The Top Ten
28 November 2007
Too much Baby/Nursery Talk, let’s get back to grass roots www.steveqpr.co.uk entries. The return of The Top 10, here’s one that’s prompted a lot of thought…
The Top 10 Dunking Biscuits
10. Morning Coffee…
As thin as tracing paper with a similar taste, these bastards lasted a whole nanosecond before snapping in your mug. Do yourself a favour and throw one a lifeline in the form of a Fox’s Party (Rubber) Ring.
9. Rich Tea…
Hold it 4 inches above your mug and watch it fold like one of those pick a number pick a colour paper puzzles – Should have a bold, precise and compelling advisory note on the packaging and be renamed ‘Ditch Tea’.
8. Malted Milk…
What was once a classic (creatively and dunkingly) has now fallen victim of the usual supermarket rip off. They’re all making them now which results in shoddy artwork (I once unwittingly dunked one sporting a cow with 2 udders, three legs and the calf in the background was suffering from Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and mid-biscuit breakage - A victim of its’ very own popularity and destined to become part of the terrible trend of multi biscuit packaging along with Custard Creams, Bourbons and Nice.
7. The Ginger Nut…
If any product has delusions of grandeur then this it – look at it in your hand, hard, rugged, rough and durable, The Death Star of the Biscuit World. Unfortunately like the Death Star there is a major flaw in its’ design. It looks impenetrable but has a weakness. One incy wincy second over its’ given submersion time and it’s curtains for the Nut and it’ll crumple in your mouth like a luke warm Juicy Fruit. If you’re not a pro the only way to estimate a Nut’s dunking period is to use the force, it’s not for the faint hearted.
6. Chocolate Digestives…
Another one for the pro-dunker – Amateur attempts at submersing this classic of the chocolate biscuit world result in either…
A. a Chocolate residue being left around the rim of your cup
or
B. a Chocolate residue being left at the corners of your mouth
Either way you look like a Nob Jockey.
5. HobNobs…
‘…they’re like the bloody SAS of the biscuit world’ - Peter Kaye knows a bit about comedy I’ll grant you. However with his well versed HobNob routine it was proved that he knows absolutely bugger all about biscuit dunking. I’ll concur with the fact that the Hobnob has a helluva submersion time but the essence of a decent dunk isn’t just that – You’ve gotta combine dunking longevity with other factors, one of which is the silty debris that appears at the bottom of your mug when you’re nearly finished with your tea. The HobNob leaves more detritus behind than the Severn Bore. To put it in simple terms if there’s crap at the bottom of your cup after a dunking session you might as well take the last drop of tea with a mouthful of rusty nails.
4. Fox’s Sports…
‘Chunky crunchy biscuits with added glucose for that extra burst of sporting energy’ - that’s how they’re billed by Fox and who am I to argue (not a nutritional expert thankfully). Underrated and undersupplied, The Sport’s artistic influences bear the hallmark of L.S. Lowry to the Malted Milk’s Tony Hart. Its’ submersion life beats the majority of other biscuit on the market, it leaves no sediment behind whatsoever and the footballer artwork is modelled on ex QPR player Peter Crouch.
3. Digestives…
Not the crappy generic kind that crumble before you get them out of the packet like the Berlin Wall being attacked by a jack hammer – REAL Digestives, in the red packet, the one’s made by the Scottish family. Some amateurs argue that the DD (Dunking Diameter) of a Digestive is too much but pro-dunkers are adept at breaking them in half using a deft combination of molar and incisor work before plunging each half into the mug. Not as much hangtime as a Hobnob (nor Kobe Bryant) but it’s widely considered to be the professionals choice.
2. The Fig Roll…
The tampon of the Biscuit World, one dunk and you lose half of the contents of your tea as it literally sucks up the liquid in its’ hefty inner fig sanctum. If Fig Rolls were used instead of Sandbags at Mythe Water Treatment Works Gloucestershire would never have had a water shortage.
1. The Garibaldi…
‘Apollo Creed vs. the Italian Stallion. Sounds like a damn monster movie’ - Apollo Creed, ROCKY, 1976.
The popular misconception is that Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed) was talking about Sly Stallone (Rocky), it’s bollocks of course, the ‘Italian Stallion’ that he was referring to was the humble Garibaldi biscuit, the King of Dunkers. A glazed coating that looks like it’s been set by an arc welder and rock hard currants that can take fillings out on sight. You could drop one into a Tea Urn full of nuclear waste and pick the biscuit out unharmed at the end of the day. It has no peers.
‘They’re ain’t gonna be no re-match’ - Apollo Creed, ROCKY, 1976.
Cribs #3
25 November 2007
To use a Tony The Tigerism, ‘Dad’s are GRRRRREEEEAAAAAAAAT’. The fact that I’m gonna be one in 3 months doesn’t affect this statement whatsoever.
What could have been an extremely frustrating weekend attempting to fit a border to the nursery became a breeze as Katie (yep, that’s what we call my Dad - Don’t ask, it’s a long story involving the words ‘long’, ‘unkept’, ‘mane’, ‘1970s’, ‘matted’ and most importantly I suppose ‘Hair’) popped over with the nursery furniture on board and assisted with the fitting of said border - Well, that’s not entirely correct, I ended up in the YTS role and assisted him.
