How would you like it if you were being used every time someone interacted with you? What would you do if you found out you were only wanted for one purpose? And how would you react if by the time you discovered all of this, your purpose was realized and there was nothing at all you could do about it?
Because you see, this is a very true reality many organisms face, thousands of times a day. There is a minority out there who are used, treated like they're nothing but a stepping stone, then destroyed every time you want to undergo this one, small act of pleasure. A needless amount face peril as you sip your cup of tea.
What many of you won't realize is that as you're reading this right now, up to 100% of biscuits dunked are disconnecting from their base and falling, helplessly, into a cup of boiling tea. Dunking biscuits is a perilous path. Every time you dunk a biscuit, the biscuit fairy is in the corner of the room, whispering into the universe 'this is a perilous path you walk'. There is no escaping the biscuit fairy. She is the one who causes you so much grief, she is the one who puts out into the universe what you get back. Burn the fairy!
Or don't, because it's actually totally your fault that your biscuit just dropped into your tea. I was pining in the week for rich tea biscuits because I desperately want something that tastes heavenly when dunked in a lovely cup of tea. Reminiscing with my mum on the times when we used to have rich tea fingers, I longed for the perfect dunking biscuit -- not just a rich tea -- but a biscuit perfectly shaped to fit in any cup. The legendary rich tea finger. Which I now have! Thanks dad!
However, as previously mentioned, dunking biscuits comes at a price. Leave it in for too long when dunking, you face the possibility of it dropping into your tea, or worse, splitting down your cup running into your tea and also onto your table. If the latter happens, you're torn- do I save my table or my tea? Will my tea still be drinkable or will I be faced with biscuity-bits dancing on my tongue with every slurp and sip? Will my cup still be sticky after wiping the melty-biscuit mess from the side? In the words of my brother, "this is a perilous path you walk". So much could go wrong in this endeavor with so little you can do to negate the wrongness. The only solution viable is prevention and survival mechanisms.
Evaluation of different dunking biscuits.
The Chocolate Digestive
I've previously found grievances with chocolate digestives -- of course if the chocolate melts off into your tea, you have a sweeter cup; however I choose the amount of sugar I put in my cup because that's the sweetness I like, I do not appreciate the extra sweetness brought on by the chocolate which should be on my biscuit. Also, if I had wanted a chocolate-free biscuit I would have picked a plain digestive. I would not recommend this biscuit.
Rich Tea (circle)
This biscuit was actually originally invented for the middle class, as something to munch on between 'full course meals'. So although they weren't invented specifically for dunking, they've served quite a happy purpose. The main issue with these biscuits is that you can only dunk them when your cup is full, otherwise they probably won't fit in your cup (unless you dunk one side at a time, which changes the shape until you can fit it in your cup). The down side of these biscuits it that they're relatively weak. The up side of the down side is that because they only fit in your cup for the first few sips, you're at a relatively low risk of the biscuit splitting.
Rich Tea (fingers)
These were specifically designed with an identical flavour and texture of original rich teas, but with the specific purpose of dunking. Unfortunately, the biscuit's making is also its undoing. As terrifying as terror is, the peril hits when you're least expecting. I would only recommend this biscuit for the tea-timing experts out there. Those of you who don't leave too late to remove the biscuit from the tea, yet also don't remove the biscuit too soon, for if the biscuit is removed too soon, the biscuit is still crunchy (and that's no good!), but if left too late to be removed, the biscuit will flop and potentially drop into your tea or lap. Although these are the only biscuits specifically designed to be dunked, they are also the most dangerous, with a risk factor higher than the SPF on baby-block.
Twix Finger Straws
There was a phase around 6 years ago of heavily publicized twix-dunking. It wasn't real dunking, but had the same messy consequences; bit both ends off a twix finger, stick it in your tea and slurp through. Supposedly the biscuit's hollow nature would provide a straw for the tea to come up to your mouth, the caramel on top would flavour the tea sweeter and the chocolate apparently would stay on the biscuit. All that would actually happen is that the biscuit would become mushy by the tea being forced through, the caramel would melt on your fingers, you end up inhaling tea and bits of biscuit and the whole thing disintegrates. You're left with a messy kitchen; nasty, sticky hands and a ruined cup of tea. I hope you're happy.
