Im prepared though

I have my wall chart

I have my gloryhunting Brazil Shirt

I have my Four Four Two World Cup edition ready to steal stats from

I have my Vuvuzela

I have my referee card sets for overexcited carding of players while watching matches

I have my Fifa World Cup game ready to play the matches after watching them

I have my desktop set ready

For the desktop background Im using click here

I have the fever.

Ive got World Cup Fever.

….And so does Chopsy

He even demanded a go on the Vuvuzela

And got stuck….

WORLD CUP BABY

It was awesome.

We turned up semi late, and were worried we would have missed getting in there, but luckily there was a queue so no one had gone in yet. Theyd even set up a red carpet and there were a load of press photographers there. Exciting!

We were a little far back, and I saw some people getting photographed and sent Rach to look, but she didnt recognise anyone. The queue started to move slowly, as I started to get worried that they over allocated tickets and we wouldnt get in. It slowed down, and slower and slower, till there were just 8 people between us and the front. And the line had stopped

For 10 minutes we stood there, while they checked how much space was there. A few people walk up with names on the guest list as we stood there impatiently. Then they let in 2 people. Then another 4. Then the two in front of us.

Then us.

Then they stop the person behind us and say “Sorry, we’re full”

KICK ASS!

We got in and theres free popcorn on the seats. Double kick ass! They tell us to turn off our phones as theres going to be a special interview before the film, and any recording equipment or phones have to be off or they’ll interfere with the mics. Then they introduce two of the stars to do a quick Q+A session. The dude who plays Kick Ass (Aaron Johnson) and mother fucking McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

This fucking rules.

McLovin is on top form, while other dude is a bit of a mumbler, almost Beckham esque with the amount of “you knows” and “umms” he drops into a sentance. They’re asked if Brad Pitt was on set much to which McLovin replies “Pitt doesnt give a fuck about us”. After a few more dumb questions and hints at a sequel they go off to eat having “seen the movie enough allready”

The movie fucking ruled, and I can see this being a great little series. And hopefully I can go to more previews in the future!

At Christmas I decided that the time was right to start running again. I do this every few months, get myself motivated and ready, and planned it out.

And then dont bother.

Early January I looked up the Couch to 5k guide. Its been reccomended me by a few people, but I’d always been put off by how overly simple it seems. I mean, Im a guy who used to be a champion triathlete.

(over a decade and a lot less inches on the waist ago now)

So I decided to stop being such a dick and printed it out. Then unhappy with the way it looked I resized it, reprinted it in colour, and printed it again. Then I still wasnt happy, so I redid it, putting in which days of the week I’d do the training, making sure the columns were all the right size.

Anything to stop actually training.

By the time I was happy with it, and had it printed out, it started to snow. So I couldnt train again. YES!!!

By the time it stopped snowing, I wasnt in the mood. Then 2 weeks ago we were in the Nike Outlet store, and I bought me and Rach new running trainers for less than£50 total. So now, we had to start running.

Fast forward to this morning tho, and we still hadnt started. I woke up at around 11 and thought fuck it. Time to run.

So I consulted the plan online (my printouts gone walk about) and the idea was

“Brisk five-minute warmup walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.”

Piece of piss eh?

So we start walking to a park round the corner. Easy so far. Get in the park and start running, and immediately hit a hill. Oh well only 60 seconds, easy. We did circuits of the park, and after only our third running 60 seconds I was panting more than Tiger Woods in bed with a porn star.

When we hit the 15 minute mark I started to get confused, were we meant to do 20 minutes total including the warm up, or 20minutes plus the warm up.  The easy thing would have been to say the first option, but we said balls to that, and did a full 20 minutes of the run walk cycle, then an extra one for luck, then walked the five minutes home.

So I have to carry this on for 2 more times this week, for 9 weeks total.

How long before I quit?

Ive just finshed a book that I picked up on recommendation from a friend, who didn’t say anything major about it. Just a simple “this books pretty good”. Although the guy cant always be trusted (he recommended I buy the worst Xbox game Ive ever played once and even thinks Two and a Half men is funny), I generally trust him.

The book was Power Play by Joseph Finder. Before buying it I didn’t even read what it was about, but upon picking it up the front cover screamed “Moves like a bullet from a gun” – Lee Child. Being a name I recognise as a decent writer I thought this was pretty decent praise. On the back there was also a quote from the Guardian – “Read the first page and you wont be able to stop – you’ll be hooked”.

