Lorne Sausage

You can keep your Pork and Leek, Venison and Juniper Berry and your Lamb and Mint Sauce. You can also keep your Toulouse, your Cherizo and your Merguez. What am I on about ? Sausages that’s what. Sausages. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing like throwing some Walls Pork or some Cumberlands onto the barbie, but for me the king of all sausages is the good, old fashioned Lorne or Square Sausage. 

There’s probably quite a large percentage of the UK population who have neither seen nor tasted a lorne sausage and it’s their loss, although I suppose it’s probably quite difficult to get them anywhere south of the border. When I bring them over on the plane I invariably get stopped because, as I said in a blog a couple of days ago, it’s a block of meat which shows up on the airport x-ray machine as a sinister blob. A blob they just have to examine more closely and generally ask what it is. If the person doing the search has never seen or heard of a Lorne Sausage, it’s then a long complicated process to explain what it is. It would be much better if they had a frying pan beside the x-ray machine cause you could then cook some, prove it is edible (and not explosive) and they’d be hooked. 

The Lorne Sausage is credited to an 19^th century comedian called Tommy Lorne who apparently loved sausages so much that he used to eat them during his acts and whilst history gives a good account of Tommy Lorne, there is nothing to explain why the Scot’s came up with a square, skinless sausage. Anyway, they are delicious (although probably an acquired taste for someone who has never eaten one) and my kids love them. When I returned from Glasgow late on Monday night and went down to the kids’ bedrooms to say hello and goodnight, the first words Kitty uttered were, ‘have you brought any Scottish sausage home with you’? And this from a  girl who never tells her classmates what she has for breakfast because she's embarrassed (she usually has eggs and bacon or banana pancakes) as most French kids just have a croissant and an orange juice to start the day. 

The one thing which I could not bring home from Glasgow though and something which compliments a Lorne Sausage perfectly is a Plain Loaf, another Scottish delicacy difficult to find in England. Now whether Plain Loaves were designed, developed or whatever with Lorne Sausages in mind, I don’t know, but it’s a strange form of sliced loaf, which when a slice is halved makes a perfect shape for the geometric shape of the Lorne. None of this extra bread round the sides of the sausage, it fits it perfectly. No round, cylindrical sausages jumping out of the bread onto the floor, just a perfect symmetry between bread and meat. 

They say the Scots are the masters of invention – the Lorne Sausage and Plain Loaf proves it beyond doubt. And do you know the best thing of all? I still have another 2 kilos of Lorne Sausage to share with the kids for our breakfasts over the coming weeks.    

 

The French Revenge

I screamed and screamed. I tried not to but if I’d stifled them I would just have burst into tears and that would never have done and so I just screamed some more. I gripped the hand of the nurse who held me down so tightly, it must’ve hurt her but she continued to hold me, as did J on the other side of me. A third nurse held my lower body down as best she could as I’d already tried to knee the Urologiste who was tearing my body apart. I looked at him and was sure I could see his lips curling into a sadistic smile and him saying softly, ‘and theees eez for all zee nasty theengs you ave been saying about zee French eeen your blog’. 

I was just about to pass out when they decided I should experience the pain for a little longer and slapped an oxygen mask on me and then with a flourish, reminiscent of a great conductor ending a symphony, there was a loud pop and he cried ‘et voila – c’est finis’ and proceeded to milk the utter admiration of the two attendant nurses. As he strode towards the door to leave the treatment room, no doubt to rapturous applause from the other patients in the emergency waiting area, he turned to me and with a final sneer said, ‘and now you need to be circumcised’! 

They say cleanliness is next to godliness but after yesterday, they can stuff it. I knew I should have been more careful when cleaning my ‘wee man’ and I knew as soon as I’d done it (details omitted for the squeamish) that something pretty awful had happened. I left it for a few hours but it got worse. The pain was excruciating, although in retrospect it was nothing compared to the trauma I was to face a day later. I spent a sleepless night trying not to roll onto my stomach and the next morning got onto the internet. The pictures of self-attempted fixes convinced me to get to the hospital asap and J kindly gave up her lunch date with the Tourrettes Ladies Shopping Group to take me. 

This would be a good test of the French Health Service which I’d heard lots about. In 9 years down here (nearly 10) I’ve only been to the doctors twice for minor ailments and never to the hospital. Within 10 minutes I’d signed the admission forms and was ushered into a treatment room. A further 20 minutes passed and then a rather attractive lady doctor came into the room. I’d been desperately hoping for a male doctor to spare my blushes and the last thing I needed was any stimulation down there given my situation, but as is usual with doctors, she was very professional until she raised my gown. She then gave that sort of look which cross the faces of doctors or nurses when they see something which makes them want to scream, puke, run away to consult their journals or whatever. A succession of nurses and doctors (all female for some strange reason) came into the room to have a look and then left shaking their heads. My doctor then explained in English that she would put some anaesthetic on me (it) and as she prepared in the corner I desperately tried to see if I could spot the glint of a needle anywhere. I hate needles, especially down there. I was reassured however when she approached me with a large syringe contraption without a needle – result! As she squirted the anaesthetic on me some of it landed on the side of my face which she didn’t spot and as she proceeded to work away she kept asking me if there was any pain. Well, all I could utter was ‘gug, goop, blub’ as my mouth had stopped working. After about 5 minutes of ‘messing about’ without success she went off to get some ice packs which she put on me and said she’d be back in ten minutes. 30 minutes passed and she returned and removed the packs which had now melted and had made me look incontinent. She turned to me with her sexy brown eyes and said, ‘Monsieur Cupples, there is no need for further treatment. You now have frostbite and it will fall off of its own accord in due course’. Ha ha – her little joke! Another 10 minutes of fumbling and then the dreaded words – ‘I cannot fix this I will get the specialist’. 

