This week Snaggletooth has nibbled some yogurt oat crumble biscuits, some Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins, some prawn snacks with a guitar playing cat on the packet and some cuttlefish flavour snacks.
This week Snaggletooth has enjoyed hazelnut Lindor from the Lindt shop in Swindon, a pink doughnut, some sweet potato crisps from a shop in Reading’s Broad Street Mall and some pigs in blankets crisps because Christmas 2018 is approaching.
Snaggletooth has enjoyed some creamy apricot fromage frais, a crunchy Reese’s Nut Bar, a moist and spicy lightly fruited cake and some assorted chocolates recently. The cake was homemade by me, a basic sponge recipe with six tablespoons of mincemeat added. The chocolate assortment claimed to have world famous chocolates but I was unable to identify a single one of the chocolates contained therein, even after asking the people of Twitter and Instagram for help.
Recently Snaggletooth has chomped some fudge made in Belfast, a sugar coated ring doughnut, some spaghetti squash baked with olive oil and black pepper (fancy!) and some unicorn stars. He’s not claiming to have a balanced diet. He is claiming to have a diet that looks nice when photographed, like many young people today!
Today (Sunday 7th October 2018) you can download a free Kindle copy of The Very Metal Diary Of Cleo Howard 1997. It’s a 222 page time machine full of things you might have forgotten. I loved writing it and I love the intimacy of the diary format.
The heroine, Cleo Howard, is a full on metalhead and a girl who likes to have fun. Like most teenagers, adults keep trying to rein her in.
Here is the start of July, August and September. I hope some fond memories get jogged.
It’s the Freshers’ Week time of year again and it’s got me thinking about how great going to uni was for me. I went in 1996, before tuition fees, since which students have become consumers of the product of education for a high cost. If I was eighteen now, I doubt I’d go to uni because I’m from a working class family that doesn’t believe in getting into debt.
A lot of my thoughts about uni made it into The Y2K Diary Of Cleo Howard. One of the big themes is her reticence about going. She has all the typical worries about being smart enough and being away from home. By the end of her first term she’s coped admirably with the change and made friends. She starts to love the city of Coventry.
Here’s an extract from The Y2K Diary Of Cleo Howard when she’s first in at uni;
Wednesday 1st November 2000 – A grey cloud looked down upon Lady Godiva’s nakedness as I walked past today. I wonder what bra size Lady Godiva is? When I came out of Woolworths blue sky heralded my reappearance. A flat puddle in the precinct was mightily upstaged by the nearby fountain’s projection of sparkling water into the chill air. I feel really detached today. It might be because I walked round town thinking about how I would describe the weather and scenery if I was a great writer. Am I really in Coventry studying English? Maybe I’ll wake up back in Reading before A Levels. When I saw the sandwich board advertising the BHS breakfast I suddenly thought that maybe a World’s Strongest Man contestant had once chosen egg, egg, egg, egg, egg, egg, egg and bacon. Or maybe there was once only seven eggs and a bit of bacon left at the time of day at which no more breakfast items were being cooked and displayed. I went and sat in the cathedral ruins for a bit after I’d been to Woolworths. It’s my favourite Cov quiet place. In Reading I like the avenue of trees in Prospect Park.
University always teaches much more than the subject you went to study. I gained confidence in my abilities every year I was there. I hope those starting this autumn have a wonderful time.
Snaggletooth has chomped a lovely lemon sundae, some peanut butter flavour Edinburgh Castle rock, some strawberry daiquiri jam and some rice pudding with golden syrup recently.
This week Snaggletooth has been chomping fruit rock (it makes him think of the seaside!), nibbling caramel shortcake, savouring a blackcurrant sundae and marvelling at my new culinary invention, the feta and olive potato waffle. The FO Waffle, as I’ve named it, is a fusion recipe taking something delicious from both working class and middle class foodstuffs.
This week Ol’ Snag has been eating crisps and desserts. He’s had fancy modern mango and passionfruit cheesecake (which didn’t exist when he was born in the 70s) and rice pudding with a big blob of strawberry jam (which has been delighting people since the 14th Century). He also had cheeseburger flavour crisps and sticky rib flavour crisps. Crunchtastic!
I’ve loved Danzig’s music for 30 years and last night I saw him at Brixton Academy! It was the hottest indoor gig I’ve ever been at, so hot that even when standing still everyone was sweating and you could have turned to the chap next to you and wrung out his beard. I stood in the same spot I stood in to see the Ramones in 1992 and had such a great time. I’ve seen Danzig at Wacken Festival, Download Festival and the Roundhouse in Camden but last night was somehow the best. He spoke to the audience more than at any previous gig I’ve seen and I defy anyone not to get goosebumps when they hear him sing “Mother”, “She Rides” and “Long Way Back From Hell”.
Danzig gets 26 mentions in the Eviscerated Panda Saga and 37 mentions in the Cleo Howard Diaries. Here are just a few;
“Cleo danced around her room to the sounds of her getting ready to go out playlist. This included AC/DC’s ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’, X-Ray Spex’s ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours!’, Flotsam and Jetsam’s ‘Hammerhead’ and Danzig’s ‘The Hunter’”.
“It was a chilly Monday morning in autumnal Reading. Glenn Danzig was singing loudly; ‘She rides, let loose upon the world, she is the night’. Cleo got up quickly, having set her iPod alarm for as late and as loud as possible”.
“Ian’s reply came in the form of a quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; ‘Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space’. He followed this up with ‘Don’t panic’ and pointed out that in another, parallel universe Jez and Cleo got married and lived happily ever after, but in this one they didn’t. In one universe they never even met. In one universe the Spira was never discontinued. In one universe Glenn Danzig is a tall man. In one universe Jason Statham is unable to say the word ‘trousers’ in a threatening manner. In one universe Gene Simmons is a shy man who doesn’t like to put his name to merchandise and refuses offers of casual sex. In one universe Rocky’s wife has a proper girl’s name. In one universe Ted Nugent is a pacifist vegan. In one universe bass players get all the chicks. In one universe Pete Steele has average sized genitals. In one universe furry pants wear Manowar”.
“Ian caused a tickle fight by saying that Danzig would have a willy like a fun size Mars bar. I couldn’t let him get away with that. Since last year Ian has got a lot stronger than me, Dear Diary”.
Since I was in Brixton I also took a look at the Bowie shrine.
