Wives) is a Mexican comedy (though it sounds more like a tragi-fantasy to me) made in 1953 not starring the three amigos. 
5. Millionaire. Unfortunately not the shortbread, but the Belgian rock band. Yep, Belgium has a rock band, I didn't know that. 
6. Rhamphodopsis, take a breath, its a distinct genus of ptyctodant placoderm, a fish type thing.  Until I read that I would have put sheckles on Rhmaphodopsis being an Egyptian Pharoah. 
7. Joe Walsh, and bingo, he was in The Eagles.  Seven , that's not bad for me, just goes to show smoking and celibacy is not as bad for your brain as I had convinced myself. 

Tune in next time for a not at all amusing story about kung fu movies. 

Lang may yer lum reek. 

A panda, a pigeon and a P45

There he is, Hands up Muthafuckaa!!!

Hello Reeking Lums, remember me?

Its been so long, to be fair, I have been busy and a lot of shit has gone down since last you saw anything up my lum.

So what have I been doing?  Well, the Great Big International School Sports day pretty much took all my summer and looking for a job has taken all my attention, fortitude and patience.

Lets start with the LOLympics. It was great wasn't it, the weather was kind, the public loved it and walking to work in the morning through Stratford you got a real sense of being at the centre of the world.   I had imagined my job would be a bit like Jack Bauers,  abseiling down tower blocks, car chases,  sinister phone calls with evil henchmen masquerading as government officials and a body count of his drones and gimps that  would make Skillz Millz from Taken blush.  In the end, thankfully it has to be said, it was pretty uneventful .   I remember mentally noting a few "incidents" along the way because I thought it would provide some scale to the issues being dealt with behind the scenes.(some other things may or may not have happened, I may have been making tea and missed them)

We had the North Korean flag faux pas and the associated panicky round up of the face painters at Hampden stadium, though it remains unclear how many requests had been made for the North Korean flag to be painted on anybodies face.  There was a pigeon loose in Wembley arena, we had to take it seriously, it was acting suspiciously.  There was a plague ship, somebody pissing in the stands at beach volleyball, tacks on the road of the cycling races and signs turned the wrong way at the equestrian events which made me think Dick Dastardly was competing.  A favourite episode was the police sending us a picture of a protester with a pandas head on to aid identification, though they could just have said, look out for the fella with the big panda head, that would have given us enough to go on.

An old copper I was working with had some great tales of the old days on the force.  One night they lifted a couple for getting involved in a drunken domestic.  The boy was still scrapping when they got him in the van and they had to sit on him to keep him still, his girlfriend was in the back of the van as well and she caught one of the policeman glancing up her mini skirt, " that's right, I've no fucking knickers on" she says, quick as a flash the copper replies " thank fuck for that, I thought you'd sat on my kebab"

The LOLympic Family, as they like to be known, take a bit of getting used to, not the athletes who I'm sure are humble, genuine people, but the officials are a bit up themselves.  I remember hearing it said that a group of official judges had said they were quite happy to take a train back to Central London, but they didn't want to wait on one. That left me wondering how that could be managed, just have a train on constant stand by I guess, if they had said they wanted to drive it too they probably would have been allowed to.  Biggest disappointment I think was the non appearance of the army of cheap prostitutes that were meant to descend on the city, I didn't see any, though apparently one of the super yachts parked in Canary Wharf used to get some stunners delivered at night.   You can read a bit about my opinion on the whole sorry situation here.  http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=47954

The other big summer distraction was finding a job.  My expectations were reasonable, 15 minutes from Kirkintilloch,  BMW/Merc company car, corporate credit card, international business class travel to far flung interesting places, private health including dental, gym membership, private school for any future children, 10% employers pension contribution, loads of free stuff and a salary about 300% of the national average, that would do.   I spoke with RIM, the Blackberry people, you could smell the decay on them, if they are still in business in 2 years I'll be surprised, I spoke with a software company that provides processing tools for the hotel business, they didn't really know what they wanted, I spoke with Kelloggs, this was a Grrrreat number, but they didn't want me in the end and I even flew to Munich for an interview with a software firm needing a security meister.   In the end I accepted a job with Britain's favourite domestic and motor insurer, with none of the pre-requisites listed previously, though the pension is decent, hope I get to spend some of it. 

 I'm glad I started the job hunt early though, way back in March.  Its crazy to think you will get offered the first job you go for, or even think its wise to accept the first one, but it can be a demoralising experience when you get so far through the process, answering the same daft HR questions like, "Tell me about a time you had to give someone a difficult message" ( I, of course worked at Port Dundas Distillery (RIP) previously, and any message where you asked anyone to do anything was generally thought of as difficult and met with bear like scowls and ill conceived arguments for not doing it). Yazz would be more use as a lift attendant than some of they lazy fuckers.  Anyway, as I was saying, to get so far, over weeks or months then not get the job is heart breaking, the only solace being in Mums old adage, "Whits fur ye, will no go by ye"  which is a nod to fate, and not to question it to much.  