Hmm, sounds like some decent hype there, a big name fellow writer giving him props, and a promise of it being a page turner from the very first page.

So I open it up and the first page (as taken from Amazons look inside feature) is this

I’m not hooked. I’m not desperate to read the next page. Bullshit.

But fair enough, hooked from the first page could be a bit of a hype to make sure you get interested quickly. What about the “moves like a bullet” quote? I’d read another line on the cover that let me know this book featured a kidnap plot, so I was thinking I’d be thrust into the action quickly.

Nope. Wrong again.

The book takes about 150 pages to kick into full gear. I’m not saying this is a bad thing – the slow build before that is pretty awesome and fleshes out most of the characters so that you actually feel like you know them and care or don’t care about certain people by the time the book starts. But even after page 150 it doesn’t move like a bullet.

Its an awesome book, but I’m finding myself more pissed off by the hype than how good the book was. As soon as I saw the words kidnap plot I was worried the book would go into one of those typical action book plots of “the main character used to be a ninja assassin but quit it but now he has to use his skills again to save the world”, but it wasn’t, it was fantastically written and you felt like there was reason behind everything. I’d be quite interested in a film of this, but I imagine the slow build of the book would be cast away for explosions and gunfire.

On a happier note I picked up a book called World War Z based on a few friends raving about it, and the hype is fully deserved. It’s a book written as a kind of recap of the Zombie infection that plagued the world, looking back and interviewing key people from the times. So awesomely written and such a different style to anything Ive read.

HOLY SHIT I UPDATED MY BLOG

Job done.

Only joking of course

I dont have a strict guideline for what you need – basics are enough potatoes for chips for everyone, enough chicken for everyone. 2 eggs, some flour, bread, parmesan, and garlic.

Chop up some potatoes into chunky chips, like so. You can peel them first if you like, but I just wash the outside.

Put a pan on the hob, fill it with water, and put on the boil. When its boiling add the chips, then bring it back to the boil. Once its boiling again, cook them for approximately three minutes then drain them. Then put the colunder youve boiled them in back over the now empty pan, and put it on the heat for about a minute. This will help dry off the chips.

Pop your oven on to about 220degrees

Take the colunder out of the pan, and put to the side. Add a glug of oil and some salt and pepper to the pan, and heat up till you can see it sizzling.

Toss your chips into this, till they are coated, then transfer them to a baking tray.

I threw a few chilli flakes on top of mine at this stage to spice them up a little.

Pop them in the oven now, they’ll take approx 30 minutes to cook.

Now you can start on the goujons. To be honest this was the first time I’d tried these, so I didnt take pics at the start as I wasnt sure how they’d look

I bought some mini fillets, but you could cut some chicken breasts into strips. We had approx 335g of chicken which was way too much

Grab three slices of bread, throw them in a food processer. Add a handful of parmesan, a teaspoon of parmesan and 2 cloves of garlic. Whizz them up until fine.

Now get three bowls. In the first put some flour, the second an egg youve beaten, and in the third your breadcrumbs. Dip the chicken in the flour till covered, then the egg, then finish off with the breadcrumbs. This bits a little messy

When you’re done pop them all on a plate, and put them in the fridge for 10 minutes. This’ll help the breadcrumbs stick

Get a frying pan and cover the bottom with a good glug of oil. Then pop your goujons in

Heat them for three minutes on each sides. If you arent sure if they’re cooked then take one and slice it in half.

I did mine a bit too soon and my chips werent done, so I popped them on a baking tray and put them in the bottom of the oven.

And you’re done. Serve up

Fucking delishous.

First time I’d tried these and I’ll definately be doing so again. With the breadcrumbs you could throw whatever you like in there, I looked througha  ton of recipies and everyone does different. I liked the idea of the parmesan, and it went really well with the garlic.

Heres some pics!

It was absolutely freezing, we walked up and followed my pre match tradition of having fish and chips. I had curry sauce, and Rach only wanted chips – is it only Welsh people who like curry sauce?

We met up with someone I had to give some tickets to pre match, and he said “enjoy the prawn sandwiches” as we were sitting in the exec area. This made Rach think we got free food, unfortunately not her silliest comment of the night.