Jaffa Cakes
Don't even try it.
My only other solution to the problem of biscuity tea would be to just not dunk biscuits, but that wouldn't really be fun. That's like saying, rather than risk injury, why not just stay in a safe room and do nothing, ever. It would not be a good solution! I would really like the ability to invent a device that allows you to dunk biscuits in tea without the issue of soggy biscuit at the bottom of your mug, but that's an unlikely possibility for two reasons: one, I'm too easily distracted and wouldn't be allowed in a lab because of this and two, I don't have anywhere NEAR enough money, and even if I did, I'd never make it all back as most people who choose the perilous path of dunking biscuits in tea (like myself) would simply continue to gamble on their tea's life by dunking and avoiding products (which probably don't work anyway) claiming to be the solution to all their soggy-biscuit-tea problems.
These are most of my thoughts on the matter, but feel free to leave a comment. Also, apparently Heston Blumenthal did an experiment to determine how best to eat a biscuit, and, apparently, biscuits taste better dunked.
Monday, 25 August 2014
Monday, 18 August 2014
How to Moult Your Cat
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| One Cat [check] One Brush [check] |
How to moult your cat.
You Will Need:
1 cat
1 moulting brush
Full body armours (optional)
Elephant tranquilizers
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| The cat can be seen hiding in plain site. |
Step 1. Locate your cat
Your cat may sense the evil presence of help, and will most likely hide from you. Cats think they are cunning and tend to hide where they think you won’t look, for example: in a chimney hollow; behind a sofa; on a roof. Sometimes though, the cat will attempt to trick you by hiding in super obvious places like on a bench or bed. These are the places you will slip up. The cat is cunning by presenting a cute front, in an attempt to distract you from your real intention.
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| Don't let the cute distract you! |
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| Cute paws at the camera lens in an attempt to distract the moult-er |
Step 2. Eyes on the prize
As mentioned in step 1, cats will attempt to blind you of your goal by being cute. Ignore the cute. This might be a good time to put your body armour on, too.
Step 4. Be prepared
Your cat won’t like being moulted because they refuse help. In this way cats are similar to grandmas. Read more about that here. This has nothing at all to do with the fact that cats have a cleaning instinct and they know how to moult themselves. This is a lie. They need you to moult them. This won’t at all result in a scratchy bitey cat and a
Step 5. Ready your brush
I. Get your brush.
II. Hold it in your hand
III. Place on the cat’s neck
IV.
Step 6. Commence brushing
It might be easier to hold the cat in place as they may squirm. Here you will need two hands. I find it helps to label them (left hand is ‘L’ and right hand is ‘R’). Hold the cat with your non-writing hand; if you are ambidextrous this won’t be an issue- simply pick the hand you care less about. If you’re left-handed, this might be your means to a sticky end*. Pull the brush from the scruff of the cat’s neck to the tail base. Release.Step 7. Repeat step 6
Repeat step 6 until either your cat wriggles free or you’re dangerously close to
Step 8. Get to hospital.
Unless you were wearing body armour, you might need medical attention. Ring an ambulance if your bleeding is serious, otherwise ring NHS direct (in England + Wales) because everyone knows how great NHS direct are. Alternatively, pour alcohol on your scratches and bind with a clean t-shirt. I think that’s what Bear Grylls does? Also, drink your own pee**.
