Over. And over.

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This post forms part of the The 05:59, Bill Murray-inspired, self-imposed, unnecessary, blog-writing challenge.

Over_ And over

I was in the Virgin Islands once, I met a girl, we ate lobster, drank piña coladas, at sunset we made love like sea otters. … That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day? Over. And over.

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blood sausage

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This post forms part of the The 05:59, Bill Murray-inspired, self-imposed, unnecessary, blog-writing challenge.

Phil: I’m probably leaving [the television company]

So this will be the last time we do the Groundhog together.

Larry: What’s wrong with the Groundhog Festival?

…

Phil: Someday somebody will see me interviewing a groundhog… and think I don’t have a future.

Rita: I think it’s a nice story. He comes out, he looks around, he wrinkles up his little nose, he sees his shadow or he doesn’t see it. It’s nice. People like it.

…

Phil: People like blood sausage too. People are morons.

-Groundhog Day, 1993.

Personally, I don’t think people are morons. And I don’t think if they were it would be because they ate blood sausage. Despite my own not particularly strong brand of vegetarianism, I think eating blood sausage is okay. What is not okay, is that someone named it blood sausage. Yuck. Certainly, there are a lot of things that I think the American language does much better than we do here in the UK (controversial I know), but ‘blood sausage’ is not one of them. ‘Black pudding’, as it’s called here, may not be as accurate as ‘blood sausage’ but it evokes a good enough idea of the foodstuff without putting you off eating it.

I’m a big fan of lists and collections, and I’ve begun collecting words that myself, friends and family dislike, terms that make them shudder. I’ve started it off here, below, and will be growing it over the coming weeks. Some are obvious choices, others more odd. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Happy for anyone to submit a suggestion using the comments section below or via email to pip.rowson@gmail.com or twitter or other. (And they must be words that may come up in conversation, rather than at the doctor’s surgery):

  • pus
  • glad (an odd choice but the person who picked it said it makes them shudder so…)
  • stomach
  • blubber
  • rubber
  • couch
  • pamphlet
  • wobble
  • clot
  • crust
  • blancmange

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‘The whole world is about to explode. Whadda you do?’

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This post forms part of the The 05:59, Bill Murray-inspired, self-imposed, unnecessary, blog-writing challenge.

Phil: If you only had one day to live, what would you do with it?
Rita: I don’t know, Phil. What are you dying of?.
Phil: I mean, the whole world is about to explode. Whadda you do? I want to know where to put the camera.

-Groundhog Day (somewhere in the middle of it)

I am in a massive Sainsbury’s at an out-of-town shopping centre on a Friday evening. Someone I know, ‘______’,  is a big fan of the Friday evening shop, and I know Friday night chores are the thing to do now so that Saturday mornings can be reclaimed.

I used to think that doing anything mundane on a Friday night was a waste of the beginning of the weekend but, in fact, I have discovered that doing a chore such as the weekly shop at this time is perfect because picking up your groceries when everyone else is out partying, or at home with a glass of wine, means that the shops are blissfully free of ‘everyone else’. Therefore a) it’s a speedy, almost joyous shop and b) you get to experience an apocalyptic atmosphere without an actual disaster having happened – perfect for a disaster movie junkie like myself.

So Beau and I are at this big empty Sainsbury’s on a Friday night. Before we go in, I head  to the cash point outside and ask it for forty pounds. ‘Do you think it’s going to give me tenpound notes or twenty pound ones?’ I ask to pass the ‘time’ (four seconds) between tapping in my pin and selection and the thing giving me what I want. ‘Tenners’ says Beau. We wait. 2…1… The machine spurts out eight five pound notes. We look at each other wide-eyed. The first surprise of the night.

Inside the supermarket, it quickly becomes apparent that Beau and I are the only customers in there. I pounce of the disasteryness of the situation. ‘It’s like a film set!’ I say. ‘It’s just like everyone’s been wiped out!’
“Well… it’s a bit like that” says Beau. “But also just a bit like it’s not that busy.”
“Look at these DVDs!” I say, rushing up to an ‘impulse buy’ stand near one of the self-service tills. “These wouldn’t mean a thing in an apocalyptic situation!”
“We could use the cases as bricks in a wall” says Beau
“What would we need a wall for?” I ask.
“Well, okay, for a shelter then, plastic roof tiles. They’d be useful for something for sure.”
“And some sort of weapon from the discs themselves!” I say.
“What would we need a weapon for?” says Beau, right back at me.
“Well, okay, we’ll use them to reflect the sun and start a fire to cook our evening meal then.”
“Better” says Beau.

In one quiet aisle, a loaf of bread (Hovis, wholemeal) falls off a high-up shelf, unprompted. Splat on the floor. Beau and I look at each other. I take this look to mean mutual acknowledgement of the impending apocalypse. I suspect Beau takes it to mean ‘it doesn’t mean anything’.

