When Push Comes To Chef! - E-Mail correspondence with Spooky St. Ives

Helen Bristol

13 April 2003 17:17

Modem communications.

now that you've updated the SSI site I can read your reply to my last emu. BM has explained about our server glitches? Apparently we can send messages but not receive any - makes the conversation a tad one-sided.

I know what a Gordon Broon is, but what's a Bank Manger? All the staff at my local branch look about 15 and inspire about as much confidence as you'd expect from a teenager. And they speak a strange language about debts and credits and b-a-l-a-n-c-e. I can feel my brain glazing over just thinking about it. I'm sure labelled jam jars under the bed work just as well.

PS BM's cooking something called "the Imam Fainted" tonight, so I'm off to look for my seventh veil - can't recall where I left it!

Vile Jelly

14 April 2003 16:32

Didn't Max von Sydow win it off Death in a chess match?

Helen Bristol

15 April 2003 11:26

Ah, but that couldn't have been mine.

Still haven't located it. ( Make mental note: to obviate potentially embarrassing situations, beware of flagrantly scattering personal possessions.)

Gearing up for the ecstatic Easter emmets?

Vile Jelly

15 April 2003 21:18

Have informed the Criminallackof Intelligence Agency that Saddam Hussein is sheltering here for Easter.

Expecting the tomahawks to fly at any moment.

Town v.emmet-ish. On the plus side, though, a local insider informant claims that the town is short of 15 chefs already. Apparently some people just don't want to work anti-social hours in unpleasant conditions for bugger all pay!

Looks like there'll be a lot of tourists going hungry in St. Ives this year.

Helen Bristol

16 April 2003 10:06

Are you certain it wasn't one of his doubles? Does take much to confuse the aforementioned agency. Will there be Globals flying as well?

So will you be exchanging one unreasonable, brutish, slave pit for another? 15 chefs = a lot of hungry, angry people - could lead to riots and looting. The Tat included.

I've just been signed off for another 2 weeks. My boss is talking about me returning to work on a graduated programme rather than straight in at the deep end. With the weather as it is and the life of relaxation that I am currently leading I could get used to being a lady ( I use the word loosely) of leisure.

Off now to flick a rather fine mauve duster around...............oh, that's where I left it!

Vile Jelly

16 April 2003 16:44

No, I'm eagerly looking forward to the notorious 'Great Chefs Walk Out' when 50,000 emmets have to have UN aid parcels flown into them because there isn't a single place in St. Ives where they can purchase food.

Let them eat art!

PS. Congratu-miserations on the signing off. Now, you know what it feels like in the Slave Pits when they said 'Sorry, but that finger will fall apart if you try to use it for the next four days'. Point being that the only people you are really putting out are your fellow slave pitters who will have to do even more hours of misery. Now, if the (alleged) management had to fill in for your missing hours .....

PPS. Dusting is pointless. I speak as one of the male tendency but have, in my defence, learned the vicious arts of cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing. But dusting? ..... What's the bloody point? It only comes back anyway.

Helen Bristol

17 April 2003 11:59

Oh, I quite agree about dusting, well all housework really. It's like painting the Forth Bridge. But I only said I was going to flick the duster around.

She does. Management is more enlightened in East Angular.

Vile Jelly

17 April 2003 16:14

You lucky so-and-so!

Back in the Slave Pits for the duration while the sun shines on the ems.

Oh well, at least it keeps the buggers out of the pub. We got absolutely hammered for food orders last Sunday because the weather was so foul.

Helen Bristol

17 April 2003 17:18

Also means that you don't have to mix with them.

Another beautiful day. We don't encounter too many (whatever is the EA equivalent of) ems this far inland, except those in horse-drawn gypsy ones who clog up the lanes or "normal" ones being towed by volvos or 4x4s who clog up all the other roads.

Suppose I'd better start thinking about something for our evening nosh.......... just for 2.

Vile Jelly

17 April 2003 22:21

What? Where's Outsized Oilskin?

If it's just you and Catto Macho then I suspect something with a fishy theme might be in order.

Helen Bristol

18 April 2003 09:38

Not being able to get to my usual fishmonger in Lowestoft, and looking at the peripatetic fish outlet locally, fishy things, though normally a favourite with me and CM, are not on the menu. Besides which BM is off fish at the moment. CM is very partial to raw meat and the butcher always weighs things "heavy" so that he gets his bit (CM not the butcher). Anyway I cook during the week. We're really lucky here having so many good real food shops, even if we do only have the choice of 2 Budgens for supermarket type shopping.

Vile Jelly

18 April 2003 10:26

Hell, all we've got is a couple of Spars and butchers. If you want to go Big Game Shopping the nearest venue is the Cardboard Bay Megastore Retail Park (also known as Tesco).

I reckon eventually St. Ives won't actually have any 'practical' shops. It'll all just be artyfarty, tourist tat and pasty shops. Anyone actually wanting to live in the town on a permanent basis will have to arrange to have food parcels shipped in like on the Scillies!

Helen Bristol

18 April 2003 12:17

We've also got 10 cafe/restaurant type places, 2 fish and chip shops, 2 take-aways, seemingly endless hairdressers and artfarty craft shops and a good old fashioned hardware shop, plus all the other things like banks, solicitors, clothing stores, florists, etc,etc. and 2 bakeries and the Cheeseboard (previously referred to by Large Loden.) All this within 10 minutes walk (if that) in one direction and countryside 100yds up the road in the other. Oh, I nearly forgot, 5 mins. walk to collect the free range eggs from the farm ( yes, you can really see the chickens wandering about the field with the cows.) and free range poultry and beef and Gloucester Old Spot pork. Also several people round here grow organic veg not to mention the stuff I grow in the garden and the fruit at the field. Don't know why we feel the need to go away on holiday when we have everything we could want to hand, except fabulous craggy countryside and wanting to visit friends.............Not quite on the elevated level of the Leach pottery but there is also a craft pottery - Millhouse Pottery.

CM stays at home and sulks for days after we get back! but I have discovered that he secretly goes away as well to visit my neighbour who feeds him on tinned salmon and other delicacies - but he doesn't know that I know.

Vile Jelly

18 April 2003 15:34

Good lord, all that!

No wonder you need a couple of air forces to protect it.

PS. You don't know how lucky you are having that gullible neighbour. When the wrinklies go away I am forced to look after their pair of fleabags. I wouldn't mind feeding them so much if it wasn't for the fact I bought them an electric tin opener a couples of Xmases ago but they absolutely refuse to use it!

Helen Bristol

18 April 2003 17:05

Actually its another neighbour who should be feeding him.

There I was this afternoon, sunning myself on the 'lawn' when I thought the sky had fallen in or something. Said neighbour's teenage son had something akin to radio 1 on full volume , window wide open with Club 18-30 type 'dance' 'music' Makes me feel my age! (don't ask)

Vile Jelly

18 April 2003 21:18

Remember, if god hadn't meant for you to blow irritating spotty twerps away he wouldn't have invented Kalashnikovs!

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