Step 9. Don’t moult your cat
I mean, I moult my cat, but he’s more of a dog than a cat. By which I mean he’s a dog. Well, he’s a dog if you mean a dog in a cat’s body? We have a lead for him. Though last time we used it he wriggled out of it and almost killed me (with worry). He was off his lead for a good 10 seconds and it was the scariest 10 seconds of my life. Apart from the time I almost died under my brother’s bed (again there’s a blog post on that). Or the time I almost drowned… maybe I should write a post on that. Very traumatic, wouldn't like it to happen to anyone else. ANYWAY, long story short, you might want to steer clear of moulting your cat unless it’s a pedigree or really old. Or it’s a dog masquerading as a cat.
*Disclaimer my year 9 English teacher (who would prefer not to be named) told us that left-handed people live approximately 6 years less than those who are right-handed. To my knowledge this hasn't been disproved. If you are left handed, you may wish to get an ambidextrous or right-handed friend to assist you in your cat moulting endeavor.
** This might be for dehydration. That could also be a problem depending how long you've been trying to moult your cat
Monday, 4 August 2014
Family
Family is a very important thing for a lot of people, and spending time with family- whether you get on with them or not- is vital. It's a thing a lot of people are used to- family all sitting round a table at least once a week for a meal, seeing the cousins or aunties and uncles or grandparents regularly is taken for granted. But my family is rather different. Unfortunately, we often only see each other (cousins and uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews) at celebrations or in a crisis. And I don't mean Christmas and Easter- if I saw my cousins every Christmas I would be so grateful- but unfortunately only occasions like my eldest (and quite poorly) brother's 21st birthday party or my grand-dad's 80th birthday. The last 'crisis' my family had was last year with a very unexpected car-crash. No one was critically injured but it really shook my family and we'd seen each other all well so recently for my grand dad's birthday. Since then I've seen one of my cousins and his (now) wife several times, and I think we all just realized how much we missed each other. I love seeing my cousin and his wife and my uncle and I appreciate them seeing us, too.
Recently however, my other cousins and uncle and aunt (same side) got a new puppy, and this was- amazingly- the push my family needed to prompt us seeing one another again. We'd meaning to meet up since my grand dad's birthday, but things have been so hectic as my younger cousin swims (very well, look out Rio 2016! Pow Pow!) and my uncle and aunt do a lot of hands on parenty things (think soccer-mom but more Manchester-ish) and my older cousin is currently doing a course on teaching swimming to kids with disabilities (I think?) and it's difficult to find a time when everyone's free. But as it's summer, we made the excuse of a new puppy to go over and see them.
And it was awsome.
We were going to go out for a meal together, but my cousins had been out the night before and weren't feeling up to going out twice in a row, and my grandparents couldn't come because my granddad was going with my other uncle (who we've started seeing more, recently) to see the rugby and my nanna wasn't well enough to come for a meal out. After the meal though, we went and picked my nanna up and we went off to my cousin's house. All of my mum's family live in the same neck of the woods, so it was a quick drive from my nanna's to my cousins' house. Immediately we were greeted by an excitable 16-week old pup and my younger cousin. Note I don't say little. That's because he's twice as tall as me and has flippers instead of feet. Did I mention he swims? And sleeps in a green house?
I saw my cousin's medals and trophy's for swimming (he has many a trophy and lots of very shiny medals) and we all sat in the garden and played with the dogs, and later I sat with the rabbit on my lap (who was really super soft, softer than my angora wool socks yo). The older dog was called Molly, and was constantly being hounded- no pun intended- by Amber, the tearaway toddler who doesn't know the size of her own mouth. Any toy Molly had, Amber wanted. A few times Amber managed to take a toy from Molly, so Molly would get another toy, which Amber would promtly attempt to tackle from Molly's jaw. Even when Amber already had a toy in her mouth, she would run alongside Molly, rugby tackling her for the second toy. It was madness, madness, y'all.
Anyway, throwing the balls was endless entertainment for all of us (and the dogs!) especially when we would pretend to throw the ball, then when the dogs went to search, throwing the ball in the other direction and laughing at how dumb they were. When in actual fact, we humans are the dumb ones as we don't know when and how to throw balls in order for a dog to fetch. The game is called 'fetch', not 'try to make your dog look stupid and confuse it'. Stop being so cruel to your dogs, people.