Round the next bend a trolley has been abandoned. A trolley full of value goods and a newspaper with a headline that reads ‘time has come to end austerity’. I wonder whether the person pushing the trolley, picking up their ‘Sainsbury’s Basics’ dips and chips’, had clocked the headline on their paper and immediately left the shop to go to Fortnum & Mason and get the good shit before the apocalypse really sets in. I took a photo of the abandoned trolly which will be today’s ‘phone photo Friday’:

trolly apocalypse

trolly apocalypse

—

Read the other posts in this series:

The 05:59, Bill Murray-inspired, self-imposed, unnecessary, blog-writing challenge
we’re up here at Gobbler’s Knob waiting for the forecast
Hey, who else could go for some flapjacks right now?
The Girl I will love

The girl I will love

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This post forms part of the The 05:59, Bill Murray-inspired, self-imposed, unnecessary, blog-writing challenge.

I’ve been moderately ungeeky so far about this film so far [what film? Groundhog Day that's what. Keep up. Click on the link above.] but it’s probably time for an itty bitty bit of trivia. Not my trivia, but IMDb’s of course:

The French poem Phil recites in the German restaurant [watch a clip of the scene here] was written by Danny Rubin, based on the lyrics of Jacques Brel’s “Bachelor’s Dance”. Translated into English the poem reads: The girl I will love / is like a fine wine / that gets a little better / every morning.

Firstly, what is a Bachelor’s Dance? I hope it’s like this bird of paradise dance, but I suspect not.

Secondly, is this what the film-makers/casting crew hoped would happen to Andie MacDowell? That she’d get a little better each morning? Because she doesn’t does she?

Thirdly, I really like the sound of the translation of this poetry. Something lovely and en francais made, at best a haiku, but actually just a bit boring when put into English. In the same vein, I thought I’d follow this process and make a poem out of a ‘Bachelorette’s Dance’ except translate it the other way, into French, to make it really pretty (to an non-French speaker anyways). Imagine Bill Murray reciting it in the way he does in the film clip above and it will seem all the more Romantic:

Tirez-moi
Dans tes bras,
Disons que je suis celui que vous voulez,
Si vous n’aimez pas,
vous serez seul
Et comme un fantôme,
je ne serai plus là.

original text:

Pull me into your arms
Say I’m the one you want
If you don’t, you’ll be alone
And like a ghost I’ll be gone

- from, of course, that great 19th century French poet, Beyonce with her famous sonnet All the Single Ladies (put a ring on it)

—

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Hey, who else could go for some flapjacks right now?

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This post forms part of the The 05:59, Bill Murray-inspired, self-imposed, unnecessary, blog-writing challenge.

Hey, who else could go for some flapjacks right now?

So says drunk guy Ralph in Groundhog Day. Well, I could go for some flapjacks for sure. But, where are flapjacks these days? Unlike Groundhog Day, which has stood the test of time, flapjacks have gotten worse and worse over the past twenty years.  A true flapjack, to my mind, is not sticky and chewy but slightly brittle; it should have a lot of grease in it and yet not be too greasy. But the ones found in shops these days (if you can find any at all that is) are big, thick and cakey. I had a panic just now that this whole blog post would fall to pieces if I were wrong about this, about how a flapjack should be, but thank goodness, the wonderful Felicity Cloake agrees.

We can’t move at the minute for the onslaught of ‘breakfast biscuits’ like Belvita and yet, does anyone sell a simple plain traditional non-multipack flapjack? No. Many a time I’ve been ‘in need’ of a flapjack when out and about and many a time there’s been every other sort of snack but that. Who does one write to to make a request for flapjacks? Who decided that breakfast biscuits should be all the rage? I have this email in my drafts folder, waiting to be sent. Does anyone know who the addressee should be?

Dear Biscuit Big Cheese(s), 

Please make some flapjacks. We don’t need breakfast biscuits, we already have digestives.

Thank you, 

Pip Rowson

In the meantime (or maybe for all time), I recommend we boycott stodgy sticky non-flapjacks and breakfast biscuits and make our own batches of the original ’energy bar’. I’ve blogged a number of recipes before – for Pumpkin Pie and my grandmother’s (secret) gingerbread – but, hell, well, I don’t know what I was doing messing around telling you about those when I should have been pushing a flapjack recipe on you. My mum’s recipe is the best (of course) but I don’t have it to hand and it’s just after 6am in the morning – I’m not sure that she’d appreciate a phonecall this early. I’d snitch a mildly inferior one off of Delia but there doesn’t seem to be one online. . . she’s probably got a big flapjack copyright case against someone already. We’ll stick with Felicity C’s ‘best of’ version at the link above or below.  It’s cheaper, yummier and 100% easier than Belvita to obtain in the early hours of the morning, when a Ralph-like flapjack craving calls. Have an oaty, energy filled rest of the week:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/mar/10/how-to-cook-perfect-flapjacks

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