Fools Gold

Long forgotten about at the back of a draw I finally found what I had been searching nearly an hour for. A small plastic box, square and black, inside cotton wool and laying on top of that a gold ring. I had bought the ring many years ago whilst on holiday in Greece with my family. I wore it for a while but then got bored, took it off placed it at the back of this draw for safe keeping and here it lay untouched till now. I now have a far more important ring on my finger so could see no point in keeping the other. It held no sentimental value, a little extra cash to spend on holiday would be nice and with the gold price currently at a 20 year high it seemed like an opportune time to liquidate.

The obvious place to start seemed to be the internet and true to form good old internet came up trumps again. With the help of my kitchen scales I weighed the ring, typed in the numbers and out came the figure. I figured that this was probably a best you can get figure and in reality would turn out to be some what smaller but it was a start and everyone needs a start. Hearing too many bad stories about people sending things through the post to shonky companies and not entrusting Royal mail to safely deliver anything other than a circular I decided the best thing was to head to Londons gold epicenter of Hatton Gardens and try my luck there. The big cheese and I had been a while ago to get our aforementioned rings, at the time I had not noticed but now the words sore and thumb sprang to mind. Even the guys without women had guys with them, maybe for moral support or maybe to bare witness to the price tag. Either way I had to walk the gauntlet of leaflet touts trying to show disinterest but at the same time ascertain which might give me the best price with the least amount of hassle. In the end it came down to nothing more scientific than judging books from their covers and having seen a window display that looked similar to the ring I had I went in only to be handed another leaflet.
"Are you looking to buy anything specific today" said the woman brandishing the leaflets
"I have an item that I might want to sell" I said trying to play it cool
"SAINF.........SAINF" the young woman shouted up a large stairwell.
A head popped over the railing
"Can you show this gentleman to the office please"
So Sanif came down and we set off up 10 flights of stairs to their fifth floor office. Apparently the lift was out of service. At this point I should have seen the omen and made my excuses but at that point the non descript door in front of us buzzed open and the moment of flight had gone.

Inside, the office was tiny and this was made all the more apparent by the plentiful supply of people employed there. The whole place had the aroma of a fish curry recently consumed at ones desk but trapped in a tiny space by the lack of circulating air the smell was completely numb to the curry's consumers. A fat man sitting fully reclined in a cheap swivel chair motioned me from the door over the one and half meter distance to his desk. He had a neck brace on and looked one cat short of a Bollywood bond super villain fallen on hard times. I produced the box and gave him the ring which he tossed from hand to hand for a while then held aloft his free hand open palmed and without a word being said a loupe was placed in it by one of the employees standing through lack of space less than a meter away. His face screwed up a bit and then someone else entered the room came over sat in a chair next to gold finger's less fortunate brother, at which point I became completely invisible. For a full 3-4 minutes I no longer existed in that room, no manner of attempted eye contact, shuffling in my chair or huffing could make me reappear. It was clear they had plans for world domination to formulate, probably involving the use of a satellite and big lazer as it became apparent all business had been suspended. I had to grab an assistant who was, due to the rooms dimensions, situated just over a meter from me to try and prize my item from gold fingers grasp. He did so and handed it to another employee stood behind a counter on the opposing wall. He weighed it three times and came up with three different weights and chose the lightest (naturally) on which to base his "best price." I protested weakly that the weights were different only to be told with no sense of irony it was because the scales were so accurate. At that point I just wanted out and they wanted to barter I named a ridiculous price he named another and we parted ways neither of us any the richer.

I pounded the streets a while longer visiting the shops I had scoped out earlier. All were looking to give me roughly the same price give or take ten pounds. Resigning myself to have found the true market value I went in the last shop and offered up my treasure. I was handed another leaflet on the way in and directed to a counter on the left and greeted by a cockney geezer straight from the set of a Guy Richie film. Much like being on holiday I got the gist of the conversation by listening out for key words and waiting for pauses in to which a response was expected. I was only able to respond in my native language but he seemed fine with that. I rationed I had said the right thing in the correct place because he pulled out a set of scales. He weighed it and went through the same procedure everyone else had, asking me how much I had been offered else where. I added £10 to the best price and asked what price he would pay. The next bit was difficult to decipher but the key words I gleamed were "All of the money", " Top end", "Treasure in the attic" and the price. It was £10 higher than anywhere else so I said yes at which point he pulled a stack of £50 notes large enough to knock out a man from under the counter before he realised he didn't need this stack and changed it for an equally large stack of £20's. He peeled a few from the top placed them in an envelope and in true cockney style we shook on a good deal done.