Cookie, AKA Tony, AKA Mr Rabbit, was jumping round his little run like Tigger on a fresh spring morning (my cat Tigger, not the cartoon character, although remarkable similarities in jumping height), until we took some notice of him, and I then sat with him on my lap for about 40 minutes. He was so soft and fluffy guys it was like stroking a silky cloud. Apart from where Amber had been licking him, because apparently some dogs like to lick their rabbits. No seriously, Amber really likes the rabbit. I reckon it's because they're the same size and so feel able to relate to each other's struggles, like not being able to reach the cereal on the top shelf.
By the way, who keeps cereal on the top shelf?
Anyway, it was a lovely day, and as we were driving back to my nanna's house to drop her back home, we saw an arm sticking awkwardly and waving madly out of the car in front. Then we realized it was our other cousin with his wife. It was mad. And awesome. We just totally weren't expecting to see them, as his mum has recently moved house and we know that they'd been busy helping her move, but like I said earlier they all live near each other, so it was totally believable that we'd have bumped into them like that. It just put the cherry on top of my day, because like I was saying earlier, I just love seeing them. All of them are so rad, I just wish we lived closer. Because if we lived closer to one, we'd live closer to all of them! And then we could randomly bump into each other all the time! I think I have a bit of a fairy-tale-ish perception of living close to your family. I don't care. But anyway, they got out of their car and we got out of our car and we stood around and talked for a bit and then they had to go, but it was great, it felt like the most worth while visit to anywhere ever.
And family.
Recently however, my other cousins and uncle and aunt (same side) got a new puppy, and this was- amazingly- the push my family needed to prompt us seeing one another again. We'd meaning to meet up since my grand dad's birthday, but things have been so hectic as my younger cousin swims (very well, look out Rio 2016! Pow Pow!) and my uncle and aunt do a lot of hands on parenty things (think soccer-mom but more Manchester-ish) and my older cousin is currently doing a course on teaching swimming to kids with disabilities (I think?) and it's difficult to find a time when everyone's free. But as it's summer, we made the excuse of a new puppy to go over and see them.
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| Molly |
We were going to go out for a meal together, but my cousins had been out the night before and weren't feeling up to going out twice in a row, and my grandparents couldn't come because my granddad was going with my other uncle (who we've started seeing more, recently) to see the rugby and my nanna wasn't well enough to come for a meal out. After the meal though, we went and picked my nanna up and we went off to my cousin's house. All of my mum's family live in the same neck of the woods, so it was a quick drive from my nanna's to my cousins' house. Immediately we were greeted by an excitable 16-week old pup and my younger cousin. Note I don't say little. That's because he's twice as tall as me and has flippers instead of feet. Did I mention he swims? And sleeps in a green house?
I saw my cousin's medals and trophy's for swimming (he has many a trophy and lots of very shiny medals) and we all sat in the garden and played with the dogs, and later I sat with the rabbit on my lap (who was really super soft, softer than my angora wool socks yo). The older dog was called Molly, and was constantly being hounded- no pun intended- by Amber, the tearaway toddler who doesn't know the size of her own mouth. Any toy Molly had, Amber wanted. A few times Amber managed to take a toy from Molly, so Molly would get another toy, which Amber would promtly attempt to tackle from Molly's jaw. Even when Amber already had a toy in her mouth, she would run alongside Molly, rugby tackling her for the second toy. It was madness, madness, y'all.
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| Amber. I was warned I wouldn't get any good photos, mwu-ha-ha-ha |
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| Cookie |
By the way, who keeps cereal on the top shelf?
