Chicken Foul

We had some home shopping delivered this morning. Its not something me and Layla normally do, having the ability to carry things and legs and a car to drive to a supermarket with. I also quite like the active running around and selecting things to eat, then no doubt getting carried away and buying cereal with a free toy and all the other things I had to ask permission for when I was a kid. I'll probably never grow out of the fact that now I can buy whatever I like from the shops. Well I say whatever I like, but there are times when I'll just fill the trolley with lots of brightly coloured things and Layla will have to remove them as we really don't need 6 types of ice lolly and tropical smelling toilet duck. So we don't do the online thing because I find its a little restricted. Yes you tend to save money, yes it means you don't even have to leave your house, yes those two reasons make me wonder why we don't do it more often. Then it arrived and I remembered. Its because of simple things like the replacement items. Today they replaced a bottle of Ribena with a smaller bottle of Ribena. That's fine. They also replaced a fabric softener with another type of fabric softener. I'll be honest, I don't really know what this means, so I just nodded. Layla will probably be annoyed because the washing doesn't 'smell right' or something. That's also what she says when I over pack the washing machine and forget to put any powder in. On those occasions she is 100% correct. However when it smells of petunias instead of lavender or something then as far as I'm concerned that is an upgrade on man sweat. The last item the Sainsbury's men swapped was some meatfree garlic kievs. These are Sainsbury's own Quorn substitute things. They exchanged these with free from Chicken kievs. I'm not sure if you can see the problem here, but essentially they have not given us our veggie items and just instead given us chicken. Just because a chicken is free from wheat or fat does not mean its any less a chicken. Sure its probably the healthiest chicken around, probably does laps around the coop whilst the others just sit. Its possibly also a less bloated chicken thanks to the lack of gluten in its diet, although I can't imagine most chickens chow down on white bread and pasta on a regular basis. Whatever that chicken may be free from, it is still a bloody chicken and that makes it hugely different from a veggie kiev that might essentially pretend to be chicken but actually has nothing to do with it and has probably never met or even sat next to an actual chicken in its life.


These sort of things make me all a bit sad. Last night I went to a Wimpy's on the way to my gig. I didn't necessarily want to go to a Wimpy's but I feel a sense of duty to do so, in the same way I would donate a few quid to a 'Save the Siberian Tigers' charity or something similar. I know it won't be around for ever, but I'll do what I can to try and keep it alive that little bit longer. The problem with Wimpy is that it doesn't do enough to compete with other chain take aways. By that I mean some of its food appears to be cooked properly and the food seems to fill you up not making you feel like you need to eat again within 10 mins of leaving. It also isn't associated (as far as I know) with any companies that destroy the third world or do immoral things. While I've never really understood calling anything Wimpy as its hardly a name that evokes good images of a strong, enjoyable environment, more so a flaccid geek's cock, I like to think I'll help them to survive. Then, last night, I ordered a spicy bean burger and I was informed that they have to tell me they fry the bean burger in the same oil as the chicken. I was a bit taken aback by this. Who orders the bean burger that is ok with that? Surely its mostly veggies that buy it? I asked why, and the response was, 'dunno'. I said why not just fry it in some other oil and the man said 'yeah we could, but we don't'. I can only assume someone at Wimpy's used to work for Sainsbury's and is under the notion that chickens are not meat. Technically they'd be right in terms of cookery books putting them under poultry or fowl. But they still have a face. Even if they've had the face cut off. Them's the rules. See here for the rules:

http://tiernandouieb.blogspot.com/2009/10/weak-vegetarian.html


Had a lovely gig in Burnley last night. The audience were quite odd but very nice. The odd things they did included telling me that the most exciting thing in Burnley was 'having a shit', and responding to Sarah Millican's question of 'What would you most like to see your boyfriend dressed up in?' with 'A shroud'. Terrifying. This was almost topped by a man responding to Sarah's routine about using food in sex with the words ' Hot pot!'. The Mechanics is a lovely venue, but I had believed it would be some sort of large centre of cogs and wheels that operated the rest of Burnely like a Stepford Wives type town. No such case. It was nice gigging with Sarah too as I haven't seen her since at least Edinburgh and she's ace. There is a phenomenon in the comedy world that means you tend not to gig with someone for ages and ages and then suddenly you will gig with them a lot. From December last year through to about April, I would gig with Mitch Benn at least once a week. Now I've only gigged with him once in the last 4 months. In the same way I haven't actually done a gig with Sarah in ages and ages, mostly because she's been doing brilliant large gigs and telly stuff. Now though I'm gigging with her next week again, which either means I'm doing ok or things are going wrong for her. One day a mathematician will come up with an equation for it all. Or more likely, they won't be bothered. We spent quite some time last night discussing scary tweeters and people that have tweeted that they've spotted either of us but not come along and said hello. We both tweeted that we had seen each other as a joke and then, while Sarah was on stage I received a tweet from someone saying they were watching Sarah on stage and had just seen me. Firstly I was annoyed that someone was using their phone in a gig, but then I felt bemused by it all. I turned to the promoter Mark to show him, thinking it was funny. He then told me the tweet was from him, he just hadn't wanted to say. The world is a silly place.


Back to my favourite (read that with heavy sarcasm) city of Coventry tonight for my last date on the Jim Jeffries tour.