To help the Aussie fans sɹǝʌoɹ uɹnqʞɔɐlq

Our backyard is enclosed on all four sides except for a normal sized gate....................so I'm still trying to work out how the wheelie bin ended up 100 yards down the street!!! Fortunately Wednesday was bin day.

Went to York today, as beautiful as ever, and found "Demijohn," on Museum Street. It's a liquid delicatessen. Flavoured vodkas, gins, cask strength whisky, beautiful oils. Came home with Somerset Calvados, gooseberry gin, pineapple vodka and rhubarb vodka. You can sample everything before you buy!!! Hic! Called at The Bull at Broughton on the way home. Surprisingly quiet for a Friday night. Good food, better than t'Clog.

How to boil an egg

Watched The Men Who Stare at Goats again this weekend. Even funnier the second time around

La Petit Maison.........hmmmm, said to be very, very good. I've been to many lovely restaurants in Nice, most of which I can't recall the names as they are spread over 20 years or more. One memorable experience was a truly traditional Bouillabaisse (fish stew which takes 24 hours to prepare) in the smallest back street cafe one could find. We ordered the day before for 12, halfway through the meal I noticed there were no Visa signs in evidence!!!!!!! Twelve fully grown adults couldn't muster enough cash to cover the bill. The very large Spanish lady who cooked for is made sure we all stayed while one person went to find a hole in the wall!!

Well if we are doing overseas.........if you find yourself in the Nice area try the restaurant at Eden plage, Cap D'Ail. There are two, one very expensive called La Mala and the other simply called Eden. The beach is superb, small and can get busy, with excellent swimming. We went to Eden restaurant as a party of 10, had everything we wanted, including wine and aperitifs for 371 euros, which i thought very good value. Be aware parking is a nightmare and you may have a long walk to the beach. Take the Bas Corniche through Cap D'Ail, direction Monaco, watch for very small sign to Eden plage on right and follow. My suggestion is arrive around five, couple of hours on beach and then eat. Tends to be quiet in evenings due to parking issues.

On that theme just had local roast lamb (from two fields away!), home grown potatoes, carrots, French beans and home made red currant jelly - made from our home grown red currants! Spent the weekend harvesting fruit and making, red currant jelly, red currant gin (hic!), gooseberry jam, blackcurrant jam, jelly and cordial plus got a freezer full of home grown soft fruits.

The Filling Station, Inverness. Excellent spaghetti carbonara, large glass of Merlot and garlic bread for £16.95. Usual sort of place with menu to match but good quality food. Very busy when I went in. On leaving the station turn left, 100 yards round corner opposite M&S.

GG - I was cycle touring in Argyll and the Hebrides (started in Barra, finished in Stornoway) so I wasn't doing a lot of fine dining. Generally I stopped at cafes / pubs for lunch and then stayed overnight in bunk houses or hostels, in the evenings I was cooking myself pasta or other heavy carbohydrate food. I can give some general observations, it soon became obvious the places doing home / locally prepared food where those with very limited menus while those with extensive menus where opening tins / packets. Foods I really enjoyed are a bit obvious but were local cheeses, salmon (Salar and smokey flaked are superb), sea trout, kippers, home made soups, tablet, crowdie, Stornoway black pudding and also white pudding which is quite different to the black. Local eggs are superb fried or scrambled. The water is amazing, in a few places the colour of cider. Places I can remember by name are the cafe at the Hebridean Jewelery shop at Iochdar, The Lobster Pot cafe in the Ardmore Stores on Berneray did good tea and cakes and unusually did an evening meal, rather bizarre menu of three standard curries or local kippers which were very good. The Hebridean Smokehouse, North Uist, does very good smoked local produce and has a shop which is quite pricey. If you go a few miles north on the same road you'll come to a good cafe which has lots of products from the Hebridean Smokehouse on the menu which means you can try them as a meal. Also you can get smoked salmon lunch for £6.95 while the Smokehouse was charging £7.95 for a 100 gram pack!!!! If you go to Tarbert, Harris don't go in the first cafe on the right opposite the Tourist Info centre - awful and all tinned. All the Co-ops stocked Indonesian farmed prawns - strange! The Hebrides are the most beautiful place I have been, fingers crossed you get the weather. Be aware much of the islands are extremely remote, a village might be 3-4 houses. If you want some other info let me know.

