Wednesday October 16th 2024 "Do YOU live in Bell End, or in its 'sphere of influence'?"

Dear reader, do you live in the lovely Worcestershire village of Bell End? 

A lot of us do, don't we, although my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I can't make that proud claim, sadly!!! We do live in the village's cultural "footprint", however - it's only a few miles up the road from our new-build home here in Malvern, so we take a keen interest in your news, "Bell Enders"!

Daisy-May Fisher (19), winner of this year's "Miss Bell Ender" competition

"Bell Enders" by the way, is the official "demonym" for residents of the parish, and "demonym" doesn't in any way mean that the name is intended to "demonise" you, you'll be grateful to know! "Demos" in Greek simply means "the people", hence the word 'democracy'. And the word 'demonym' comes from the same 'stable', and simply means the name for the people living in a particular place.

Bell Enders are generally lovely people, Lois and I have found, so it's a pity that they've been getting some "stick" recently for being money-mad, a charge from which Lois and I have always vigorously defended them - and I've got the recordings to prove it (!). People are inclined to be so litigious these days that I've taken to recording all my conversations, even those I have in bed with Lois, just to be on the safe side - call me "risk-adverse" if you like!!!!

some typical "Bell Enders", to give them their official "demonym" (!),

pictured relaxing here at local 'watering-hole' the Plough and Harrow

However, it doesn't help us "friends of Bell End" or "Bellendophiles" to give us our official name (!), to see stories like this one in the local Onion News print edition for West Worcestershire (see page 94 if you don't believe me!). Just saying (!).

And that awful story has come hot on the heels of other such stories about this popular Bell End "local" - remember this "doozy" that I reported in my blog post of last September, causing a bit of a "stink" here locally, as I recall !

flashback to September 19th 2023: the "DanskColin" blogpost that started the furore !

I keep trying to defend the wonderful people of that lovely Worcestershire village, but let's be honest, Bell Enders, you're not really doing yourselves any favours, with all these stories coming out, are you. Be honest !!!!

[Get on with it! - Ed]

If you're in the Plough and Harrow, Bell End, for an evening out, by the way, Lois and I don't really recommend the spotted dick, we've had it there a few times - and it's not really "spotted" enough in our humble opinion(s), although don't  quote me on that. Pub landlord Kevin Whiteley is a bit on the litigious side, to put it mildly, and villagers say he spends more time in the County Court at Worcester than he does at the pub - allegedly !!!!  Just saying!!!

landlord Kevin Whiteley's 'specials' board at the Plough and Harrow, 

Bell End, where his "spotted dick" (ringed) has become a regular 'staple'

Speaking personally, however, our days of having a large-to-extra-large portion of "spotted dick" are over now, for Lois and me, anyway. Well, we are 78 !!!!

And it's quite sugar-heavy too, at least, as it tends to get made "in these here parts", as people say "in these here parts" (!). 

Lois and me, pictured here at a local café - "spotted dick" is on the menu

but we choose to ignore it (politely!)  - it's kind of "off limits"

plus, well, we are 78 now you know haha!

You see, Lois and I have been on this almighty "low-sugar diet jag" for what must be - like - a billion years, it feels like. In reality it's only a week, but time is relative as Einstein discovered not a hundred years ago (!).

[That's enough exclamation marks in brackets (!) - Ed]

And dieting gives us plenty to talk about this morning while we're shopping in Shoezone and then later, after a walk on the common, relaxing with a coffee and toasted tea-cake at Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop. 

We've got to find some good rubber boots for Lois because we like to walk through the long grass on Poolbrook Common, but we keep coming home with soddin' ["sodden" surely? - Ed] wet socks (me) and tights (Lois). I've ordered some wide-to-extra-wide wellies online, which should be arriving in a day or two, so fingers crossed on that one.

we find some wellies in Shoezone to keep Lois's tights dry

on our 'perambulations' in the long grass (!) ....

...followed by a walk through the soddin' long grass, 

then coffee and a shared toasted tea-cake 

in the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop (ringed)

I don't know if you can see in the above photo, but I'm having jam on my half of the toasted tea-cake, but Lois is having it "neat" with just a scraping of butter on hers. Well, we are supposed to be on a diet, after all.

And later, in the afternoon, Lois has a good old "chin-wag" on the phone with one of her fellow-church-members, Christine, who gives her some further tips on cutting down on sugar intake, like eating your potatoes cold. It also helps gut health generally, she says, because cold potatoes contain "resistant starch" which feeds good bacteria in the gut, a process known as 'retrogradation'.

Yes, who knew that cold potatoes are much better than hot ones for slowing down your sugar intake? Not only that, but cold pasta is the same, with the added advantage that you can re-heat the pasta without any reduction in the slowing of the sugar-intake? 

Another of Christine's tips is to have a salad starter, like they do a lot of times at restaurants in the States, as we discovered when we lived over there, from 1982 to 1985. We thought it was weird at the time, but now it's starting to make a crazy kind of sense. This also slows down the intake of sugar, apparently.

Who knew? [I expect a lot of people did - including, it seems, most of the USA's current population of 350 million almost! - Ed]

flashback to 1983: me with our two daughters Sarah (5) and Alison (7)

after a salad-based starter and meal at the iconic

Wetherburn pub in Williamsburg, Virginia  - happy days!!!

And don't the findings from these recent gastronomic studies shed new light on the Jerome Kern classic "A Fine Romance"?

I wonder.....!

21:00 We go to bed on the first half-hour of a Channel Four retrospective on the beloved 2010s sitcom "Friday Night Dinner".

This was one of mine and Lois's favourite sitcoms, all about a North London Jewish family, the Goodmans - mum and dad and their 2 teenage sons -  constantly fighting and hitting each other, but coming together every Friday evening for a "family meal".

In this scene, Jonny's new American wife, Lisa, discovers for the first time mid-Friday-night-dinner as to why the family has got so many candles in the room.

Yes the Goodmans "identify" as Jewish, although they're not 'observers'. And of course they use a bunch of Jewish words now and again - that kind of malarkey.

In all, thirty-seven episodes of the sitcom were broadcast, and for each episode the cast would have to spend days eating plate upon plate of chicken and roast vegetables, and mum Jackie's famous "crimble crumble", doing the same scene over and over again as the show's writer, Robert Popper, explains:

And all this time the cast has to be filmed eating food, so they've learned how not to really eat the food.

Some of the guest actors who appear in a few episodes only haven't mastered this skill, however, as actress Tamsin Greig, who plays long-suffering mum Mrs Goodman, explains in this interview:

Yes, step forward Anglo-American actress Skye Bennett, who plays young Jonny's new American wife. 

Time to "fess up", Skye!

Poor Skye !!!!

And I've got to put my hand up here too, because many's the time in the past that Yours Truly has eaten a load of roast potatoes at one sitting. And I'm talking like a whole billion of the buggers, literally, and not the mere "million" that Skye manages to "shove in" every episode (!).

Seriously, though, there's perhaps a message here from the show for Lois and me to take on board. Could we lose the excess weight off our tummies by just cutting up the food and moving it around the plate?

I wonder.....!

[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!