Day 543: I Narrowly Escape Death

It has been a quiet week. I am waiting for my work permit to arrive and the days are passing slowly, but not unpleasantly: the snow plops down; tiny leaves cartwheel down the highway; pathologists brush snow from Subarus; the local supermarket continues to think it is in France in 1982, and I learn to drive my mother-in-law's pale gold Mazda.

It is pleasant, this life; soon enough I will be wearing 'power suits' and using a mobile telephone; my 'partner' will look at me with his eyes of liquid green and ask, in a tiny voice, if I am in fact married to my work. Then we will fight and there will be hitting with for e.g. knitted Pierre Trudeau ragdolls, or a seven-pack of Hula-Hoops sent in an emergency parcel from London.

Regular readers will be aware that one of the results of all this 'free time' is the opportunity I have had to think about biscuits*. Indeed, a cursory glance at the comments on my last post will reveal how my many legions of adoring readers have 'risen to the challenge', as it were, by providing a sheaf of comments rich in recipes, clarification, irrelevance, pomposity, recommendations**, presumption, kindness and fuckwittery.

It is all quite good, this biscuit-chat, but it is not enough to fill up all of my time. I have, as a result, decided to test out some customer service departments. Here is the result of my survey:

Harrods

Harrods is only good if you do not live in London. If you live in London you know for a fact that it is full of tourists and ghastly people with new money buying golden taps, busts of Lady "Princess of Hearts" Di and portaits on velvet of Mohammed Al-Fayed.

On the other hand, Harrods is good for presents for people in other countries, especially if they like tea and biscuits and are over 50.

Summary of email of complaint: Price labels, when removed from products, rip off half the packaging, making the present look pikey.

Reaction from Harrods: Full refund, no questions asked.

Mark: One email was ignored for five days. An email to the press department resulted in an almost-immediate response. Had the original knobbers not ignored my email, I would have given Harrods 10/10. As it is, they get 8/10.

Jigsaw

It is OK for the high street but good for jerseys if you look like me (i.e. really beautiful, in a somewhat simian style). I like their jerseys and buy many. They are good for cold places, e.g. Canada where I now live.

Summary of email of complaint: Your jersey that I bought started pilling within three hours. I am sad. Very sad. So sad. It is rubbish.

Reaction from Jigsaw: Oh gosh, yah, awfully sorry. Am off on maternity leave on, like, Friday, but send me the serial number, yah? And if you want to send it back, we'll give you, like, a refund. Yah?

Mark: Quite quick and nice and that but a bit fucking wet. Also I said I wasn't going to send it back as live in Canada etc and can't be bothered with posting and all of that. 6/10 for Sloaniness; would have been 4/10, but she knew how to spell.

Novotel

Do not laugh!!! I was there on Saturday in Ottawa and it was really good despite smelling a bit like a hospital. (And I mean good for not much money, but we were only going to lie down there in between drinking three-litre glasses of beer and picking federally-correct bilingual fights with the locals.) I left my boots there.

Summary of telephone call: Hello. I left my boots in room 624.

Response: I am not at my desk. I will call you back in a second. (Calls back in 2 minutes.) Yes I have them. I will send them back to you tomorrow. What is your address? Let me check that. Thank you very much for choosing Novotel.

Mark: 10/10. Fucking astounding. If in the Britain they would ask you for a postal order to cover the postage and/or steal the boots to sell for fags.

Europe's Best

Let me explain for the sake of non-Canadian residents: Europe's Best is a brand of frozen food products. They advertise a lot here. They have large amounts of space in the 'chiller cabinets'. They really get on my tits as I think their name is stupid and thy are always on the telly going: yeah our fruit 'n' veg is really great, when it probably isn't.

I assumed a pseudonym, and wrote to them.


























I am still in correspondence with Europe's Best, who seem to think that the offer of a 'voucher' will distract me from the fact that they told me (in their letter) that some of their produce is grown in Peru and Mexico - neither of which are in Europe!! Do they think I am stupid or something? I jolly well hope not!!!

But all this is as nothing, for on Saturday we nearly died. I will not go into detail, but suffice to say that the following 'image' captures - in some small way - the horror we had to endure.




















When I have recovered from the shock, I will try and find the energy to write a little on what England seems like when you don't live there any more. In the meantime, I shall eat my imported oatcakes and stare, wide-eyed with horror, at Coronation Street on the CBC. Apparently Leanne is now a lady of the night!

Pip pip

NWM



* I bought to gingerbread persons from a shop in Ottawa. I ate half the lady and the head of the man and then threw them away. They were rubbish.

* Should anyone wish to send me either Prince Charles' ginger and chocolate biscuits, or the Fortnum and Mason ginger and chili biscuits, I am more than happy to furnish you with my postal address. Suffice to say the first line is "Chez Monkey"!

SPECIAL EDITION: MY FAVOURITE BISCUIT

Regular readers gasped upon reading my last excellent post. Could it really be possible that one person - and one person alone - could suggest so many fascinating future 'topics' for discussion?

The answer is yes, and I am that person. Not only are my ideas tooth-achingly good, but I am also able to 'bring them to life', or 'execute them' (as the advertising johnnies say) in a way that gets people really talking. It is quite brilliant.

OK. Here goes. To start off, I give you Topic Number 4:

"My Favourite Biscuit (And Why)"

British people know what I mean when I say 'biscuit'. Americans think they know what I mean, and Canadians don't really mind one way or another, so I had better explain before I start. (I do not want confusion, but confusion is possible, what with the fact that the metaphorical door to my web-log is not unlike the fire escape of the main United Nations building after a false fire alarm.)