Anyway, it was a lovely day, and as we were driving back to my nanna's house to drop her back home, we saw an arm sticking awkwardly and waving madly out of the car in front. Then we realized it was our other cousin with his wife. It was mad. And awesome. We just totally weren't expecting to see them, as his mum has recently moved house and we know that they'd been busy helping her move, but like I said earlier they all live near each other, so it was totally believable that we'd have bumped into them like that. It just put the cherry on top of my day, because like I was saying earlier, I just love seeing them. All of them are so rad, I just wish we lived closer. Because if we lived closer to one, we'd live closer to all of them! And then we could randomly bump into each other all the time! I think I have a bit of a fairy-tale-ish perception of living close to your family. I don't care. But anyway, they got out of their car and we got out of our car and we stood around and talked for a bit and then they had to go, but it was great, it felt like the most worth while visit to anywhere ever.
And family.
The only thing I dislike about seeing my family is that it reminds me how much I miss them.
My Grandma's Badass 1-Ups Your Grandma's Badass
My family and I recently went away for a short break and during that time we got talking about inappropriate things members of our family do. Not inappropriate like flashing in public, but inappropriate like they shouldn't be doing it. Obviously I'm not condoning flashing in public places, I'm not condoning flashing anywhere, but what I'm talking about as inappropriate is more like things you've been told explicitly that you shouldn't do. Like someone with a nut allergy shoving a handful of coconut or peanuts in their mouth, or a grandma giving chocolate to their grand-child.
I'm not brilliantly sure how we got on to the subject, but at some point someone brought up my grandma and I thought her faux pars were so spectacular, they perhaps warranted their own blog post, but I guess we'll just see how this goes.
Firstly, a memory I have- and probably one of my earliest with my grandma- is when she used to come on holiday with us. A combination of my parents not being able to handle 4 children under the age of 8, one potty training and one intermittently in a wheelchair, my grandma being too old to travel and us going on holiday every year, enabled my grandma to come with us each year. For me it felt like an eternity of having my grandma holidaying with us, but I'm told that she only came for a few years. I think maybe I was just so traumatized that time stood still. This might be a slight exaggeration where your generation is concerned, depending how old you are and how much you dislike. What you have to understand about my grandma is that, like my dad, she is always right. So if my parents say 'no seafish' and she says 'seafish', chances are, you're getting seafish. This happened because my grandma used to love the nostalgia of picking muscles off of sea walls and my siblings and I thought the shells were pretty. We had no idea there were actual, live creatures inside the shells, else we probably wouldn't have picked them. But we didn't know, so we did pick them, and my grandma told us she liked to cook them and eat them. At this point my parents caught on to what she was doing with her two grand-daughter-minions lugging around three sandcastle buckets full of muscles and told her, very clearly "If you want to cook those and give yourself food poisoning, be our guest, but do not give any to our children." I've checked with my parents multiple times since then and they said it was very clear that she wasn't to give us any. They were most shocked when we informed them a few weeks ago that she had, in fact, given us the muscles regardless. But hey, she apparently cooked them properly because my parents surely would have noticed if we- or my grandma- got food poisoning.
Me and my brother were sat in the carvery with our mum at this point talking about how badly the muscles smelled. It was like the smell was ingrained in our brains- it was horrible and it lasted for hours (but apparently they were only cooked for 6 minutes?) We both remember her using a tonne of salt and practically forcing the slimy, liverishly-textured seafood down our throats.
The second memory I have of my grandma on holiday is when she decided to help my parents out by giving me and my sister our bath before bed. She used to make us cry and scream because rather than laying us back to rinse the shampoo out of our hair, she used to dump the water on top of us, both rendering us unable to see, or breathe, whilst the suds filled all the crevices of our face. This really was a traumatic experience, and when we told our parents about it she was reprimanded and told how we were usually laid down and the suds rinsed with her hands from our locks. But sure enough, next bath time she not only dumped water over our heads, she used a fucking saucepan.
Nothing says retaliation like a saucepan. Just watch Tangled. The kid uses a saucepan to defy her 'mother' and also the law, thus her real mother and father. That girl's just a badass with a saucepan. I bet they based the film off my grandma- I don't remember a saucepan in the original. In fact, I don't remember a lot of the little prettied parts of Disney's version being in the original.
