Dear friends, HELLO HELLO I’M BACK AGAIN It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted any form of update. This has been quite intentional and for no other reason than I’ve clogged up enough of your news feeds recently with lengthy diatribes and photos galore that I thought I’d give you all a wee break…plus I was beginning to appear in the papers more than the independence debate, and we all know how boring that has become! I’m quite happy that everything has died down (pardon the pun) a bit now over the last couple of weeks and I’m settling back into a normal routine. The swallowing problem continues to progress (or should that be deteriorate) to the point that I’m now very conscious of eating in public. By that I mean that I’m very aware of what happens if food gets stuck and it ain’t very pretty to watch, so I try to stick to soups and ice creams if at all possible. Ice creams you say? Well there has to be some pleasure! I have been for a few meals with friends lately and I’m pleased to report that I’ve pretty much managed to stick to my ‘diet’ when I’m out but it’s a lot harder than you think. Like most of you, it’s not something that had occurred to me before, but we all know that most restaurants provide vegetarian and even vegan options, but very little cater for people with swallowing difficulties. You’d be surprised by the amount of places that do not do soups, or if they do, they do only one…their ‘soup de jour’ and if you happen not to like their one and only offering then you’re pretty much Donald Ducked, and no, I haven’t seen a duck soup offered anywhere! On Tuesday for instance I met up with Sarah the Seagull once more who has returned from her migration to Brazil, via St Tropez to spend a couple of weeks here before buggering off to Ibiza. Now you will all know the story with Sarah and her inability to stick to her own side of the dinner table but I thought I would be safe going for the soup. Lo and behold though, the soup of the day was cheddar and onion, and most of you will know my aversion to cheese, and so I had to order chicken pakora for a starter! Well, even when I could eat like anyone else, Sarah would always manage to grab something from my plate, but with the swallowing difficulty now, eating anything remotely solid means I have to eat in very small pieces, practically pulp it, and it still has a risk of getting stuck. Far from being sympathetic, you should have seen Sarah’s eyes light up when my three pieces of pakora arrived. She knew she could take her time with her own starter and she’d still be able to hoover mine, which she duly did. I managed one piece while the seagull devoured two. Mind you, for the main course I ordered a chicken curry without the chicken, just with rice and the sauce, all of which went down no bother! The previous day, Monday, I caught up with another good friend, Elaine, and the chicken noodle soup we had was brilliant. But the sweet menu listed an apple crumble, and, as I love apple crumble I gave it a go. Ladies and gentlemen I’m distraught to inform you that my crumble days are over. Bang goes another favourite delicacy. However, my days of meeting up with Elaine for lunch are not over so all is good! It was also good to meet up with a couple of Rovers fans lately. Carol came to the match against York City on Tuesday night, which turned out, in a football sense, not to be very pleasant at all. We were royally humped 4 – 0. I was convinced I was watching Brazil, not Rovers!! Carol lives in Barcelona and writes a number of Barca themed articles for the Rovers programme. She knew about my travelling difficulties when the Seagull invited me to Barcelona and I couldn’t go, so Carol came over to the game and brought me a bottle filled with Mediterranean sand, and another filled with Mediterranean sea water. What a lovely gift! If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain…so to speak!! And yesterday I met up with Sharon, a Rovers supporter who lives in London and a good friend. Ladies and gentlemen I can thoroughly recommend the haggis, neeps and tatties at the Bridges restaurant in South Queensferry…oh and the ice cream sundae is to die for. Oops, I’ve punned again! So there is Gourlay’s Gourmet Guide for this week. Apart from the swallowing I still seem to be as fit (or as fat) as a fiddle, and getting closer to my target of surpassing the three month mark. Get the balloons out!! Finally, I’ll wrap things up for this week with a couple of forthcoming events that those of you in the Kirkcaldy / Fife area may be interested in. On Friday August 22nd (providing I’m still breathing) I shall be dj’ing and presenting a 70’s Glam Rock Night at O’Connell’s in Kirkcaldy High Street…and yes, apart from Slade, Sweet, T. Rex, Wizzard, Mud, Rollers, Suzi etc, there will be quite a few Gary Glitter records. It’s all in a good cause as all money raised from the night will go to the Maggie’s Centre in Kirkcaldy who do such sterling work in supporting cancer sufferers and their families. There are also plans to do a ‘Blitz Club’ night in either September or October, featuring the likes of Bowie, Roxy, Visage, Human League, Soft Cell etc, again with funds being raised for Maggie’s. And on August 29th (again subject to not being a stiff) I’m doing a dj set at The Wedding Present gig at the Greenside Hotel in Leslie. That will be an Art School Dancing set featuring punk / new wave / and underground music. Really finally this time, and I mean it, thank you all so much for your kind words and messages of support. Let’s keep sticking two fingers up to the Grim Reaper, wherever we are in life, and enjoy every minute we share with those around us. Love Ally x
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 01:43:47 +0000
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