Now for that holiday. 

Everlasting Soap

The chore of cleaning the bathroom is just that, a chore. It is both in the physical and metaphorical sense a chore and something I in no way relish doing. I love a clean bathroom, who doesn't, so I see it as a necessary evil and on balance worth doing. I usually start with the shower and bath working my way round to the toilet and then the sink. If I was pushed to decide which of them I liked or maybe least hated doing most it would have to be the sink. I have not just plucked this out the air, the sink has one major advantage over the others, soap.

A bar of soap in our house seems to last forever, this is not because we are dirty it just does. I guess that shower gel has stolen much of the soaps thunder. The soap sits next to the taps waiting for dirty hands to pounce, to squeeze and rub and lather it up before placing it back on the dish. I like the way soap goes through a life cycle, and unlike shower gel whos level you can observe declining after every use it recedes at a rate almost too slow to observe. Like the life of a tree it only changes when no one is looking. Then one day you notice it is round instead of square, then its flatter than it used to be, the colour has lost the intensity it once had and it enters the winter of its existence. You would think that once it got to this stage that would be it, its days would be numbered you could even estimate how much longer you thought it had. But we have everlasting soap or so it seems, perhaps even made by Willie Wonker using technology based on his gobstopper machine (the only invention not to harm a child) for it seems to go on and on. Even when whittled down from small to tiny then to a mere nubin if it will not fit between the spaces in the plug hole it's not done. But like most things there are a couple of exceptions which sometimes offer a respite to the situation they are, The big cheese loosing all patience then discarding it in the bin and secondly having guests round and dazzling them with our bountiful soap supply, these are the only times it is permissible to prematurely replace the soap. 

It is said that it's the little things and starting a new bar of soap is one of mine. Firstly it has a new scent which is in pleasant contrast to the previous bar whos familiarity has numbed me to it. But best of all the feel of its sharp corners and 90 degree sides. It looks so nice placed in the center of the holder its geometry creating a zen like harmony against the porcelain. Everything else looks so sloppy against the uniformity of the perfect edges. This new bar has not yet conformed to the rigors of ergonomics and at the same time shuns form and function in favor of looks and style. This one small thing can be compensation enough for cleaning the whole bathroom as I know that I can be the first person to use it.

All I need to do now is find a way to use soap quicker or clean the bathroom less.

Pirate Bling

Back in the golden age of pirating, all you had to do was sail around a bit and you would practically fall over a merchant ship loaded with plunder, apart from the loss of the occasional limb, monsters from the deep and mermaid sirens life was good. Then people got a bit annoyed at having all their stuff nicked so set out to put a stop to it. War ships were deployed, task committees formed and rewards offered for capture dead or alive, life became a bit more of a chore. The pirate way of life became less enticing and with the advancements in technology many a foresighted pirate saw the nail was in the coffin for the maritime based lifestyle they had become accustom and started to explore alternative careers.

Documents released through whistle blowing website WikiLeaks show that with the help of a government based back to work scheme many pirates returned to dry land, retrained and under local council supervision were integrated back in to society with the hope they could lead productive lives and enrich communities through their diversity. It could be attributed to the many hours singing shanties or the less formal attire adopted by these particular sectors, but it seems that pirates have a penchant for the music and entertainment industries as today this is where we see many have ended up. As much of a success as the scheme was there were a few pirates who's life of crime was so ingrained that once deemed rehabilitated they turned back to the underworld. A certain sector started black markets in pirate DVDs, games and CDs selling them on dodgy market stalls, street corners and through the 'guy at work' network. A few looked for fame over the air waves and started what has been called pirate radio. Already adept at mast construction they found this allowed them the ability to broadcast from all manor of locations, a few even returning to the sea. This made detection by the authorities almost impossible at the time and as it was only considered an infringement on the law very few were ever caught or prosecuted. Others chose to follow a more legitimate thespian career path and to this day can be seen treading stages across the world performing in everything from seasonal pantomime, opera and the dizzy heights of Hollywood to great acclaim.