While we're talking about how badass my grandma is, I should tell you the toaster story.
Same holiday as the muscles I think, at least same location, the toaster was jammed the whole duration of our holiday. There was one day we didn't leave the house the whole day because- I'm informed- my brother was in hospital and no one felt like doing anything. In the afternoon my grandma fancied a snack and a break from what I can only assume was the longest game of snakes and ladders the poor woman had ever had the misfortune of playing. She was fed up of not only having her toast burnt but also catapulted across the room so she timed thirty seconds on her watch and made my sister and I wait by the toaster. Once her watch hit 30, I pressed the 'stop' button on the toaster. My grandma, who had been waiting across the other side of the room with a plate, lifted the plate into the air and, like a ninja catching a fly, caught the toast.
Ladies and gentlemen, my grandma. *takes a bow*
Next story is her being inappropriate in a different way, similarly to the muscles incident. My aunt was always adamant her children would have no e-numbers, organic, steamed and local grown everything with no preservative and additives. And above all, they would eat no chocolate until they were old enough to make the decision to wreck their teeth themselves (I should imagine). My grandma knew this and, being her, immediately had to defile the rule and rewrite it with her own reasoning. She would take my cousin out every now and then, away from my aunt, and force feed the child chocolate buttons. She would give him as many chocolate buttons as he could hold in his chubby little additive-free cheeks, and once he'd choked them down, she'd fill him up again. Once the buttons were gone, my grandma would nicely clean him up and return him, presumably in a sugar-coma, to his doting mother who would be left none the wiser as far as my grandma was concerned. When she told my mum about the grand chocolate endeavor, my poor mother was horrified, telling her how inappropriate it was, but my grandma shook her head in denial. "He likes them! They're good for him, a bit of this and that, you know?".
So folks, if you want my grandma to do something, tell her she's not to do it under any circumstances. Tell her that doing it would be putting the fate of the universe in grave danger, and could actually re-write history, including human life ever existing on earth. She'll be instinctively drawn to doing it. Honestly, she's just programmed that way. Probably part of her genetic 'badass' makeup. She's one of the world's risk takers. She's so badass, she likes the fate of the universe hanging in the balance of just one too many chocolate buttons.
I'm not really sure what else my grandma's done that's classed as inappropriate by you civilians. She's probably robbed a bank at some point. At gun point. And got away with it. She probably has a stack of alibis for every evening, her neighbours saying 'oh no, she falls asleep every night at 7:30pm bang on when Corrie starts. She's the most peaceful neighbor ever' when really she's just placed a crash dummy there from her entrepreneurial days as a jetpack designer and tester, and is out looting the local jewelers and performing other risk-taking behaviour. I bet she's a trained skydive instructor as well.
One thing I do know though, is she wouldn't be out saving the day for children who want to play with their dolls but forgot a vital piece of kit. These days, all dolls have hair. I had a Cindy doll with hair on one of the occasions we holidayed with my grandma and had taken the doll to the beach where we had paddled together and now needed to restyle our hair- brush it an let it dry. My grandma happily handed over a hair brush when I asked, but snatched it violently back when I went to brush Cindy's hair with it. My parents could never understand why she'd been so against her 3 year old granddaughter role-playing parental responsibilities and showing a sophisticated and educated level of play at such a tender age. Same holiday, my grandma went into a grumpy stupor when she'd smashed her flask in a hurry to get her tea out. We always went to a bowls field for a pot of tea and biscuits when we went to this holiday area, but my grandma was adamant that her tea was the only stuff she wanted, and it was a really nice tartan flask with a glass insulating chamber. Unfortunately, glass is very delicate and once broken could be fatal if ingested. I later found out that it could cut your throat and drown you in your own blood if you drink from a broken glass flask. I mean, considering my grandma's risk-taking tendancies, it does surprise me that she hadn't persevered with the flask. Perhaps my parents flippantly told her to just go for it when she told them she'd smashed it. If we're going with the logic that she does the opposite of what we ask, that would also be a reasonably explanation.
