girlofprey

The thing about the Scorpion Cake, which I was going to put after the poll before I realised it sort of made a mockery of the 'Please tell me more' question, is that I had it a couple of years ago at the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. K and I were going for cake and a film, but it turned out the cake at the Broadway that I had heard about was sold in weird plastic containers, and had run out anyway. But as luck would have it, they had Scorpion Cake on the dessert menu, and we had it, and it was really nice. It's basically chocolate gateaux or chocolate fudge cake with a bit of chilli in the icing, or the sponge or somewhere. I never heard of it anywhere else, or saw it on the Broadway menu again, until I ended up working near a Cheesecake Shop branch, and they were selling it, and I had some there a few times. It was also very good then.

I have lately been buying some (cheap) baking and dessert-type cooking books, and a few weeks ago I decided to have a look to see if I had there was a recipe in them for Scorpion Cake. There wasn't, which I was kind of expecting, so I googled it. GOOGLE IS BEING REALLY UNHELPFUL. And I can't help but think that if such a cake existed, it would be mentioned SOMEWHERE on the internet. It's chocolate cake with chilli. It's very good. And google seems to understand the words 'chocolate chilli cake', but quite frankly, I can't imagine anyone calling it that if they had the option of calling it scorpion cake. MY SEARCH CONTINUES.

I'm going to Eastercon tomorrow. I still haven't packed and my hair is wet. Eek.

No-one wants to write David/Gary slash for Coronation Street. A quick search on Google has sort of confirmed this. Although given the fact that there's now a court case in the air, and they're playing it as an actual love triangle sort of thing rather than Gary being a twat at David's girlfriend and David being jealous, it's not entirely a surprise. The people on the forums only seem to want to talk about which one is the least attractive and the most horrible. It's quite rub. Probably the show is just building to it, and I should be patient. They can't bring the Ultimate Teenage Criminal Team together straight away. But, dudes. This is the episode where Gary stalked him, with all the rubbish/irrelevant bits taken out. THE GAY IS VERY CLEAR. Probably a fandom will leap into being in the next week or so. Probably.

My secret pairing of Tony/Maria is apparently on the cards though, according to the soap magazine covers. So it's not all bad, I guess.

I’ve been a bit rubbish at LJ in the past week. This was basically my week:

Monday: I got to work and the heating was broken. Apparently if the temperature is 15 degrees Celsius it's illegal conditions. It was 16 degrees all day. They said something about getting some heaters in, but the man meant to be scouting out the place to see where to put them never arrived. Thankfully, they started working very weakly at about 3 or 4 o'clock. The next day it was back on properly and we got to work with our coats off.

Tuesday: Work without having to wear our coats, as I've said. And in the evening I went to the cinema, and had a whole screen all to myself for The Secret of Moonacre. Which I thought, coupled with the adverts, would be related to its quality, but it was actually quite good. It had Dakota Fanning, being a better Dakota Fanning than she was a Lyra Belacqua, in my opinion. It also had Hornblower/Ioan Griffiths in it. And Tim Curry. It wasn't brilliant - although the costumes very often were - but if you want a good, gentle fantasy film, I'd recommend it.

Wednesday: Things probably happened, but I can't remember what they were. I think I had to wash my hair, so not much. Possibly looking up a bunch of videos on Youtube, as I recall.

Thursday: It snowed, starting just before I left the office to go home, as I'm sure it did in many other places. They were doing Light Night taster events, so I saw a light show near the castle as I was coming back. I went to the train station, in snow, to get my train tickets for Redemption, abut was told they would be about the same price on the day, so there was no point booking a time. Then I went and had cake, because I quite like having cake in a cafe/cake shop when it's dark and snowing outside. And I've been in there before, but Lee Rosy's Tea seems to be leading the way in ambiently-lit cake and indie music shops in Nottingham. It was lovely, anyway.

But by this time it was about half past 6, I remembered I'd forgotten to do my little letter to go with my Jobseeker's book explaining that I was now in work and couldn't be bothered standing around on the street doing it, so just went for the bus. I went to the bus stop where the cheap buses go first, and there was one in, but it was out of service. They're usually pretty regular there, but I waited about ten minutes in the cold, and nothing came. The fact that a Light Night woman came around handing out glow sticks because she wanted to go home made it only slightly better. As I was stood three of the more expensive buses I could get went past, so I started walking down to that stop. And then the cheaper bus came. I ran back up, queued, and just as I was pretty much about to get on the driver said the bus was full and no-one else could get on. I walked down to the other bus stop again. I got there about 5 to 7. I was 7:30 by the time a bus came. And I'd been standing there with wet feet inside my boots. I could have walked home more quickly, but I thought it might be slippy on the pavements because of the snow. There wasn't that much snow though. The buses could possibly have bucked up, in my opinion.