In America (which is quite a strange place), when you say "give me a biscuit, cretin, and stop cocking on about your superpower status", they try and give you what we in the Old World would (loosely) describe as a 'scone'. (It's not exactly the same, but you get the gist.)

In Britain, when you say 'biscuit', you mean what the Americans might refer to as a 'cookie' or a 'cracker'. Interestingly, however, the British 'biscuit' could be any number of things (including a wafer, but not a KitKat).

Broadly, my own definition of 'biscuit' is thus: if you might find it in a selection tin (savoury or sweet), it is a biscuit. (See fig. 1, in which the area highlighted in duck-egg blue denotes the type of biscuit one might find in a mixed selection):

Fig 1





I should point out that the examples given, or indeed various sub-species of biscuit described, are by no means exhaustive and serve to illustrate the point rather than provide a dictionary-worthy description of the term 'biscuit'.

Wikipedia attempts a definition here; there is another, very amusing and clever definition here, written by someone who, I suspect, works in the advertising but really, at the end of it all: if you can see it in a tin, it's definitely a biscuit.

To further clarify, I present you with some mixed biscuit selections:



























These 'selections' come in posh, too, but their contents - despite being organic and/or personally stamped by the signet ring of Prince Charles, are, nevertheless, still biscuits.













Now that is clear, I feel able to reveal my favourite biscuit. It is the 'Ginger Nut', my favourite biscuit for the following reasons:

1. It is not fancy.
2. It is with ginger, which is a strong flavour that I like.
3. It is very crunchy and not too sweet.
4. It is possible to eat many of them without feeling sick.
5. If you put them with sherry you have the beginnings of a strange 1970s pudding.

In fact, I have a fondness for ginger biscuits, all of them. I am willing to try other ginger biscuits if people would like to send them in; if they are sufficiently good, I will 'endorse' them on my web-blog, even going so far as to produce and film a 'testimonial' that I shall distribute on YouTube and the more minor satellite channels. I also like ginger cake and ponies.

I hope that has cleared that one up.

(If you are interested in biscuits, may I suggest you go and see Smitten Kitten, who offers up a recipe that looks very good. Katy sent me there, and she was right to.)

Coming Next: What Would I Rather Do: Never Poo Again, Or Never Eat Toast?

Day 536: I Am Losing Readers!!!

I do not think it is a 'seasonal lull'. That alone cannot account for a near 50% drop in readership in the last three weeks or (to illustrate it in equally tragic, if not numerically different) terms, a 63% drop year-on-year.

I had better write more 'posts', and this time they had better be interesting. I think this is the 'root of the problem', or the 'genesis of the issue'. (I cannot believe that many people have died in the intemperate British winter.)

But I have nothing to write about! I have not had to cut the chewinggum from my ladygarden in recent months; nor have I seen any giant classical cocks. The squirrels are quiet and I have no neighbours to hate, as the nearest one is fifteen miles away.

However, a number of 'topics' spring to mind. Here they are. You can choose which one you would like the most, and then I will write it with my tiny little monkey paws.

1. Who would win in a fight: England or Canada?

2. What I Miss About England

3. What England Seems Like When You Do Not Live There Any More

4. My Favourite Biscuit (and why)

5. What Would I Rather Do: Never Poo Again, Or Never Eat Toast?

I can do all of them if you like, spread out over some time, e.g. up to and including one month. That should do it.

In anticipation of your early reply,

NWM

Day 529: I Review An Old Email

I am in London until tomorrow morning at 9.45am, whereupon I mount an Air Transat aeroplane and return to Montreal, where I now live in conjugal confusion with a French Canadian veterinary research pathologist*.

In England, the people walk the streets gasping about the cold, but in London it is only -1, and in Montreal it is -17. This means English people are wetsies and Canadians are hard and would probably win in a fight (if they could be bothered).

And in London, the clearing out of my plush one-bedroom Brixton penthouse swankpad continues. In the bottom of a previously-stuck drawer, I find an email dated 3rd June 2003, written ten months before I took a very fucking long sabbatical.


From: NWM

To: Random list of ex-colleagues

Date: 3/6/02 7.48pm

Subject: WELCOME TO NISSAN
______________________________________________

So, we're sitting on the train to Rickmansworth on our way to a Nissan meeting, and Roz suddenly says, "Bloody hell, I heard this story at the weekend, you're not going to believe it". Steve and I look at her and say, "What?". She says, "Well, my mate knows this girl who's got these tiny monkeys, the size of a hamster apparently, and she keeps them in a hamster cage."

"Do they eat tiny bananas?", I say, "like the ones you get from Woolies, you know, made of foam?". Then Steve says, "How do you know they weren't hamsters dressed up in tiny little monkey suits?". Roz says, "Well they weren't, there really ARE tiny monkeys in the world, the size of hamsters."

We think about this for a bit then Steve says, "What about hamsters the size of monkeys?". Then Roz says, "What, eating enormous sunflower seeds?".

Good God.



Happy New Year, one and all!



* Recent events involving a hairdresser-cum-standup comedian with a philosophy degree mean he can no longer be accurately described as 'self haircutting', at least until the fin grows out.

Day 525: I Offer My Readers A Seasonal Warning

Yes my friends. It is the season of licking out the inside of a family size tin of Quality Street with your rasping tongue, of being caught gnawing on a joint of ham in the light of a inquisitive torch as you feast in the clammy larder of your incontinent grandmother, and of sucking Bailey's straight from the bottle with a curly straw.

But beware. If you do not stop soon, the same fate could befall you as befell the porky squirrel discussed in this online article, forwarded to me by MonkeyMother under the heading "URGENT - TRAPPED SQUIRRELY".

In other news, what the cock are these beavers doing in this eighteenth century German print? If this is what they thought North America was like, I wonder there were any German immigrants to North America at all!