Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow and everywhere that Mary went, the damn sheep left poo stains. So she hacked it up and made a stew.
Best thing really, sheep are really stupid and deserve to be eaten.
When I was very wee I used to play in the fields next to our house, and we played in the orchards, and the cliffs, the abandoned abattoir, the quarry where we stole dynamite, the cemetery where we played hide and seek in the ancient mausoleums, the old train station, several old fullers cottages where hobos stashed booze and naughty magazines…that reminds me I had a friend that cut all the eyes out of one such magazine..a very disturbed little boy…anyway…they were mostly dairy cow fields, with the occasional patch of oats and the odd highland cow standing around looking like one of my mothers Lhasa apsos with horns.
There were however some ba$tard sheep in a field a few dykes over (A dyke is a wall of random rock piled together, not whatever you were thinking). The sheep were controlled by a collie dog named Hamish. Yes Hamish.
My reference to Mary and her little lamb involves something much more sinister.
A Theme park! Cue Violent Organ Music Here!
Storybook Glen.
What a sweet innocent name, full of promises of gumdrops, lollipops and sheer unadulterated Mother Gooserey.. yes goosrey or even goose-ity.
Sometime in the last quarter of the 20th century someone built this place, and by a bizarre quirk of fate it remains open. Unlike Pixieland.
Just off the Deeside Road and Dual Carrigeway one can find Stories brought to life. Well not really, you can find stories brought to Fiberglass.
Near the entrance was a garden filled with cockleshell borders and tortured faces of Gibson girls trapped within unmoving plastic petals. Mary Mary quite convoluted, how does your garden grow? It doesn’t you silly gits it’s plastic, even the cockle shells are plastic and we were knee deep in the ba$tards. Just off there near the car park was a large tiger smiling away, looking like a friendly version of something from a popular animated movie about Rudyard Kipling’s “Book”. My mother always posed on this, and when her childhood friend came from Japan for a visit it was where several rolls of film were discharged. You may or not be happy by the fact that this animal has “Changed it’s shorts” as it is now a Cheetah?
They too had the highland cows below a ha-ha (look it up) so that they could not wander into the place an incapacitate the tourists by being obnoxiously cow at people (i.e: trampling things, eating anything that looked like it might be grass or grass related, or goring someone on their obnoxious freaking horns.).
These were followed in turn by the most popular Mother Goose and Fairy stories, being sure that they stayed this side of anything copyrighted by the evil empire (Disney-Dreamworks). There was a shoe with a bunch of fiber glass kids and an exasperated looking fiberglass old woman. If you were less than three feet tall you could go inside the shoe, it smelled like pee.
There was a house made to look like an apple? I don’t get it, maybe I missed that story. There were houses made out of fiberglass straw, sticks and bricks with some terrifyd looking surgical appliance pink pigs. No sign of a wolf though.
Around about the turn in the path there was a log cabin? Log cabin? Mr. Lincoln Mr. Lincoln what have you been drinking? I don’t think that was the rhyme they had in mind, it had a large fiberglass bear with a honey pot and another wearing an apron. It is understood that at one time there was a baby bear, itsy bitsy who was smaller than the others however he was apparently stolen and never replaced. So you are lost in the land of Goldilocks and the Two bears. (Case Number 4320, County of Grampian verses Goldilocks, charges of breaking and entering, petty theft (Porrage) and vandalism in the first degree (Chair), one assumes she has already been taken off for execution or to serve out her sentence in a “Cupcake” prison. After all she was a overbearing bitchy unsatisfied blond that complained about everyone’s decorating technique. I quote: “This bed is too hard, I recommend spreading a packed collection of soft mosses, it’s a good thing.”. Gotta hand it to her though, she can whip up a mean soufflé. Literally, I followed her recipe and the soufflé car jacked me, now that is a mean soufflé.
Oh, the cabin also smelled like pee.
So it goes, around a bend there was a wall, that loomed up at you and if you were’nt paying attention attacked you with the image of a humpty dumpty so demonic the designer of the Predator cried for a week. He had such long fingers, like Father “Two Fingers” Perelli, his pants were so red, and he wore that too small top hat at such a jaunty angle. There was no sign of the King’s horses or Men. One assumes that they caught one look at Humpty here, and decided that there was something vitally important that they had to be doing in some place very very far away.
They had obtained some licenses because Postman Pat was there with his Royal Mail Van and his Black and White Cat. I still remember the theme song: “Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat ran over his cat, all the guts went flying, Postman Pat was Crying, Postman Pats a very silly man.” Though those may be the words we made up at dinner time when the nuns (Sisters of the Sacred Heart) were trying to brow beat the Dinner Ladies into serving dinner on time.
Throughout this there was always one redeeming feature. Every display, and the paths were lined with the perfect British flower gardens, at varying times of year just like Aberdeen herself, the fields became purple and white with millions of crocus. As they died the green shoots of the daffodils came up to create seas of butter stretching as far as the eye could see. When the daffodils were looking a little peaky they were mowed down and the fields became fields again. The edges however brought forth Lupines by the thousands, gladiolas by the millions and innumerable peony flowers. Plain bushes through early spring became Phlox, and Hydrangea, Lilac and Fuchsia, Cornflowers and Tulips, and Roses OMG the Roses! Aberdeen was famous for her flowers. Down the medians of the highways they were planted in buried planters next to the bulbs of the crocus and daffodils, they were cut down to the roots every year so that they would grow like crazy. With the laws in place that there had to be a green space of 500 yards either side of any highway, and a median of no less than forty feet, to be filled with renewable plants. You can imagine fields of purple, then yellow then green grass with rose borders.