We did get a free program as we walked through the fancy exec area, and Rach prepared herself for the cold

The match itself, well Spurs battered us in the 1st half, but somehow we came into half time 2-0 up, thanks to two fantastic goals from Darron Gibson. We had pretty awesome seats with arm rests and cushions almost on the halfway line!

Rach was more excited though that at half time in the exec seats we got free tea and coffee. We warmed up, then afterwards went back for the second half. About 15 minutes in I realised I wasnt talking too much, turned to Rach to check if she was bored to be greeted by this

Oh Ayresy.

On the pitch we ran out the 2-0 win easily, me enjoying every minute

After the match we wandered home. A good night!

And this is my report!

We left on Saturday night after Ayresy got home from a late finish from work. It took much umming and ahhing before we decided to take Chopsy with us as Ayresy was too worried about leaving him on his own.

The drive down was uneventful, and we to Rach’s family home. We were a bit knackered, so had an early night, planning on getting up early to get going. We’d also made a decision that rather than use some money we’d got for a refund for overpaying some bills of about £60 for a meal out for our anniversary next week, we’d instead use it to buy food and treats at the food show. We’re such losers.

We were up for about 8, and left just after 9, early as we had tickets for me and Rach to see the Hairy Bikers do a cooking demo in the Supertheatre.  It was top notch, with the Biker boys on top form, with some very dirty jokes for 10am, and you could see that the editing team for their shows clearly have their work cut out for them. They cooked some scallops with apple and black pudding, duck breast with apple and asparagus, and a strawberry desert with  balsamic and some kind of cream.

Ive been a big fan of balsamic lately, having it on steaks ever since it was suggested to me on the Something Awful forums.  Seeing it used on strawberries was quite interesting and I decided that’s something I’ll have to try.

After we walked out of the hall we met up with Rach’s mum and sister briefly, before deciding to head off separately and meet up at about 1ish. While I was looking at the floor plan and looking to get us a route that would take us past every stall and make sure we’d see everything, Rach had one mission – cheese.

When we cam last year we’d visited a stall by the Snowdonia cheese company that had a variety of cheeses such as cheese with cranberry, cheese with garlic and herb, pickle cheese, and ginger cheese. I’d seen them at a welsh food show a few years back and told Rach they were great and she tried them and loved them, and we’d ended up buying £10 worth at last years show.

So this year Rach was determined to find the Snowdonia stall and get some cheese. She practically pulled my arm off dragging me to the stall, where she elbowed her way to the counter and started sampling every type of cheese. I began to chat with the lady on the stall, complimenting the cheeses and telling her we’d loved them last year. Meanwhile Rach at this point had eaten a moons worth of cheese samples. I turned to her to see what she wanted to get having seen the sign that said 1 for £3.50, 3 for £10 or 7 for £20. Needless to say we bought 7 blocks – 2 ginger, 2 garlic, 2 pickle and a cranberry. After Rach had many more samples we walked off.

Next up was the other stand we’d checked that would be at the show – Jimmys Farm. Jimmy is one of Jamie Olivers mates, who decided to try and start up a rare breed farm in the UK, and a tv show was made about his struggle to get the farm to be successful. He now presents a show on BBC2 called Jimmys Food factory. Last year we’d bought some of his sausages and without doubt they were some of the best I’ve ever tasted. Since then I’ve regulary looked at his website to consider ordering some, but because we’ve had parcels left just outside our door at the apartment I’ve been reluctant to go through with it incase they “go missing”

When we got to the stall we were surprised to see Jimmy himself on the stall, and after buying £10 worth of his sausages I asked and got a pic with him

Nobody else will probably recognise him, but I was pretty happy.

After this we started to try and follow a bit of a more concrete route round. As we were already in the produce section we were pretty much in sample city, basically walking up to stands and trying whatever was on the counter. We tried loads of produce, many different types of cheese and sausages, salami, pies, shortbread, chocolate, crab meat and much more. The only other thing we bought at this point was some Scotch Eggs, after finding a stall that sold special different types of scotch eggs for £2.85 each I decided to buy 4 for £10, picking up a Scrumpy (extra appley), Scarecrow (uses beetroot, carrot and parsnip crisps for its outside), Black Watch (using black pudding with the pork) and Christmassy – I don’t remember what was special about this one.