Anyway, I haven't got any more badass stories of my grandma, unfortunately. Probably because they happened when I was younger and my memory is patchy from my childhood and she is an old lady now so is probably hanging her badass hat on the hook for now. I think when the time comes, she'll pull something super awesome out of the bag, but for the time being she's masquerading as a fragile lady with intermittent memory lapses, like most badasses her age. (I think it's best to keep her antics on the DL at her age, don't want the press hanging round all the time you know?)
I'm not brilliantly sure how we got on to the subject, but at some point someone brought up my grandma and I thought her faux pars were so spectacular, they perhaps warranted their own blog post, but I guess we'll just see how this goes.
Firstly, a memory I have- and probably one of my earliest with my grandma- is when she used to come on holiday with us. A combination of my parents not being able to handle 4 children under the age of 8, one potty training and one intermittently in a wheelchair, my grandma being too old to travel and us going on holiday every year, enabled my grandma to come with us each year. For me it felt like an eternity of having my grandma holidaying with us, but I'm told that she only came for a few years. I think maybe I was just so traumatized that time stood still. This might be a slight exaggeration where your generation is concerned, depending how old you are and how much you dislike. What you have to understand about my grandma is that, like my dad, she is always right. So if my parents say 'no seafish' and she says 'seafish', chances are, you're getting seafish. This happened because my grandma used to love the nostalgia of picking muscles off of sea walls and my siblings and I thought the shells were pretty. We had no idea there were actual, live creatures inside the shells, else we probably wouldn't have picked them. But we didn't know, so we did pick them, and my grandma told us she liked to cook them and eat them. At this point my parents caught on to what she was doing with her two grand-daughter-minions lugging around three sandcastle buckets full of muscles and told her, very clearly "If you want to cook those and give yourself food poisoning, be our guest, but do not give any to our children." I've checked with my parents multiple times since then and they said it was very clear that she wasn't to give us any. They were most shocked when we informed them a few weeks ago that she had, in fact, given us the muscles regardless. But hey, she apparently cooked them properly because my parents surely would have noticed if we- or my grandma- got food poisoning.
Me and my brother were sat in the carvery with our mum at this point talking about how badly the muscles smelled. It was like the smell was ingrained in our brains- it was horrible and it lasted for hours (but apparently they were only cooked for 6 minutes?) We both remember her using a tonne of salt and practically forcing the slimy, liverishly-textured seafood down our throats.
The second memory I have of my grandma on holiday is when she decided to help my parents out by giving me and my sister our bath before bed. She used to make us cry and scream because rather than laying us back to rinse the shampoo out of our hair, she used to dump the water on top of us, both rendering us unable to see, or breathe, whilst the suds filled all the crevices of our face. This really was a traumatic experience, and when we told our parents about it she was reprimanded and told how we were usually laid down and the suds rinsed with her hands from our locks. But sure enough, next bath time she not only dumped water over our heads, she used a fucking saucepan.
Nothing says retaliation like a saucepan. Just watch Tangled. The kid uses a saucepan to defy her 'mother' and also the law, thus her real mother and father. That girl's just a badass with a saucepan. I bet they based the film off my grandma- I don't remember a saucepan in the original. In fact, I don't remember a lot of the little prettied parts of Disney's version being in the original.
While we're talking about how badass my grandma is, I should tell you the toaster story.
Same holiday as the muscles I think, at least same location, the toaster was jammed the whole duration of our holiday. There was one day we didn't leave the house the whole day because- I'm informed- my brother was in hospital and no one felt like doing anything. In the afternoon my grandma fancied a snack and a break from what I can only assume was the longest game of snakes and ladders the poor woman had ever had the misfortune of playing. She was fed up of not only having her toast burnt but also catapulted across the room so she timed thirty seconds on her watch and made my sister and I wait by the toaster. Once her watch hit 30, I pressed the 'stop' button on the toaster. My grandma, who had been waiting across the other side of the room with a plate, lifted the plate into the air and, like a ninja catching a fly, caught the toast.