Cribs #2
18 November 2007
As this website unapologetically launches into Changing Rooms Mode once again I’d like to point out that I’m not rooting for Anna Ryder Richardson to win ‘I’m a Celebrity…’, I’d also like to mention that I don’t watch ‘I’m a Celebrity…’. However, my Parents do which is a worrying Family trend that I’m nipping in the bud before Baby steveqpr makes an appearance. Although if watching crap TV just skips a generation then I’m banning all Visual Media from the house before he or she is old enough to watch X-Factor, Big Brother and Eastenders/Coranation Street/Any other Soap that believes it’s quality entertainment.
A second coat and the flooring were the two main jobs in the nursery this weekend and although I haven’t finished the beading of the floor I reckon we’re well on the way to being completed by the beginning of December…
Cribs
11 November 2007
We can Bounce from the Club, to my Car, to my Crib we go,
Skip the Couch, Head up the Stairs, to my Room we go’ - 112, ‘To The Crib’
So, it’s out with the ‘Guest Bedroom’ and in with the ‘Nursery’. Friends and Family will now have to make do with an Air Bed in the Office Room which has only once been previously utilised by Special K in the Summer of 2004 as he didn’t fancy sharing the double bed with Snoring (allegedly) Lloydy. Thankfully Spesh was full to the brim on Strongbow/Glenmorangie/King Edwards (cigar not spud) on the occasions that he made it to the blow-up (a trait which continued throughout his bachelor years apparantly!) so failed to notice how bloody uncomfortable it was and how the air bed was fully deflated by about 4am.
A week (so far!) in the making and a joint effort, Len’s done the glossing - doors, windows (and the radiator has been removed and is awating its’ first coat - How do you like that for a subtle hint Lenbab?!) and I’m in charge of the ceiling, walls, and fitting new door handles, light switch, light, window stays and flooring. Here’s the progress so far…
Marvel us
07 November 2007
‘Wealth and Fame he ignores, Action is his reward’ - Spiderman, circa 1977.
According to Doctor Miriam Stoppard, www.babyworld.co.uk and the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pregnancy at 22 weeks your baby can apparantly distinguish between Mum and Dad’s voice, here’s where I let the experts (or complete wacko’s depending on your standpoint) takeover…
‘When baby hears you read him the same story every day, he is comforted by the familiar pattern in your voice. When he is born and you read the story, he will remember and associate the patterns of your voice to the soothing environment of the womb. This can help calm a fussy baby and give you two some quality bonding time.
So pick up that copy of ‘Goodnight Moon’ or whatever you choose and read to your baby before he is born. Just be sure to keep it up throughout his childhood. Reading to your child will give him and you memories that will last a lifetime.’
With the aforementioned in mind, Len and I have decided to choose some books to read. I’m pretty sure that she’s going for some A. A. Milne or Beatrix Potter but I can’t really say that I’m too enamoured at the thought of reading about Christopher Robin and his pals’ countryside adventures (plus whenever I hear the phrase ‘Pooh Sticks’ it conjures up some pretty disturbing images!) so I’ve gone for something a bit more modern, something with a cutting edge, something that’s empowering, something that has both male and female role models (Admittedly one spends his evenings hanging onto the sides of multi-story bulding’s and the other is a reformed burglar)…
Four Years in the making (mainly due to the writer’s ineptitude at keeping to an agreed contractual schedule!) a Limited run of a Six issue Marvel Comics Story the title of which alludes to William Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’. In the play, Mark Antony says, with regards to Caesar, ‘The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Arguably it’s a classic and I’d like to think that Baby is gonne be educated with literary quality at every crawl, puke or dribble (for this reason I’ll keep him/her away from this website obviously).
The only problem is that Len moans and moans as she’s gotta be present when I read it aloud.
Next Up…
…the Mr. Mentalist musing’s of Roger Hargreaves.
Big Pants…
06 November 2007
Similar to the bloke that’s had an ongoing argument with his wife for 30 days, or like an American trying to gain access to Libya, this website has experienced a first since it’s conception nearly 2 years ago. There’s been no entry’s for over a month.
I can only apologise to the avid readership of www.steveqpr.co.uk. The excuses as usual are long and plentiful but prompting myself to put them on this site would bore the pants off reader (and I use the singular term purposefully) and writer.
3 o’ clock feeds are apparantly part and parcel of bringing up Baby. What I wasn’t prepared for were the 3 o’ clock movements - we’re talking Baby not Bowel here. Every morning for the past 3 weeks we’ve been up at the aforementioned time as Len’s ever growing bump decides to practice it’s gymnastic floor exercises. Well, to say that ‘we’ve been up’ would be overstating the case somewhat, in fact unless Len actually physically grabs my hand and places it on her tummy I would happily sleep through the whole joyous experience - a trait that I’m secretly hoping will carry on throughout Baby’s early snivelling/screaming years.
On the subject of Len’s bump I’m wondering just how big it’s gonna get. She’s 6 months pregnant now and, like Steve McQueens alien foe, the Blob just keeps growing and growing. In fact I can reveal that on the basis of current experience this website is able to provide an answer to one of life’s unanswered questions…
Q. When is it OK to post pictures of your wife in her BIG pants on the Internet?
A. When she’s Pregnant.
Here’s the monthly bump update…