We ate the Scrumpy one as we were excited, then continued sampling stuff. Next up was the alcohol section, where I proceeded to try all manner of samples – strawberry cider, 3 different types of toffee vodka from 3 different stalls, ginger ale, 2 fancy sambukas, blueberry vodka, and various other shots that we didn’t really know what they were. After this I was feeling a bit tipsy – Rachs solution was to go and get more cheese samples!

We met back up with Rach’s mum and sister, then headed back to a fancy herb stand where I got some cumin, bay leaves and coriander. They then left us again – when we’d been apart we’d ended up looking at the opposite stands, so the ones we hadn’t looked at they had, and the ones we had they hadnt .

We looked at various stands, picked up a knife sharpener, then stood for 10 minutes while Rach got sucked into a demo of one of those slicing machines, the type that you put say a carrot on a dome, flip the lid over and it chops it for you. Rach was really into it, to the point where I dragged her away, she then went back when the guy said “don’t leave now, you’ll miss the best bit” then I finally dragged her away again. It was like one of those late night shopping channels but in person.

We did however get sucked in again, this time by a rep for Vol who was demonstrating some of their non stick pans. These were amazing, with a ten mill base and a special coating that’s guaranteed non stick for life, better than Teflon. Because of this they can cook with no oil, and he demoed a way of cooking a fried egg with no oil which really left us amazed. Even when he put some plastic in the pan it didn’t stick. After this me and Rach spent ages looking at the pans, wondering if we could afford one of these that retailed at £70. Ultimately it was a no, but its one of those things that I really can see buying.

How fucking sad is that, I could care less about where my clothes come from but I’d love to buy a £300 quid set of pans.

After this we did another route around some stalls, seeing Gordan Ramsey signing some autographs, then Mr Reggae Reggae himself, Levi Roots at his stall. We went and bought ourselves a hot pork bap, then went and had a few more samples – including Rach visiting a different Snowdonia cheese stand to the one we bought our cheese from and helping herself to a load of samples which prompted the man on there to shout “samples here, but we aren’t paying for your dinner”

We ended up buying even more sausages from another stall, another 4 packs for £10 which tasted good but not as good as Jimmys Farm. We also found a stand selling some fancy balsamics and oils, something I’d been really looking out for. I tried a Balsamic with blueberry and vanilla, and it was awesome, so I snapped up a bottle and some fancy oil. Not sure what I’d use a fruity balsamic with but its recommended with fruit and icecream so will give them a try!

I went back to Jimmys Farm stand to pick up our sausages that had been held for us, and ended up buying another 3 packs. We’re going to be swimming in  sausages for the next few weeks.

We went back home to Raches mums, and then ended up going out for dinner – which none of us could really finish because of the amount of samples we’d eaten! With our bellies full and our legs knackered, it was time for an early night.

All in all it was a great day, and I’d always recommend a trip to any food show. You get a ton of samples, and can find plenty of top products to buy.

Quite like this one at the moment.

The comic is called Keyguard Active and is based around a group of friends and their lives. Its main star is considered by some to be Alan, the ponytailed unlucky in love loser, but the real star is the all action, all funny all the time guy called Mike.

And Mike is based on me. He wears a shirt with Taffy on it to prove it.

My friend WT has been writing the comic for ages now, with almost a thousand entries updated every Tuesday-Saturday. Occasionally he runs low on ideas, and asks me and I come up with bizarre ideas of what he should put int that weeks storyline. He takes my ideas, draws them up and even gives me a guest credit. Without fail it brings a smile to my face every time I check the updates, so why not check it out today.

Keyguard Active

I asked WT to draw up something based on something that came into my head during the Christening, so heres a TAFFS BLOG EXCLUSIVE!

And heres an example of the usual Keyguard Active, showing that WT takes all his ideas from me

Click it to see the full sized comic.

Well, I was wrong

Having done a bit of digging round, Ive found out that the original news came from a FAKE twitter account. The person running the fake account has since claimed that she was just trying to build interest in a return for B*Witched in the hope they’d get back together.

The twins from the band, Keavy and Edele, have set up a seperate twitter to confirm this, and this can be found at the following link

http://twitter.com/keavyandedele

Is it wrong to say this news makes me sad?