In a septic fish tank.

There are times when curiosity may not kill the cat, but it will certainly turn its stomach. Anyone who may have wondered what all the fuss was about with 'two girls, one cup' and googled it will know exactly what I mean. No, I'm not linking to it. If you are dumb enough to ignore the less-than-subtle warning signs I'm putting out here, then you can do it on your own.

And don't blame me.

My own, latest 'curiosity vs cat' moment came today as I was searching for an image to include with this post. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back in time, quite some months now, to a point when Julie and myself were in a local cafe and looking at all the different food they had to offer. Julie was having a quick look at the 'specials' board* while I perused the main menu.

As I had my head down, and was trying to make up my mind between two very good options, I wasn't listening to Julie as closely as I could have. That said, it seems my subconscious is excellent when it comes to picking up on Julie's Gems...

Joking aside, I realised I have never seen this dish, let alone tasted it... You can see where this is going, can't you?

These, ladies, gentlemen and others, are quails' eggs. Either that, or an eagle has made its nest in the hand of a giant. You will note a distinct lack of aspic. This is for two reasons. First, I wanted to show the relative size of the eggs, as I'm well aware that a lot of people will not have even heard of them.

Second, I googled 'quails eggs aspic'.

Ew.
I had flashbacks to the time I inadvisably tried jellied eels.
To put this into context, some of you will be aware of my views on sushi. I would willingly chow down a plate of sushi before even glancing at anything that has been 'jellied'.

Excuse me, I think I need to go and rinse my mouth out. With Marmite.


* No, the classic 2-Tone band has not gone into catering.

A lickle trouble

Viewers of programmes like Eastenders, and those who have seen films with Jason Statham in them will know of a certain vocal characteristic of those who live in the London area. Essentially, letters and wholes syllables are swallowed up in a glottal space, resulting in an almost total absence of the letter 't'. In fact, the very word 'letter' ends up being pronounced as "le'ah."

Dad had a similar, yet different, approach to pronouncing whole words. It was - and still is - a family in-joke that Dad could never really pronounce the 't' in the middle of a word. Instead, the hard sound of the consonant was transformed into a 'k' sound. Since my father was fond of Derbyshire, and a lot of his and Mum's spare time revolved around trips there, this invariable meant going through Matlock. Or, as Dad would call it, 'Macklock'.*

You can see how this is going, can't you?

Now, since Dad was rather fond of a tipple, especially single malt whiskies, the family joke has always been about 'lickle bockles'. My father always took it with good grace, and even enjoyed joining in with the banter. Brilliantly, this Gem has someone else falling foul of the whole scenario...

Hmm. If this was Twitter, this would probably be given "#guessyouhadtobethere".

Interestingly enough, when I was having an idle google, I found a site that would seem to have been named by my father...

I'm not making this up - ickle bockles is a site that provides you with all those horribly small toiletry containers that airports demand these days. Visit THEIR SITE to find out more.


*either way, Matlock is a lovely place to visit, but it is a right bugger to drive through as it's at the bottom of a long, narrow valley.