Friday: Was the last day of the week, and the first day I'd been paid since December. And it was Light Night. And frankly, I think in the matter of festivals that are completely made up, I think Nottingham sort of wins. There was definitely a lot more stuff on than last year. The first bit was slightly spoiled by a man sat near me shouting a bunch of racist stuff to do with St George's Day, but eventually I moved away. There was the big wheel, as usual. Also a robot roaming the streets, people on stilts, jugglers doing David-Bowie-in-Labyrinth tricks with glass balls, roaming story tellers. The castle grounds were open for free and all lit up, they had a hot air balloon they kept lighting so it lit up, and a dragon made of LED lights mounted to a bicycle roaming round the place. And then there was a Nottingham goddess parade through the streets, with an accompaniment of young rhythm dancers who did a performance in the open space by Marks and Spencer’s. It was pretty great, even if I did look for where people were getting glow sticks from all night and never found out. I found one in the street on the way back home, though. That was fair enough. And it was good. I got home, shivered while waiting for the heating to come on, and watched NCIS.


Today Adam and Joe were on doing their Valentine's Day show, and Adam was quite lovely towards his wife Sarah. I didn’t know his wife was called Sarah. His love CAME WITH A MESSAGE THOUGH. He and Joe didn't declare their love to each other, but probably they do that off the air. And then I wandered around town trying to get stuff done before Redemption. Massive queues in Thornton’s and various places. Valentine's Day. It gets all over the place.

Casualty without Toby is not as good as Casualty with Toby. It's a huge shame.

Went to town with grandmother and mum today. She bought me cake! In our little town's vaguely posh cafe-thing. There is a brand new 'cafe-bar' nearby, which serves onion rings and whatnot, but I did not think my grandmother would be able to sit on the seats, or if she could, get back up again. Still, it requires further investigation in the summer (aka next week), I think. Hmm. The cake came with a huge dollop of ice-cream, which the waitress did not mention was 85p extra, the cunning hag, but grandmother was paying so its all the same to me. There was another cake which my mother and I thought was called Sex and Toffee, which was tempting, but it turned out to be Texan Toffee, and all gone (no suprise, frankly), so we had other cake, and I felt a bit sick but happy :)

Yay, I have £360! Sort of. I'm not sure if the £110 for connotations has gone out yet - awaiting my next bank statement. But I owe dad £200 for rent anyway. So slightly less money. But more than yesterday, perhaps. Enough for things. And no-one told me The White Stripes had a new album out! I caused a slight disaster getting it down to look at it in Tesco's, but I am tempted. Oh yes I am. The songs have pretty names. Hmm.

East of Eden is out on DVD :D. Though sadly very expensively. Btw, WH Smith and Tesco CD/DVD prices kick the arse of so-called CD/DVD shops ::looks at you, HMV and Virgin:: Hmm.

The father of my sister's baby almost went to jail. But didn't. They've reduced his fines, apparently. A part of me is slightly disappointed, but he does seem to be helping her out a lot, so yes. Hm.

Lolita is sort of pissing me off. I don't know. I sort of like it. When Lolita is not around. Not that I dislike her, she seems like a perfectly nice kid, but Mr Humbert does have a nasty tendency to go off into flowery, intoxicated, showers-of-gold (not like that)-type speech, which makes me roll my eyes until I go blind and pass out. But all the other adults seem so annoying compared to him that you can't help but like him...until you realise you're only seeing them through his possibly self-delusional paedophilia-celebrating eyes and you just want to choke him again. Hmm. I will finish it though. I'd like to see where the story goes, even if we pretty much know what happens to Humbert Humbert. I am sort of in love with the girl on the front cover though. With her painted nails and Dorothy dress and pretty is-she-19-or-is-she-12? face, and sunshine and grass. Mmm.

I have begun writing what will hopefully turn out to be a nice Mickey/Rose/Doctor/Jack piece. With, yes, much focus on Mickey, who doesn't get much fic-love from anyone but me, le sigh.

( Thoughts on why I like him so )

What's this about Billie Piper leaving Who after the first series anyway? It's new to me.

Hmm. I quite like these long posts, although I worry they bore the Hell out of everyone else. One advantage of being at home (when the computer's free, anyway ::eyeroll...::).