Posts Tagged ‘fish’

Danda, the phone and the dinner

Life with Danda is filled with fun. There are days out, there are long evenings talking nonsense and watching films, there are walks filled with Danda’s extensive knowledge of history, there are occasional bouts of cleaning and, weather permitting, lots of him gardening and me drinking tea and watching. Omygoodness, there is tea. So much tea. You can never have enough tea. But most of all, life with Danda is filled with hilarity. Stomach-clutching, eye-watering hilarity. Let me demonstrate.

Danda and the dinner
The other night, Danda offered to make the dinner. I’d like to think it’s because I had been working hard that day and was tired but I was probably just being lazy. We did one of those easy put-a-load-of-stuff-in-the-oven dinners. So I sat in the front room drinking tea, reading a book and listening to the sounds of Danda making dinner.

After about half an hour, he went to the oven to check and shouted that it was ready. I arrived in the kitchen and pottered around getting cutlery etc. As I turned around to collect my plate of food Danda had the two plates in front of the microwave as the microwave pinged.

In a moment of madness, he reached behind the plates and pressed the ‘open door’ button. The door did indeed open… sending one of the plates of food out at a hundred miles an hour before leaning gently to the floor and landing, surprisingly, facing upwards. The problem came with the speed that the plate hit the floor causing the fish and mushrooms to keep moving while the plate had stopped.

The plate that dropped, by the way, was mine.

Employing the three second rule, I whipped the food up off the floor quicker than you can say ‘clumsy’ and handed back to Danda to defluff.

I honestly couldn’t tell it had taken a little trip southwards as I ate it but, once Danda had got over his annoyance at himself, it was difficult to eat dinner because we couldn’t stop laughing about his casual lean around the plates to open the microwave door!

Danda and the phone
On Wednesday, Danda and I went to see Argo (fabulous, by the way). For those of you not in the UK, I don’t know if you get this thing called Orange Wednesdays. But basically, there is a phone company called Orange and if you are with them, you can text them on a Wednesday and they will send you a code to get two for one at the cinema. We have an old phone with a sim card in for Orange. Neither of uses it as our normal phone so this old phone sits in a drawer all week until Wednesdays, when we let it out.

So two days ago, Wednesday, I came home from work, turned on the Orange phone and sent the text to get a code. Until Danda came in, the phone was sitting on the table. When he came in, there was a flurry of phones and keys and purses, as the film was starting soon.

We walked to the cinema, it is only about fifteen minutes walk away. We got there with about ten minutes before the film would start.

“Two for one to see Argo please,” we told the boy behind the counter.

“Yep. Have you got your Orange Wednesday code?”

Danda turned to me. I checked my pocket. It wasn’t there.

“You must have it,” I said with certainty.

He checked his jeans pockets.

“I haven’t.”

My face dropped. I had made a point of tapping my pocket before we left and saying “Got the phone!” O man. I whipped off my jacket, held out my hands for the keys and said, “I’ll have to run back and get it.”

“No,” said Danda. “We’ll go together.”

I tried to insist on him letting me run back but he said we’d walk back together.

“Hold those tickets!” we told the boy and sped off out of the cinema and round the corner.

Laughing at ourselves, I mused aloud what had happened to the phone.

“I seem to remember something. Something about the phone and you keeping it or me keeping it. I had it in my pocket, remember? Where can I have put it?”

Danda chuckled good-naturedly, for he is a forgiving soul and wouldn’t hold it against me. It was a little chilly, so he put his hands in his coat pockets as we walked…..

And found the phone.

Yep.

It was in Danda’s pocket all the time…..

After a severe bout of laughing till we almost wet ourselves, we turned and ran back to the cinema. The film had almost started by now. We arrived a little out of breath, the same boy looking at us. We had only been gone about three minutes.

“It was in his pocket the whole time!” I exclaimed loudly, pointing at Danda.

At least I was in the clear….

P.S. I’ve got some time free today so will be on to some world-saving. I’ll report back tomorrow.

Z is for…

ZONKEY!

Some of you might have already heard about these. They are a cross between a zebra and a donkey. Rather unimaginatively, the names have been clumsily mashed together and you end up with something that essentially looks just like a donkey with stripey legs. I think it’s a pretty poor attempt at animal-mashing-together, to be honest, so I’ve given it a go myself. Check out the results!

First up! It’s the caterpony!

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It has millions of tiny legs, which slow it down a little to be honest. The caterpony does not worry about this though. He eats leaves and grass in the same small space and waits for the day when it can weave a huge cocoon and wake up as a beautiful butterhorse, when its legs become much longer and it has lovely colourful wings.

Next in line is the girelephant!

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It has a large elephant head on its long giraffe neck, which gives it a bit of a neck ache. It will sometimes be found resting its huge heavy head on strong high tree branches. Its long trunk helps it to reach the water from so high up but the girelephant must remember not to lean too far forward when getting water, as the weight of its head can topple it over, causing it to splash about helplessly, until a flying butterhorse spots it and pulls it out.

Last up in the Zoo of Laura’s Mind, the reinguin!

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The head of a reindeer and the body of a penguin, this Arctic creature can fly in the air and go under water! When Santa gets nervous because there is a storm that may overturn the sleigh, the reinguin, just dips under the water for a while until he has passed the storm and emerges into the air to continue the journey round all the children’s houses.

When the reinguin is hunting, it can store its catches on its antlers and later, when he gets home, unhook all his fish and have plenty to eat.

 

So how did I do? Are my animals as believable as zonkeys? Can we get someone to work on creating them? I’m not scientifically minded so I’ll just provide the ideas. Any scientists want to jump on this?

 

P.S. 25 days til first exam… and counting…

T is for….

THE BIG SHOP!

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The Big Shop that you do when you first arrive on holiday. You know the one, and you arrive home with an unnamed slab of white fish which might be cod, or it could be a fish you don’t really get at home. And you get teabags that end up being a kind of mystery coffee-bag thing that you don’t really like but drink anyway.

You pick up all the different milk, wondering if skimmed, semi skimmed and whole are the same colours here or whether its just the different brands. You read the ingredients, you look at the nutritional value, trying to get a clue. And end up buying soya by accident anyway.

Is that green leafy stuff spinach? It doesn’t look exactly like spinach but it looks more like it than anything else you can see.

Why do their packs of bacon only have three pieces in them? That’s bizarre. And is this chicken? Does frango mean chicken?

Yesterday I went to a chicken fast food place as we were running out of options. The other choices were Burger King, a place called Le Croissant and McDonald’s. My eyes are bad so I had to wait to get right up to the till before I could see the menu. So I ordered two seconds after seeing it, in a panic. In bad Portuguese (I thought) I asked for some chicken strips and a few legs. Didn’t need any extras, there were plenty of other bits the others had got to share. Before I knew it I had two massive trays full of chips and fried chicken in breadcrumbs and a bottle of water. And two sets of plastic cutlery. I’d ordered two MASSIVE chicken and chips meals!

How that happened I still don’t know! I’m off to the shop in a minute actually, for some teabags that are tea and not some mystery substance. Wish me luck!