That cements me in London for a while longer I suppose. But whits fur ye will no go by ye

So, nice to be back, I can now call myself an infrequent blogger all over again. 

Lang May Yer Lum Reek 

Honest, it was an elephant and anyway, where did all the hunchbacks go?

Hello Reeking Lums

I've just not two seconds ago learned that many marketing pictures of watches and clocks picture them at 0950 or 1410 because the position of the hands resembles a (rather angular) smiley face.   That's like some kind of Swiss voodoo mind control that is. 

Meh, I'll have to see more
 before I believe it

Anyway, enough of that, I'm eager to relay a story to you that I heard a few Peroni nights ago.  Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

A friend of mine had been working in South Africa on a very demanding and stressful contract for a couple of years, after it was finished, he, lets call him John and his work mate, we shall call him....Marty, decided they would like to chill, recharge the batteries and go on a bit of an adventure.  So they bought a jeep, loaded it up with supplies and drove off into the interior for 4 months, driving up to Mozambique, and across southern Central Africa all the way to Namibia and back again via the Cape and South Africa.   It sounded brilliant, the tales of camping under the stars with lions roaring in the distance, the peculiar surprising people they met and the genuine hospitality and outrageous friendliness of your average Joe in Africa.


OH MY GOD!!!  Its true
The watch industry is controlling our free will with smiley watches

One night they pitched camp in Botswana somewhere, out in the country, miles from anywhere with a blanket of stars above them and the chirrup of a billion bugs for background music.  They climbed into their tent and drifted off to sleep.   
Through the night, John woke up for whatever reason and was contemplating the stars that could be seen through the fabric of the tent, a slight noise outside  he took notice of, but wasn't alarmed as it was probably some creature or another sniffing around the camp, then he noticed the stars disappear above him and two gleaming white tusks loom over the tent, the lack of alarm turned to frozen shock.   Elephants apparently get around very quietly for a big thing and some of them, in this case, a big bull, had wandered into camp and discovered the tent.   It gave it a gentle little kick, John at this time thinking he's going to be crushed under a clumsy elephant didn't want to speak or shout or make any noise in case he was panicked into a stompy squashy retreat.   Then it grabbed the top of the tent with its trunk and started to give it a bit of a shake, obviously trying to figure out what this thing was, John by this time couldn't contain himself..... marty, he whispered with no response, marty....marty.......MARTY....still no response to Johns increasingly frantic whispered alerts, Marty was obviously sound asleep.  The elephant got bored and trudged off, disappoined probably, and that was that, until the morning and John saw all the elephant shit about the place. "At least when I show Marty this lot he'll believe my story" he thought.  When Marty woke up he explained the happenings of the night before and said he couldn't believe he didn't feel the tent shaking or hear him calling his name.  Marty said "I did", "what?" says John, "why didn't you respond?"  Marty replies, "I thought you were masturbating and didn't want to embarrass you"?  "What!", says John, "even though I'm calling your name in hushed little tones and the tents about to get shaken from its guy ropes, you still thought I was having a wank?", "er, Yup".   I thought this was one of the funniest things I'd heard for like ages.

It was shortly after this, it may even have been the same night I had such a vivid memorable dream that I thought I should record it in some way, in case its a portent of future events, then I can say without doubt or fear of Derek Acorah calling me a fraud "I knew that was going to happen".   I dreamt that Stonehenge was stolen.  I was there, witnessing it, like the schoolboy hero in a boys own comic, hiding behind some gorse bushes in the dead of night watching as the blocks were lifted on to flat bed lorries and driven away.   In my dream, I'm sure I had the inner conviction that it was at the behest of a Russian billionaire and he was going to re-erect them in his garden fortress.  He got away with it too,  next thing I remember was standing around in the morning with a local policeman, who looked uncannily like PC Murdoch, with his hat off, scratching his head and rubbing his chin wondering what had went on.   If it happens, you heard it here first. 

Another disappearing thing I thought about the other day is hunchbacks, you just don't see them around these days.  We had one live over the road from us when I was growing up in the 70s/80s so perhaps I'm a bit more sensitive to them than the ordinary man in the street, not the ordinary man in our street of course, because they will be just as familiar with him as me.  And when I think about it, we had one at work aswell back in the 90s.  One came on the tube the other morning and it took me by some surprise, it was the first I'd seen for years. 
I had a girlfriend once that told me she had a fear of dwarfs, i thought, well, that's not very debilitating, I mean, how many dwarfs do you see in the average day especially if you steer clear of Warhammer shops and are careful around pantomine season, then I left her flat and met one on the stairs, he lived in the same block, which I thought was a spectacular quirk of fate.

