Coastalblog

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 poi...

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. Coastalb...

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, ma...

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.

Hello chaps Well it's all been beyond hectic, no point reiterating the same old tropes, however life continues. There's a new Ormskirk short story up, should you care to view, the whole getting some poems up on Stride thing made me determined to try to keep going, one way or the other, I'm off to submit a few elsewhere whilst I'm at this so toodle pip. Watch this space though, I think I may finally be getting the hang of the whole work/life balance thing. Fingers crossed.

Just. Poems up at Stride here . Hmm, took a while to rememebr the html there, clearly not enough time spent at the computer these days. Anyhow, proof (if proof be need be) that some creative work is still ongoing. Though not much. Maybe even some new OSS before too much longer. This is, of course, all time dependant, and as I may have noted, i have bugger all. But we shall see.

So I managed to take a couple of days off to swing by the south east and give poor old grandparents (who for various reasons have been unable to thus far) a taste of The Boy. Jolly pleasant it was too, he sat and cooed and gurgled obligingly thus cheering grandparents up no end. Familial duties discharged it was warm glows all round. However, with no disrespect intended to the relloes (who it was, as ever, a pleasure to see) it was with no small relief that I headed back north. There's something about the home counties which never fails to get on my nerves. Note, this is not intended as a swipe at the south east in general, I'm reliably informed some parts are quite nice, but never do I ever feel as though I'm intruding on Hallmark card as when ploughing through darkest Bucks. It took me a while to realise why. Normally I'm a sucker for the picture perfect, glorious villages of old england, village greens, bell-towers, all that jazz. Show me a thatched roof and I'll...

I've been thinking a lot about ownership recently. I work in two spheres where originality is a nebulous concept. In writing we talk of all influences having a direct bearing on one's personal style, an unconscious script. If you've read Creeley then some Creeley ineivitably creeps in; if you've read Berrigan then some wanders up without you realising; if you've read Andrew Motion then you'll make fucking sure that none gets anywhere near you whatsoever. In cooking we damn well know about influences having a direct bearing on one's personal style. All those of us cooking at some point owe a debt to Careme, to Elizabeth David, to Escoffier, to Mrs Beeton, to an unnamed army of cooks down the centuries. I've been thinking about this because I think I've found the line. A grauniad review of some overpriced london eaterie made reference to a deep fried jam sandwich, a dish which I fucking well KNOW to be a creation of the talented bunch in the kitchen a...

Here at Coastal Towers it is rapidly approaching what everyones favourite beetroot-fizogged professional Scot Sir Alex Ferguson once memorably described as squeaky bum time (though I suspect he may have nicked the line off everyones favourite wheely-bin Ashley Giles). Yes, the coffers are empty, the credit card's maxed out and it's time to see if the business can actually stand me taking a wage out of it. Probably it can, hopefully. You see, whilst starting your own business is an exceedingly entertaining experience, it does come lightly seasoned with a smidgeon of stress. And whilst you may think you've planned everything to the last possible iota, you've invariably missed a few things, and these few things invariably cost money, which, as we have already established, I don't have any of any more. So whilst the whole thing is going swimmingly now, thanks very much, busier and busier all the time, we're still feeling the effects of the costs of the start-up. So ...

Look, I'm aware that I'm talking to myself here. Two months is an unconscionably long time in Internetland, where the hours waiting for the next reply to your witty comment on someone elses blog attenuate beyond the capability of mere temporal nomenclature to contain them. Here in the actual living, breathing, husbanding, fathering, cooking world, however, it shoots by like a very fast thing. Possibly a cheetah. They're quite rapid, I'm reliably informed. So yes, the blog lay fallow. Purely and simply cos I was too damn busy to do anything with it. Too busy to do a lot of things I'd like to. But heigh ho. Such is the exciting and glamorous world of coastalblog. Why only yesterday I was scrubbing out an extractor fan canopy. Don't you wish you were me? But yet, but yet..I can't let go of dear old coastalblog. I toyed with the idea of making this a one final post and saying cheerio to the zero people still checking in, but couldn't quite bring myself to do...