Real long shot this one but may as well let you all know. Anyone finding themselves holidaying on Barra, Outer Hebrides must visit the sandwich shop slightly to the right of the harbour as you look out to sea. Here you will be able to buy the finest sandwich you will ever eat. They only do four or five flavours, I had flakey smoked Salar salmon with crowdie(this is like cream cheese but with bits that have turned to actual cheese - best I can do) on wholemeal. It comes with a seperate salad and potato crisps. Now you may think £5.95 is a lot for a sandwich but I can assure you it isn't. Warning though - you may never be able to eat another sandwich without recalling this one, and you'll never buy a Subway again!!!!! They also do the best tablet I've eaten, and I'm a connoiseur! Can't remember the shop name but but intend to find out as they Mail Order the tablet.

Every time I read about the furore over Halal meat in KFC I'm struck by one question. Why? That is why would anyone want to eat KFC?

Been meaning to mention this for a while now. New Season, St Thomas's Street, Chorley. Good food, excellent service and a nice atmosphere. The restaurant must have been a house at some point as each of the rooms is now a seperate eating area meaning when busy it still seems quiet. Portions are substantial and the food is good, not the greatest but GVFM.

Anyone finding themselves in Skipton and needing lunch or afternoon tea I can thoroughly recommend The Wild Oat cafe. Top of the main street just near the roundabout opposite the church with the large clocktower (on left preseumes you have the church in front of you). It's 100% vegetarian, organic, non-alcoholic - all of which we only realised after we'd sat down and started drinking the delicious tea. Highly recommended really, really good food. Waitress was a bit dopey but there you go! Skipton's a bit of a dump these days, haven't been for years but it's not what I remembered.

We buy all our meat from the local farm shop. We can walk through the fields to the shop watching the animals growing in the fields and buy them a few weeks / months later. The quality is absolutely superb, makes Tesco look like a backstreet kebab shop, and the prices are generally on par or lower than a supermarket. Not that I'd question the price because this is about buying great quality and supporting a local enterprise. On restaurants we went to The Olive Press, Preston last night (this is what I think of as Heathcote's). Hadn't meant to go but couldn't get into the Clog and Billycock any time after 5.30 (incidentally it's the same at The Bull for this lunch time). This was a small celebration for my son's 18th, we didn't stint on anything and I thought the bill at £146 very reasonable. Food was good, plenty of variety with a good choice for people in age range 18-55. The younger ones don't want pan seared tuna and I don't want pizza. Service was excellent, polite and attentive. I was struck by how quiet the place was and also by how quiet Preston town centre was for a Saturday night. We don't spend our weekends in restaurants but it's my lad's 18th and today we are meeting friends over from the States who we haven't seen for nearly 30 years. Both events are parties of 6 or more. I tried to book the Clog and could get nothing later than 5.30pm, and can't even get a reservation at The Bull. Seems to me RVI have a bit of a problem in simply being too popular. While very good lack of availability means they are rapidly dropping down our list of places to eat. This is the third time in a row we haven't been able to get in the C&B. This weekend they've missed at least 14 covers from our household.

At no point have I said I condone any form of cruelty to animals. What I did was to answer the question you posed in relation to yourself "So who am I prejudiced against?" Please read what is written rather than what you would like to believe was written. If you can point to a single post in which I have commented on animal cruelty or any form of religious / ritual slaughter I'll be astonished.

Well based on the overall views expounded on here over a number of years, Muslims, immigrants, Pakistanis, poorer sections of the lower class white British, eatern European workers, criminals......I could go on. I realise you're discussion is with TGM but please don't insult our intelligence when it's blindingly obvious you've simply changed your tack and use subjects like these to mask your prejudices. It's thinly veiled only serving to show you perhaps realise these prejudices are unacceptable in modern society and therefore have to be presented in somewhat less direct language, which usually fools no one. This was a good thread for sometime until it became yet another example of how threads get diverted by those unable to resist an opportunity to further their own agendas. Shame really but remarkably typical of the MB.

I've previously recommended Vincent in Southport and I'm sure the food is still very good. However I was very unhappy with the place yesterday. We rolled up about 6.00pm, got a table and were given the Mother's Day set menu - £30 / 3 courses. We then asked for the A La Carte menu which we usally order from only to be told this was not available as it was Mother's Day!! Advertised on the wall above the serving hatch was the usual Sunday roast special - 3 courses / £17.95 between 12.00 - 9.30pm. Guess what was on the Mother's Day menu - roast pork and roast beef!! I asked the waitress what the difference was between the usual Sunday special and the Mother's Day special - she couldn't answer. We left and went to a good Italian further along Lord Street. Whether we go back to Vincent remains to be seen. This was one of the most blatant rip-offs I've come across in a restaurant.