Arguably the most successful group went in to music and became rap and hip hop stars. This genera was through necessity rather  than choice, many preferring more pop styled tunes but with their indecipherable pronunciation, less than tone perfect vocal abilities and hard luck life stories rueing the days they were shot numerous times and the bad neighbourhoods they grew up in, they were limited. Never the less they took the music scene by storm, their hard lyrics hitting a poignant note amongst despondent youth. They were able to incorporate the pirate cultural identity through the use of bandanas, gold teeth, and earrings , popularising the 'bling' movement we know today. Drink was a well publicised issue for pirates and the revenue from platinum album sales did nothing to quell this problem of binge drinking instead moving away from large barrels and on to premium brand bottled spirits. Being creatures of habit they stuck with brandy, rum and cognac drinks, and have in their rap star incarnations become much aligned with such brands as Hennesey, Jack Daniels and Courvoisier. Few could have seen the far reaching impact pirates would have, their influences stretching in to the mainstream vocabulary with words such as Yo, a greeting and also a shortening of the possessive prenominal adjective your, Ho, a woman of questionable moral standing and Booty, a catch all term meaning both treasure and women two highly prized assets in the pirate community. As well as the pirate limp, a way of walking where one leg is kept straight while walking in order to simulate a wooden prosthetic. All have now become commonplace on streets up and down the country particularly evident around such hubs as fried chicken shops and McDonald's outlets, sported by adoring fans eager to emulate their musical idols.

The debate as to whether these are positive role models remains to be seen. It has been shown you can take the pirate out of the sea but can he sing?

Egg and Soliders

It must have been more than 15 years ago. It would have been at my grandparent's house and probably on a Wednesday. That was last time I had a soft boiled egg with soldiers.

There is no reason it has been left this long. I had no bad experience I can only imagine that the seductive lure of scrambled, the hangover curing properties of fried or the gastro difficulty of hollandaise smothered poached variety just distracted me. It would have been in the seemingly endless summer holidays where I can only remember the days being sunny and children's cartoons playing on the television all hours of the day, that my sister and I would have visited my gran in what we considered to be deep in the Sussex countryside. Things at my grans house were always at a more sedate pace. Everything was hand made in the comforting way of recipes handed down and refined through a lifetime, using bowls and utensils that have served their function for a generation already but show no sign of giving up any time soon. Where cereal, usually in front of the television was normally the order of the day in our house at my grans things could not have been more different. Soft boiled egg and soldiers was on the menu the eggs from the market, many with feathers still stuck to the shells, most no more than a couple of days since they left the chicken and hit the ground. The bread was white and from an uncut loaf and required cutting on the slicing machine the width set to your desired preference. A couple of minutes under the grill and a thick coating of butter and the soldiers were dressed, shortly followed by the egg in a cup all served at the table. This was egg and soldiers as I remember it.  

I figured it was time to amend this glitch and go back to the future. On Sunday morning I fired up the grill and put an anemic slice of white bread under to crisp and tan. Moments later the pan of boiling water was bubbling away ready to receive its offering. I figured I was somewhat larger than I used to be so reasoned two eggs rather than the one from memory were probably needed so in they went for exactly 3 minutes before being scooped out by the slotted spoon and placed in a bowl of cold water. The bread got a butter covering and the eggs a cup long forgotten about from the back of the cupboard. We were ready to go just one questioned remained do you smash or slice the top.

For posterity I should have smashed but for convenience I sliced, inside was the gold, runny and ready for dipping. Always my favorite bit I waded in with a soldier of toast touching the bottom of the egg for maximum yolk coverage. The white was always second best. When I could I would pass it off to my sister or exchange it for her yolk in the days when saturated fats meant little to a kid. In all honesty I only ate the albumen out of loyalty to the yellow, figuring I would be doing the egg as a whole a disservice by shunning it, that and being a prisoner to the table until it was all finished and I was allowed to get down.
 
So was it like it used to be? In the end I had a pile of toast crumbs on the plate and table, two empty egg shells and yolk drips down my t shirt, yes.