A CULTURAL EVENING IN MORECAMBE

Last night I was invited to attend a cultural evening in Morecambe. Following dinner, we visited several popular salons and two choral recitals. Actually, dinner was in the Toby carvery, you get a plate with slices of meat from the carvery, a Yorkshire pudding and help yourself to veg. You can go back as many times as you like for veg. but you don’t get any more meat. It was OK, the food was cheap and the beer quite expensive but it does what it says on the tin. This was in the posher end of Morecambe, if it could be said to have a posher end, and you could just imagine that the landlord would be Al Murray. Two hackney carriages then took us to the promenade concert area, where we visited several venues, actually pubs and in two of them it was karaoke night. Now I know what it sounds like when you torture a cat.

I don’t know what it is about Morecambe pubs and parties in them, but they have been disappointing me since about 1968. Lancaster a couple of miles away has some brilliant pubs but in Morecambe they have always been crap. The beer is of the extra cold Guinness, triple filtered Tetley smoothflow variety, it seems none of them have proper hand pulled real ale. The wine usually tastes like cat piss and the party food is sausage rolls and sandwiches. They are still playing the same music that they played in the 1960’s, High Ho Silver Lining, or yokkle dokkle music (country and western), and always so loud that you can’t have a conversation. On one occasion they were playing good classic rock and roll, but on a sort of loop where the song changed every 30 seconds, and again at ear splitting volume, they just don’t get it right. The one saving grace is that the people, although being of the Jeremy Kyle Show variety, are very friendly.

The one exception to this was my step-granddaughter Amy’s 21^st. She took control of the proceedings, she had her own DJ and everyone took food, I cooked a whole salmon. I can’t remember about the beer that evening so it must have been OK. I quite like some of the lagers such as Becks. I was dancing with some of her young friends from the drama course, unfortunately they were all male.

I am of course being satirical and hope I haven’t offended anyone. It was a very enjoyable experience and I like anything out of the ordinary, well my ordinary anyway. Thanks for inviting me guys.

HARVEST FESTIVAL

All is safely gathered in,

Even the sloes for my sloe gin.

PLASTIC

We do not need single use plastic packaging. Some governments have already banned it. It seems amazing to me that, knowing the immense harm it is doing to the environment and wildlife, our government and the EU still allow it. Regarding the environment it is seen as less important than say financial considerations, we cannot depend on governments to do the right thing and in many cases, individuals have got together to take action on specific issues. In the case of the above we need the government to step in and introduce a total ban. As we can see from the illustration of the container my pint of beer came in at Cartmel races recently, there are easy alternatives, even if there weren’t we should not allow single use plastic. If we can innovate to produce better TVs and mobile phones we can surely innovate to save the environment.

To give credit where it due some supermarkets are making an effort, Morrisons are replacing plastic bags with brown paper and will let you take your own containers for meat from the butchery counter. A friend of mine did this and they weren’t quite sure how to do it because she was the only one ever to have taken her own containers. Morrisons however still sell meat and veg on plastic trays. Overpackaging would not be as bad if it was biodegradable. I am sure we are nearly all guilty and much as I hate legislation, it is the only way forward in this case.

Incidentally, the book is coming along great guns and I am realistically hoping to have it published, electronically at first, before Christmas. Sorry mentioned the “C” word again.