Ride again

I looked at the title of my last blog saying that men will ride anything. The notion continues as this is a group of men riding the largest skateboard in the world. How on earth do you get your foot on the floor or more importantly how do you stop? Imagine this thing coming towards you in the park with 7 men screaming at you and one at the back sunbathing.

Men will ride anything...

The streets of Tynemouth were packed with people for the annual Mouth of the Tyne Festival this weekend. It's the sixth year and this time we got to experience the whole event with a few mad acts through the day (including a fella riding a 10 foot unicycle). On the Saturday night we were at the unbelievable setting inside the Priory on the headland with an open air concert with James Morrison. We're not really fans of his but the fact that the location is so scenic with views of the coastline and he owns a large chain of supermarkets made the whole night a bit more special. You can just make him out in this photo on the left.

The following day used the same location for a number of bands, then a performance from the Lightning Seeds. They were not that strong but for free you can't complain. By then a few more beers, with the beautiful ladies around me along with a picnic made it all worthwhile. As it was world cup final time a few minutes after the final song, you can't help wondering whether they would've performed 'Three Lions' if England had been anywhere further in the tournament. No chnace.

Just before watching the final in the pub we experienced some camp Latino dancing on the beach. At one point a bit perverted as one of the male dancers rode a donkey. A sort of Latino Bernie Clifton dressed in a Hi-De-Hi outfit.

The cow drank my beer

Wagyu might sound like a term to describe you've bagged a footballers wife but it's infact a breed of cattle fed on beer. Very informative Ian you might say now get lost, but the reason I mention this is it's not often seen on a menu in the North East. Normally you'd pay hundreds of pounds to have a wagyu filltet of beef but The Silk Room in Newcastle does a Wagyu burger for £19. It's worth a try, I had one, the flavour was delicious and the beef just melted and broke away in my mouth. Even better though, it's not shipped in from its native Japan as there's a farmer in Northumberland, Otterburn supplying and specialising in this now. I think the burger I had was a lot better than the one I won the competition with last year but mine costs about 80 pence to make.

Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubard off

Imagine being drunk all the time. As well as loving everyone like family you might get to see the world like Roobarb and Custard did or their makers in the brilliant cartoon show from the 70's. What genius dreamt this up I often wonder? Get a few splodges of paint on some paper which just about resemble some characters, sink a few beers and try and hold the paper up in front of the camera to somehow make a story. It just wouldn't wash these days unless you had an over sized bag of popcorn, a pair of ridiculous 3D glasses that make you look like Elton John crossed with Reg Holdsworth and a Channel 4 breakdown about the program you've been watching after every advert.

I ramble on like this as I got hold of some home-grown rhubarb which I intend to cook with of course. and it always reminds me of the cartoon. Looking at it, there are so many things it could be used for but I opted for an alien hand gesture followed by another. Like Roobarb, I also like to annoy my neighbours with a polite message on the window sill.
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Who should have a fishy on the little dishy?

I don't think the North East is quite ready for a food festival just yet. It's the second year of the EAT Festival and we visited the various events in Newcastle at the weekend. It included food stalls with various over priced items, a dedicated row of stalls selling the food-of-the-moment-cup-cakes, some possessed woman on stilts pushing a hostess trolley and a man in a tomato outfit laughing at her. The most bizarre event was the one where fresh fish is delivered by boat onto the quayside, seeing them fillet it and the local chef's take it away and cook it. We actually found out that the fish is delivered by van and then carried in fish boxes by hand. I can't even be bothered to do any fish jokes, but I wasn't a happy sole.

Despite the let-downs, we still enjoyed the festival which is running for a number of weeks now. The best bit was seeing the sheer panic and sickened look from the men who tried some of the hottest chilli paste at the Chilli and Beer Festival.

Shaking nuts, shaking helmets, shaken men

It's a good job stag weekends are not more than a weekend because the abuse of the body is enough to make you want to sit in a corner and cry yourself to sleep. The first night in Leeds got off to an unusual start in the hotel bar as around 15 transvestites walked in and stood right next to 18 of us who were also men, but not dressed as women. Although one man, the stag, had a lederhosen costume on. This was not his own choice.

The next day with a ridiculous hangover that felt like I'd licked the full length of a snooker table, 18 of us went off to ride go karts and hover hovercrafts. This was great fun and it literally shook the hangover from you. I managed to get the fastest time on the timed lap for the go karting but when it came to hover crafting I let myself down, the team down and most of all, I let the hovercraft down. The stag nearly had to do the whole thing in a lime green mankini but he tried it on before the activities and with all that shaking about in the go kart we reckoned it might be both painful and cause spectator regurgitation. I was surprised to find that in our heath-and-safety-mad-country that the bag the mankini came in did not say 'may contain nuts'.

That night, we were off again, managed to just avoid more transvestites, gay bars and some generally weird looking people. At one point we did discuss the logistics of getting the stag into a formula 1 car hanging from the ceiling. We stuck to the safer option of getting his photo taken with a 'fat-lass'. Joy.

Chop my cheeks and slap me with a fish

It has to be said that Cambridge is a beautiful city, you can walk around and admire it or go on a punt on the river to see more, sing Cornetto songs and tickle the fella who does the punting. We were there at the weekend but didn't get to go on a punt or tickle anyone apart from each other as the weather on the day was a bit inclement. It meant that in between a bit of shopping and sight seeing we were forced into a couple of real pubs, with real ale, real food and the odd left over student. The Chop House was one where I had a great tasting Stone Bass (nothing to do with Bill Wyman but is actually a fish). That gorgeous girl I took along had slow cooked beef cheeks in an ale gravy. Yes that's beef cheeks, the cheek of the cow... It's all about the ale here, I washed my fish down with a canny ale called Pegasus.

More food again later for dinner at the local village pub, The Plough, but I won't bore you with what I had. We managed to sit outside for drinks in the rain, heaters on and canopies up. Only the British would do that. A good walk the following day we spotted the biggest thatch 'cottage' we've ever seen. Some people must have nothing better to do but show off with a fantastic over sized house.

We came home in style with an American Bomber. Now that doesn't mean I had some weird cocktail or curry the night before but there was a memorial day at the American Cemetery nearby and it flew over along with some jets. I'm sure the pilot dipped his wings to say goodbye to me...