And so it came to pass that this denim clad, curly haired Urologiste entered the room and proceeded to inflict the most excruciating pain on me. I would have gladly confessed to being a Muslim bomber, a member of the Corsican break-away movement or an illegal immigrant if it would have had any effect but he was determined to show his prowess in front of his adoring colleagues and at the same time completely ruin mine!     

Finally, can I add that me Julie did a wonderful job yesterday. Keeping me calm, running me around and basically looking after me. She held my hand and wiped my brow and was a tower of strength as I became a complete, shivering wreck. Even the words of encouragement to the Urologiste of, 'go on hurt the bastard, make him scream more, I took in jest. She was, I'm sure, making a joke to keep my spirits up.    

Flaming Sambucas

We’ve all done it. We’ve all been there. Sitting in an airline terminal with a 3 hour wait for your plane. You can’t even check in and get through to the exciting bit of the airport cause they have a 2 hour limit before you can throw your bags onto the conveyor belt and say goodbye knowing you may never see them again. 

So you go to the bar? Nope – after the weekend I had I did not want to see another measure of alcohol for some time. You can’t smoke unless you go outside where the rain would have extinguished your cigarette slightly before the wind would have blown it out of your hands. And eat – everybody eats at airports. But no. After my 10 item full-Scottish at my brother’s house in the morning I did not want to punish my digestive tracts any more – thank you. 

So you buy a load of papers and you read every single inch of them. You don’t want to finish the Telegraph and start the Times cause you’re keeping the Times for the plane. You read articles you would normally gloss over. You read good sports articles twice just to see if you missed something. You even read the adverts – ‘Good Quality Corduroy Trousers in Brown or Olive Green – 2 pairs for £5’. ‘Dual TV Slippers in Brown Simulated Fur – sit with your TV partner and share a slipper – 2 pairs for £19.99’. You read the adverts on hearing aids just in case you might need one – good research done early might save you loads of grief in years to come. You read obituaries of people you’ve never heard of and you even scan the horse racing results just to see if any names you might have chosen came first. 

And so it was yesterday – a 3 hour wait at Glasgow and the same at Luton. Glasgow Airport is a tip and I spent most of my time trying to find a seat which did not give me chronic back pain whilst looking at the multitude of areas which were reminiscent of a squat. I also scanned the girls to try and establish whether the poll which came out at the weekend was true. This said that Glasgow girls were the ugliest in the UK which is rather unkind but unfortunately might be true. I suspect it’s the weather hammering their porcelain skins into leather which is to blame or it could be the lashings of alcohol and 40 fags a day which takes the shine off of their complexion which does it. Now before I leave this particular subject may I just add that my first wife, Fiona, was and still is, very beautiful which just goes to show that there are exceptions to every rule – whew think I got away with it? 

Right – I’m now at Luton starting my second 3 hour stint. Saw Stelios with a new fleusie. Sorry - 'admin assistant'. Had a bit of an argument with security that my 2 kilo pack of Scottish sausage was not, in fact, semtex and had the embarrassment of having my face lotion tested for explosive chemicals which would not have been so bad if Mr Semtex, trying desperately to get his revenge, hadn’t shouted out so everybody could hear, ‘Did you say it was FACE LOTION sir’? Anyway, I’m now reading the Times cause I’ve got a Women and Home for the plane…..and I come across this article which says that Glasgow is the biggest consumer spending city in the UK after London. Now if you remove London cause it’s all City boys spending large on lunches, entertainment and boys toys and their salaries are twice the national average, that leaves good old Glasgow above places like Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. Now Manchester has probably suffered because J has only been there once this year but I’m sure if they redid the survey after her visit next weekend, they’d be back up top again – by miles! 

But isn’t it amazing that a supposedly savings conscious race (or is it just me ?) and a city where the national wage is lower than the other cities surveyed, manage to outspend them and didn’t just scrape past them but outspent them by at least ten per cent? And another thing Jimmy. Given Glasgow’s population is significantly lower than Birmingham and the spend number is a consolidated figure and not a per-capita value, that makes the Glaswegians even more spendthrift. 

So why is this? Is it the prodigious spend on cigarettes and betting? I think not as these are low value ticket items. Is it food or clothes or even cars? Again, I think not. Is it make-up or meals out ? Again, no. I think I know what it is. After spending a weekend in Glasgow with my three sons, the city’s place at the top of the spending league is definitely down to Timothy’s drinking habits which centre on Triple Jack Daniels and Coke with Flaming Sambuca chasers !!  

PS – the video clip is NOT of Timmy…but I wouldn’t put it past him! 

http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/FLAMING_SAMBUCA.htm