Though remember kids, Daffodils are actually Narcissus by classification and this is their name in Doric (The Aberdonian Dialect), yes the guy who had a thing for himself. I don’t know where the name “Daffodil” comes from, but I can understand Narcissus, Daffodils are poisonous if consumed, perhaps I should qualify that, daffodil bulbs are poisonous. DON’T EAT THEM! You probably won’t, but in some unscrupulous places in the world they are sold as shallots. Like the lily and the tulip they are onions at heart yes. However DO NOT EAT A DAFFODIL BULB YOU OXYGEN THIEVES!
Oh yes Storybook Glen.
After you hit the recycled satellite dish that served as the “Dish that ran away with the spoon” (The spoon was long gone, one thinks it hangs over the “Greasy Spoon and Transit Cafe” at the hideously Victorian Aberdeen Train Station, I may be biased in this respect.) you can jump over a fiberglass candlestick (Jack be nimble jack be quick, Jack better make it over the fiberglass or he is going to have an unpleasant surprise in the backside.),followed by a fake wishing well with Dr Foster,Dr. Foster went to Gloucester (Gloster, to those that need pronunciation of ridiculous British places), then at Hickory Dickory Dock there was a floral clock.
Here beyond the floral clock was the piece de resistance! A Castle! Sleeping beauties castle according to the markers. This with the Log cabin was the only real building on site, it had four walls and someone with a jigsaw had added some battlements to what really looked like our gardeners shed. Oh and a turret that sagged in the rain. This was a building that adults could go inside with you, and it smelled like pee. The floor was gravel and on the walls were manacles. This is better than Disneyland why? Its not in California? Maybe?
Why? Because you have made it! It is done! You have achieved the wonder by traveling through this magical land, now stop by the tea shop and the souvenir super store before exiting.
A perfect ploy, by having no toilets available throughout the park one had to stop in the “Self service Cafe” or the “Tea Room” or even the “Shops” in order to not contribute to the very potent air of the park in general.
We were typical kids so we were always ready at the end of the park to eat and “Other things”. The self service cafe is like all such establishments in the UK, making it hard to explain to Americans. I will try:
Imagine a cafeteria that has all the glamor and beauty of an elementary school lunch room. Now take away any thought that the food may be nutritious or even food. Add to this dream that the service is not “Rude” but stilted friendly, (like when you call your cell phone company). Then take away most anything that involves food that is hot or warm, or in the case of foods that are supposed to be served cold or chilled any sense of that. Imagine, if you will, egg salad sandwiches purchased from a gas station in Steele North Dakota left a little long after the power went out, with a side of fast coagulating Black pudding. Cold Macaroni and cheese pies, rock buns (need I say more), Salisbury Balls (Don’t ask) Bakewell tarts (Jam and custard baked and let to go sticky and cold), Digestive Biscuits (Grainy round Graham crackers, without the Graham Cracker loveliness), Water Biscuits and Cheese (A Biscuit is either a Cracker or a Cookie in the American Vernacular. A Biscuit in the American vernacular is a Scone in the British sense. ).
It was all awful, really awful, and the tea shop was like all tea shops in Britain horrible hard pastries filled with jam and smothered in custard, topped with nuclear red maraschino cherries or candied Angelica. (Celery, yes a kissing cousin of the celery plant, mmmm that’s what everyone wants candied celery Yum-o-rama!)
Luckily, my parents were just as ripe to get the hell out of there as everyone else and our short stop ath the tea shop was just to release bladders (Preferably over the Bath Buns) and get out.
It just so happened that there was an old inn (Or rather Olde Inne, you have to add extra vowels to make it seem authentic) on the way home. A lovely place with aged beams and even more aged bar maids that could bring you a nice hot steak and kidney pie, some suet sausage and deep fried pretty much anything.
However the Tudor fireplace was also fiberglass.
Mary had a little lamb…that was a lot of words! Jason! 86 the Lamb!
Here is a Lamb and lentil Stew that is more along the lines of the happier years I spent in the Levant.
1 Pound of Lamb Sholder
4 Tablespoons of Olive oil
2 Onions sliced
3 Cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
½ Cup of lentils
4 Potatoes peeled and cubed
1 Teaspoon of cumin
1 Teaspoon of lemon juice
½ Teaspoon of coriander
¼ Teaspoon of cinnamon
1 Teaspoon of salt
½ Teaspoon of black pepper
8 Cups of water or Stock
How you do this? I tell you now:
Brown the lamb in the olive oil in a large stock pot or Dutch oven. Add the onions and garlic, cook till brown stirring occasionally. Add the tomato paste and stir well, add the lentils, cumin, lemon juice, coriander, cinnamon, salt and black pepper. Stir well for a couple of minutes. Add the water and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes then add potatoes and cook a further 20 minutes.
This is great with toasted pita bread.
No comments:
Post a Comment