I've got more to tell, I went to Munich, drove a thousand miles in a mini-bus , I put on clowns makeup and wore new shoes that ate a good portion of my feet,  I know how to control a runaway camel,  but these tales can wait.   

Lang may yer lum reek.  

John Steinbeck, M&Ms and a Premier Inn, sounds like a good night, it wasnt.

Greekings from the Lum side, 

Hey George,
Did you bury the body good? 

I've never really got M &Ms marketing.  They portray them as lovable little characters in appealing colours that we are meant to scoff down like a big cruel giant, consuming families and whole communities of them , and feel good about it.   
There is a wise cracking one, full of street marts ( an undoubted pain in the arse) and one that I'll call a retard (that you wouldn't ask to babysit).  That got me thinking M&M stood for Mice and Men, these things are like the original Lennie and George, perhaps George strangled a Smartie at some point and they are on the run from the confectionery Interpol.   The idea of that might well be true, but actually the letters stand for the founders of Hersheys, Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie, I'm guessing Bruce is the dim one.  
This pointless preamble is really to introduce my visit to M&M World.  In the heart of London's Theatre Land, its like 4 floors of chocolatey whores in there.  These candy characters are selling everything,  I expected to see a manky curtain in the corner where Sue, the green one, who I think is a girl, though her name is the only thing that gives that away, will be waiting, fag in hand, cheap shoes  and the promise of a happy ending.  
The place was heaving with people, lapping it up, buying key-rings, plates, t-shirts, there was even a pair of sunglasses with diamantes on the side which would normally say D&G, but instead said M&M, and they wanted £120 for them.  Who would buy them, Bertie Bassets trashy daughter Britney?
There were big dispensers so you could fill up a little polythene bag of the same tasting sweety, granted, you could have a chocolate one, or a peanut one, but that still adds up to a variety of 2 sweeties.  The dispensers had a lever on them that you pulled with your bag placed underneath to catch a portion.  I thought, not unreasonably in my mind, that each pull would measure out a standard weight, but no, they just keep coming, spewing out like the Wizard of Oz's vomit.  I discretely discarded that bulging bag and gingerly selected another group of jolly little candy people.  It was £5, and I felt as if I'd been coshed and had my pockets rifled.  
At the back, deep down on the lowest floor, there was an area behind a glass wall, where laboured a white coated teenager in what was hilariously called the colour lab or something, like there coming up with new colours, or is it an M&M farm, where the young M&Ms are born and raised in batteries ready for the big day they get selected and poured into a bag and onto a weighing scale.  


One exciting piece of news I'm sure you'll be delighted for me to share with you.  In this Olympic year, I managed to set my own personal best in a discipline that I have a particular aptitude for.   
It happened a good few Saturdays ago,  I had offered to take the train down to Tunbridge Wells to help a friend with some heavy lifting when they moved flat.  I'm never going to set any PBs for heavy lifting, so that's not it.  
Afterwards, we had a few beers, taking the opportunity to enjoy a few out side the city walls for a change.  Again, not a personal best, it was a fairly conservative session with me begging my leave at around 22:30.  This in theory gave me plenty of time for the 55 minute journey to London, getting me there in time for the last tubes home.  So, imagine my delight and surprise to be shaken awake by the guard at 01:30 about 4 miles from where I had started, in Tonbridge, Kent.   I had slept for 3 hours and covered some 80 miles sound asleep on the train.  Take into account the 1 hour the train was stationary at Charing Cross in London, where the guard was obviously not as diligent in his duties and it all adds up to a new personal record. 
I thought I had actually been carried on the train all the way to Hastings on the Kent coast and back, but an interrogation of my phones wherabouts history, showed that was not the case and I had to stick to 80 miles. 
Normally, being deposited at a foreign train station in the early hours would mean no more than a search for the bus stop and to enter the night bus lottery,  but I was off the night bus radar and a taxi would have been hundreds....probably.   I decided to walk about Tonbridge and think about what I could do, if worst comes to worst, just walking for 5 hours will mean the first train of the morning will be due.  Trouble was, Tonbridge isn't that big, and after the 3 or 4th time up and down the high street I was frankly bored and I imagined I was attracting the kind of attention John Rambo would get if he ambled into town.  
It was about the coldest night of the year and about -10 degrees, I was actually beginning to get a bit anxious.   I remembered that educational film from when I was a kid about how to recognise the onset of hypothermia. Sitting down and falling asleep if I remember is not a good idea.  In the end, with my feet going numb and breathing getting painful, I decided to hail the one cab in town and find a hotel.  The Premier Inn, £65 for the night, for about 4 hours sleep.  So there you go, 80 miles and £65, I think pips the mileage from Glasgow to Perth in what was my previous best.    I'm quite happy to retire now, from my sleeping on trains career. 


Lang May Yer Lum Reek.