Thursday, 6 September 2012

Carnival, the snip and Zanardi


Another couple of busy weeks have passed by..............I sometimes seem to be living in a whirlwind being blown from one place to another with no let up to pause for breath or to get any sleep!

Over the bank holiday weekend we headed to London for the family day at Notting Hill Carnival.  What a great event!  Having lived in the London area for 34 years, I had plenty opportunities to go but at the time it was often marred by high levels of crime and violence which was somewhat off putting.  In more recent years this has reduced a lot so off we went.  Anyone who doesn’t like very loud booming and bass based music would run a mile, but this just enhanced our experience.  Originally an exclusively West Indian event, the carnival has evolved to be a community project with all nationalities taking part.  The costumes were spectacular, the weather conditions very similar to the Caribbean and the streetside food and merchandise stalls plus a great atmosphere all contributed to a great (and free!!) day out.  Yes please for another visit.  How do I get to be part of the parade or travel on a float?

Regular readers of my witterings will recall how I am continually bombarded with offers of products aimed at more senior members of the community.  However, the spam mailers have excelled themselves now by offering me...............wait for it.................a vasectomy!  Actually I will hold off on that thanks as I am a bit busy at the moment, I have a couple of hours free next week if you can fit me in then.  Market research at its finest.

I am getting excited about my forthcoming trip to the Paralympics this weekend!  The weather is even due to be totally un-British with wall to wall sunshine and no rain forecast, hurrah!  The athletes from around the world have all shown great determination and talent in the various sports and I expect the football on Sunday will be no exception.  So many of the Team GB Paralympians are now household names and our medal total is creeping up on a daily basis.  I was particularly pleased to see that Alex Zanardi won gold in hand biking this week.  I used to watch him in his Formula 1 days and subsequent racing in other classes; however this was cut short when he lost his legs in a terrible racing accident.  Many people would have seen this as the end of their career, however within two years he was racing in Touring Cars, determined to carry on with life.  Absolutely bloody brilliant I say!

Having fancied something other than cereal today for breakfast I headed off to Tesco and purchased some juice and a pack of pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants in case anyone is confused).  Back home, I put two on the plate, settled down in front of breakfast television and took a bite.............never have I come across such hard and stale croissants.  They were impossible to eat and in fact I have the remainder of the packet contents ready to offer to the builders working around the corner in case they are short of a brick of two.  The best before date is still two days off.........these manky offerings have never had a best let alone a best before.  This only reinforces my continued preference to shopping in Aldi where the products are cheaper and far more palatable.  After all, most of mainland Europeans shop in Aldi, Lidl and Netto and they all thrive on it – they also save plenty money by doing so hence the influx of tourists to the UK (I bet they get a huge shock when they see the prices to get into our tourist attractions!).

Now on countdown to Spain, just need to count out all my saved two pound coins, bag them up and ask the lady at the bank to magically turn them into Euros!  Hopefully the forest fires from last week will be extinguished by then otherwise it might be a little tricky on the roads.

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