Backwards In High Heels

My Alternative Christmas Cake

Yes I know it is only October but in Morrisons I got overexcited to see they made a small gluten free Christmas cake and bought it to try. Such things get wheat and gluten free people excited. Gone are our days of just grabbing a sandwich, or raiding any old biscuit jar. If we see something wheatfree we grab it in hoe of a taste sensation.

The Morrisons Christmas cake I can report is very yummy, it tastes like, well, Christmas cake. There’s no hint of it being gluten free, no telltale aftertaste of potato flour or gritiness of rice flour.

But there is one thing on the packaging which makes me wonder just what being wheat and gluten free is going to mean in my life.

The Morrison’s ‘Free From’ range has a little tagline on the packaging - ‘a simpler way to an alternative lifestyle’.

So coeliacs and the wheat intolerant are alternative lifestyles? Type those words into google and trust me you won’t be getting gluten free recipes back. A lot of swinging and fetish but not a mention of a wheat free muffin.

What does Morrisons know that I don’t? Is gluten, or rather a lack of it, a code for an ‘alternative lifestyle’ and which alternative exactly?. If I ask the manager in a shop for directions to his gluten free mince pies will I end up being he and his wife’s ‘special friend’?

gluten+free, wheat+free, coeliac, Morrisons, christmas+cake, alternative+lifestyle

Manners Maketh The (Wo)Man

I have devised a marvellous new fashion to restore manners to the young ladies of our world whilst saving them from chills…

The etiquette petticoat.

It is a petticoat which is printed with all the essential intructions on how to behave with deportment and charm.

You are at a function and don’t know how to address a Bishop or which fork to use. Politely excuse yourself from the company, retire to the toilets, consult your petticoat and there you have it – you return fully armed with the most perfect manners.

And all this whilst having an extra, comfortable layer of warmth to fend of bladder chills.

If any major fashion houses would like to contact me, let manufacturing start. I'm sure the Royal family would order in bulk if they keep marrying commoners in.

You Called It What?! Part 267

Usually to turn my nose up at the ‘quirky’ names people give their children I have to go to Asda ( as we’ve seen before here and here) but this week the newspaper delivered a whole batch to my doorstep.

This year’s top ten of favoured children’s name has been polled where Jack and Jessica atop the chart. But of course at the other end are the more inventive.

Now in fairness I will stick up for some of the names the newspaper put under ‘unusual’.

Mylo doesn’t strike me as hugely unusual. Yes the current spelling is the same as  the DJ and the Tweenie but given Milo is a long standing and my mind flits straight away to the wonderful actor Milo O’Shea, I don’t see it as peculiar.

Elsewhere on the list Spike and Blade make me think of butch dogs with studded collars. There again I am not adverse to the thought of children being kept on leads…at least in Asda.

Franco, I don’t see as unusual at all though I do hope the children named so don’t become dictators…unless as managers at Asda, where their megalomania could be kept in check by another on the list – the Kofis.

But the laurels must go to the parents who named their child Fds. No that isn’t a typo the name is spelt F..D..S. And it is pronounced…well I’m not sure how would you pronounce Fds?

Given the trend started by the Beckhams for naming a child after where it was conceived, I wonder if Fds was the result of an illicit liaison on a sofa in the Croydon branch of DFS between two dyslexics.

names, baby+names, children's+names, humor, humour, Fds, DFS