Ladies and gentlemen, my grandma. *takes a bow*
Next story is her being inappropriate in a different way, similarly to the muscles incident. My aunt was always adamant her children would have no e-numbers, organic, steamed and local grown everything with no preservative and additives. And above all, they would eat no chocolate until they were old enough to make the decision to wreck their teeth themselves (I should imagine). My grandma knew this and, being her, immediately had to defile the rule and rewrite it with her own reasoning. She would take my cousin out every now and then, away from my aunt, and force feed the child chocolate buttons. She would give him as many chocolate buttons as he could hold in his chubby little additive-free cheeks, and once he'd choked them down, she'd fill him up again. Once the buttons were gone, my grandma would nicely clean him up and return him, presumably in a sugar-coma, to his doting mother who would be left none the wiser as far as my grandma was concerned. When she told my mum about the grand chocolate endeavor, my poor mother was horrified, telling her how inappropriate it was, but my grandma shook her head in denial. "He likes them! They're good for him, a bit of this and that, you know?".
So folks, if you want my grandma to do something, tell her she's not to do it under any circumstances. Tell her that doing it would be putting the fate of the universe in grave danger, and could actually re-write history, including human life ever existing on earth. She'll be instinctively drawn to doing it. Honestly, she's just programmed that way. Probably part of her genetic 'badass' makeup. She's one of the world's risk takers. She's so badass, she likes the fate of the universe hanging in the balance of just one too many chocolate buttons.
I'm not really sure what else my grandma's done that's classed as inappropriate by you civilians. She's probably robbed a bank at some point. At gun point. And got away with it. She probably has a stack of alibis for every evening, her neighbours saying 'oh no, she falls asleep every night at 7:30pm bang on when Corrie starts. She's the most peaceful neighbor ever' when really she's just placed a crash dummy there from her entrepreneurial days as a jetpack designer and tester, and is out looting the local jewelers and performing other risk-taking behaviour. I bet she's a trained skydive instructor as well.
One thing I do know though, is she wouldn't be out saving the day for children who want to play with their dolls but forgot a vital piece of kit. These days, all dolls have hair. I had a Cindy doll with hair on one of the occasions we holidayed with my grandma and had taken the doll to the beach where we had paddled together and now needed to restyle our hair- brush it an let it dry. My grandma happily handed over a hair brush when I asked, but snatched it violently back when I went to brush Cindy's hair with it. My parents could never understand why she'd been so against her 3 year old granddaughter role-playing parental responsibilities and showing a sophisticated and educated level of play at such a tender age. Same holiday, my grandma went into a grumpy stupor when she'd smashed her flask in a hurry to get her tea out. We always went to a bowls field for a pot of tea and biscuits when we went to this holiday area, but my grandma was adamant that her tea was the only stuff she wanted, and it was a really nice tartan flask with a glass insulating chamber. Unfortunately, glass is very delicate and once broken could be fatal if ingested. I later found out that it could cut your throat and drown you in your own blood if you drink from a broken glass flask. I mean, considering my grandma's risk-taking tendancies, it does surprise me that she hadn't persevered with the flask. Perhaps my parents flippantly told her to just go for it when she told them she'd smashed it. If we're going with the logic that she does the opposite of what we ask, that would also be a reasonably explanation.
Anyway, I haven't got any more badass stories of my grandma, unfortunately. Probably because they happened when I was younger and my memory is patchy from my childhood and she is an old lady now so is probably hanging her badass hat on the hook for now. I think when the time comes, she'll pull something super awesome out of the bag, but for the time being she's masquerading as a fragile lady with intermittent memory lapses, like most badasses her age. (I think it's best to keep her antics on the DL at her age, don't want the press hanging round all the time you know?)
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