Coastalblog

Yep, just me here by now I reckon, it really has been a while.

Look, I'm really busy, okay? I know, it's a poor excuse, and I promised you that nice dinner and everything, I even said I might get round to putting some new curtains up but you know, it's not happened.

I'd love to think that I could pay poor, battered, Doncaster social serviced, Coastalblog the respect and attention it deserves but fuck it. It isn't going to happen. By this stage of the game, I really am just talking to myself, and quite right too. No-one should actively have to listen, that would just be a bit "Smash Hits" and , frankly. I've no idea why I made either that reference or the effort required to type quote marks.

Incidentally, quote unquote is shit. But not as shit as moneybox live. Do you have any conception of precisely how much time I spend behind a stove? No, you do not. Lucky, lucky you.

yes I know, post-tastic; this is what happens when mrs coastalblog goes away for any length of time, frankly it's pathetic. I revert rapidly to the late night wine ways of a few years back in approx ten minutes, this is some lord of the flies shit right here. Yes, I have been listening to a bunch of music that was considered cool ten years ago, why on earth do you ask?

Anyhoo, in passing, this treat from the ever-giving BBC's Have Your Say (re: Glenrothes byelection, obv)

It is a tragedy for Britain that Brown thinks he is successful. Scotch people are no better than pigs

Sarah Plankin, Chaville

Ladies. And. Gentlemen. I give you Sarah Plankin from Chaville. And I wish each and every one of you to drink deeply of her majesty. Amazing work. Genuinely amazing.

You knew this already.

I just saw an advert for his new entertaining the troops DVD.

He's wearing camo.

He's a highly paid comedian who is not,to the best of my knowledge, an actively serving soldier.

Ergo, he's a cunt.

Posted this on I Love Cooking )(on the cheapo recipes thread, hence the various economic recipes thread), but I thought it was high time Coastalblog had an update, poor neglected soul that it is. In work I actually use a mix of venison, partridge, rabbit and mallard for this:

Game, god bless it, is pretty cheap (or it is round here, anyway) at the mo. So, diced venison goes in a big dish with butter, chopped onion, a little garlic, nutmeg, paprika, brown gently, pop in a couple of tablespoons of plain flour and stir further, add water to the alligator lurking in a swamp level and leave, covered, to putter away merrily to itself for three hours or so on the lowest heat you can manage. Towards the end, should you be lucky enough to have some thyme or rosemary knocking about in your garden, apply judiciously. If you don't, buy some. It keeps well and a little goes a long way. Naturally, if you're using the dried stuff put it in nearer the start.

At this juncture it's worth pointing out that if you have some odds and sods of red wine floating about, or (praise be) some of that pure stock jelly left from draining a chicken's roasting tin and chilling it then that will do nicely in place of some of the water. But just water is fine.

Make a very short pastry. Lard, please. it's cheaper. You'll be needing to use the flour what with the bag you opened to stir in with the venison. Beat one egg, half for the pastry and half for the glaze. Make pie lids.

Accompaniament: parsnip, carrot and beetroot sliced very very thin, no more than 3-4mm (a mandolin is handy here, knives for the more confident). Spread out on a baking tray, salt well, toss with olive oil and crisp up in the oven (keeping a reasonably sharp eye out, these can go from phenomenal to catastrophic in a few minutes). You've some herbs left you say? Hell, toss them with these!

Glop venison on plate, perch pie lid jauntily atop, serve a bowl of the crisps on the side. If you've some cabbage knocking about shred it, butter it and fry it.

Costs buttons.

Bah. Further perusal of the other Matt Fallaize (or the Continuity Matt Fallaize as I prefer to think of him)'s manifesto reveals him to be (and who would or could have thought otherwise?) a thoroughly reasonable and sensible chap. So more power to his elbow.

Anyhoo, on an entirely unrelated matter I note with interest that a couple of Ormskirkian's are keeping up the twon's noble tradition of slightly odd crime by being sent down for art theft. he painting in question was yoinked froma Scottish stately ome some time ago, though I do feel the Champion missed a trick by focusing on such trifling details as the painting's title, value, length of sentences etc; rather than what Coastalblog feels to be the true fulcrum of the story, the fact that as the painting was being stolen one of the thieves said to a frightened tour guide "Don't worry love, we're the police. This is just practice."

On such lines are legends built. Good work, gentlemen.

N.B. Coastalblog does not in any way support or condone crime in any form. Coastalblog would like to make it clear that it in fact supports and condones only stupid one-liners, at any time and in any given situation. Thankyou. Don't want the Continuity Matt Fallaize's good name dragged through the Guernsey mud due to my trifling idiocies now, do we?

I've been away from the net too long, clearly. Time was there was only one Matt Fallaize round the top of the google pops. Yours bleedin' truly. But what happens? I bugger off for five minutes to get with the fathering and business starting and all the concomitant fun + games and some other Matt Fallaize goes and sweeps all before him mightily in some election in Guernsey.

Now, whilst I must obviously give props to a man possessed of possibly the noblest name in christendom, salute his victory and wish him all the best with his inexorable rise to what I would imagine will be the top (how could it be anything else?) I can't help but note that he's kicking me all over google, all of which is a long winded and possibly overconfrontational way of saying I've been, yet again, neglecting dear old coastalblog, and, by extension, you.

This will not stand. Things fall apart the centre etc etc, you know the rest. This Channel Islandic upstart must be confined to page four, maybe two at best. As a wise woman once said, I can't be doing with this sort of thing. There's only room for one Matt Fallaize in this neck of the woods. And that Matt Fallaize is this Matt Fallaize. Have I said Matt Fallaize enough yet? Matt Fallaize, ladies and gentlemen.

Update: omg he's even got Matt Fallaize dot com. Why don't I have Matt Fallaize dot com? Not that I'd have actually have done anything with it but I could maybe have sold it to him for a pint of lovely Guernsey cream.

Further update: ooohh I've started getting into the policy details of the other Matt Fallaize. Apparently people don't feel safe after dark in Guernsey or whatever and therefore no means no and hanging's too good for teenagers or something, I have the feeling of a couple of weeks worth of entertainment encircling. Stay tuned.

Twice in two days, I do't know what's come over me, I feel all giddy, I'll have to sit down. And whilst I'm sitting down I'll be reading the estimable Gloom Cupboard wherein, further to yesterday's post I'll find one by yours truly. Crikey but we live in a fast moving world these days. I'll have published ten books, gone through three marriages had a public breakdown and be living the life of an angry hermit by the end of next february at this rate.

Blatant self promotion aside I particularly like Peter Schwartz's "Unwanted Love Poem", also, good stuff. I can see Gloom Cupboard becoming a regular visit (thanks to Andrew Taylor for the heads up), hence sidebar linkage.