I don't really read this thread but presume people have a reasonably wide interest in music. Last night we went to see The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain which probably sounds like a very bizare way to avoid Casualty on the box. Having very little idea of what to expect we had a great, if somewhat strange evening, entertained by seven very talented ukelele players. For the show they have taken footage from silent film, not movies, found in the British Film Institute and set the music to match the film. Now I know how this sounds slightly odd (!) but it is highly entertaining, very funny in places and there is no doubt these people can play. If you get the chance to see them do so, make sure the performance is called "Ukelelescope." Ukelelescope

Watched "A Prophet" at the weekend, a very good film with a novel approach to a crime thriller, well worth watching. The action centres around our "hero's" time in a French prison, documenting how, perhaps arguing why, prison is not necessarily the right solution for young offenders. This is a film with very violent undertones though fortunately only one scene containing any real violence - which had both myself and my wife flinching as it was very graphic. Don't be put off by this as it is entirely relevant, just be prepared.

I agree with much of what you have said there Fife, the behaviour of large sections of our society who find binge drinking acceptable is truely appalling. Myself I find it impossible to understand why people need to drink while watching football, a pint before KO I can appreciate but not the levels that seems to go on. One point which needs raising is the role of clubs in this. I have no idea what Rovers position is but I have to hope it's a damn sight more civilised than Stoke City. I went to the Britannia Stadium last year on the official coaches. As a 54 year old man with a disabled son in tow I'm clearly a major threat to stadium security. We were, along with thousands of other fans treated as scum, and I will not be using official coaches again other than for perhaps a semi-final or final at Wembley. The official coaches arrived around 90 minutes to two hours prior to kick off and parked up perhaps 30 yards from the stadium entrance. Once off the coaches we were not allowed back on and the drivers had disappeared. We were also prevented from leaving the coach park. After milling around outside for a while on a very hot day we decided to go in. The concourse was completely rammed with supporters drinking for England leaving us with nowhere to go but the stand to look at the pitch for an hour or so. The bars under the concourse were barred from floor to ceiling sending out a very clear message to all. The concourse was so badly crowded - like the majority of English concourses it's far too small to hold the number of people in the stand - had there been any sort of incident it would have been impossible to evacuate. To me football fans are still treated like sh!t at the majority of grounds. If people are treated in thsi way it's hardly surprising when a small element behave in a manner most of us find unacceptable. Treat fans like scum and some will react as scum. It's obvious to me Stoke City treat away support in an appalling fashion, this is a modern stadium with zero facilities for supporters and a policing and stewarding attitude which left me in no doubt about how I was viewed. Needless to say we didn't return this year.

Don't even begin to worry about it. At Ewood you will be perfectly OK in any area. At the Tottenham game I'd suggest the away following will be small so there should be plenty of empty seats to move to if you are uncomfortable with those around you. While I realise there are reports of a hooligan element amongst Rovers support I haven't seen any trouble at away matches, or heard any of the racist chanting. At Villa I found myself stood on the steps as I couldn't get to my seat and did get knocked down when we scored our second. After that I moved down the stand a bit and found some empty seats amongst the more sedate fans. Don't worry yourself, it isn't a widespread problem

I think you need to read his post again. Sambo's point was quite clear.

You nee to read the book first. Seeing the film will spoil the fantastic imagery in the book if you watch the film beforehand. Saw Edge of Darkness with Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone last week. It was more a case of picking a film for entertainment than anything else. Mel Gibson's daughter works for a company involved with weapons and nuclear engineering, she returns home very ill and dies. Gibson spends the film tracking down the reason why. Usual sort of storyline but well done, Winstone is thoroughly menancing and very entertaining. Our older readers will recall the BBC series from the 80s that the film is based around

True .....I leave all the present stuff for my wife to deal with. Back to restaurants.....for the travellers amongst us I found a place that has only be open a week in Tewkesbury. It's on the High Street, towards the bottom end near the mini roundabout and called Owen's. Very simple decor, short menu with 4-5 choices in the starters, mains and deserts. Myself and a colleague ate there on Tuesday for £55, starters, main and desert plus drinks. I had braised pigs cheeks, something I've never eaten before, on the basis anyone chef brave enough to put these on the menu i his first week must be bloody good!!! My colleague had baked hake. Both were excellent.