review of the day so far

Today I ate a yogurt which was 8 days out of date. It tasted a bit fizzy and it had two small lumps in the middle, which I also ate.

 

BUT I also stole two pens from the bank.

 

 THE BALANCE OF THE UNIVERSE HAS BEEN RESTORED.

I can't wait until someone asks me if they can borrow a pen, I will smile and vomit yogurt all over their shoes.

public information notice

the Pringle's progress

I got the 8am train to Dublin yesterday morning. There was a man opposite me eating a green tube of Pringles, which are the Sour Cream and Onion flavour, and easily the most disgusting of all savoury snacks, particularly at 8am when some of us are easily nauseated because we aren't properly awake. I looked on in distaste, flaring my nostrils dramatically, "PRINGLES ARE NOT A BREAKFAST FOOD. ESPECIALLY NOT THE GREEN ONES. STOP EATING THEM NEAR ME PLEASE," I thought loudly to myself. He didn't seem to notice.

So with the smell of Sour Cream and Onion burned into my brain I spent all of the 2½ hours of the journey thinking about Pringles.

The Pringle's Progress

by Sarah Gordon

A Pringle starts out like a large pancake or pizza base. It is has a damp, doughy consistency and is usually around 1 meter in diameter.

In the construction end of the Pringle factory, the large raw Pringle is pressed into shape over a horse's back by a man or sometimes a woman Pringle employee.

It is cooked in a large gas oven at a very high temperature, around 300°C for 45 minutes. The horse rarely survives this process.

While still hot, the Pringle is placed in front of an incredibly powerful laser which causes it to shrink by 94%, making it a more comfortable size for the human mouth.

(TRIVIA: The laser was obtained from the NASA space programme, (which had two,) and featured in the movie, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! Pringle production was temporarily halted during filming while the laser was on loan, but good reserves ensured distribution remained consistent so market levels were largely unaffected.)


The shrunken Pringle is then brought to a second employee who stands at a worktop with 3 condiment shakers, each containing one of the three main flavourings: Original, Salt and Vinegar, and Sour Cream and Onion. (Less popular and limited edition flavours such as Paprika and Texas BBQ are administered in a smaller factory next door, and only on Tuesdays.) On receipt of the Pringle, he or she selects an appropriate flavouring and sprinkles it liberally over the savoury snack.

On occasion the employee occupying this position has been known to lick the underside of the Pringle, which is why there is sometimes less flavouring underneath than there is on the top.

The flavoured Pringles are carefully placed in their cylindrical cardboard packaging using a series of carefully monitored air currents.

It takes 4 days to produce enough Pringles to fill a standard 200g Pringle tube, however only 1 day for the smaller 40g pack, conventionally sold on airplanes and cross-border railway services. The Pringles are left to mature for 3 months before being shipped to convenience stores all over the world.

FOOTNOTE: When you see Pringle written down lots of times it looks like Prinn-glay. I think I would eat them if they were called Prinn-glays.

three socks on rotation

I am back now from my holidays in Donegal. It was very enjoyable. However I made the considerable mistake of bringing only three single socks. This was an unfortunate accident, I fully intended to bring more socks, but forgot. I also brought 2 pairs of shoes but when we arrived it appeared that actually I had only brought 1½ pairs of shoes. This was also an unfortunate accident but one which matched my three single socks quite spectacularly.

I feel being on holiday permits certain extensions to the boundaries of one's normal levels of personal hygiene, particularly regarding clothes since doing laundry isn't much of a holiday activity. So I just wore the three socks on rotation, allowing each sock an airing period of 24 hours on the metal chair outside every third day. On the second or third evening when I took off my left shoe, I noticed there was a mark on my sock, like someone had used it to wipe their nose before I had put it on. "I don't believe it," I thought, shocked, "the dirty blighters..." wondering which member of my family had used one of my three only socks as a tissue. I took off the offending sock and placed it on the metal chair outside that night, determining to dip it in the sea next time I wore it.

The following day I pulled on my 'most fresh' sock in its place. That evening, I took off my left shoe and found to my utter horror that my sock had once more been sneezed on without my noticing. Everyone maintained it wasn't them. I chose to ignore it. All three socks were getting rather pungent as I'd tramped though a few too many bogs and piles of seaweed. I gradually lost track of which sock was the original offender, but I did notice that all three seemed to have a sort of phlegm-y film. This was deeply upsetting. Someone was secretly sneezing on my socks.

On maybe the eighth day, as I was taking off my left shoe I thought, "that is really funny that the mark is in the same place on all three socks". I thought to myself ,"I wonder...?" and then I said it out loud too, quite dramatically like I was on TV, which I do sometimes when I'm on my own - usually when I'm cooking - "I wonder...?". I looked in the shoe and saw that actually there was a whole dead slug stuck in it. Which had presumably been Resting In Peace there for at least 5, possibly 6 days without my noticing.

So I put on a wash. There are limits.

a quite nice airport

I am on holiday with my family in Donegal at the minute. I am sitting on a bench outside Donegal International Airport, which hosts the only internet for five hundred thousand miles. The airport facilitates two return flights daily, one to Dublin and one to Glasgow, (which covers the 'international' aspect of the name.) The building is more like a large living room or a church hall than a faceless, machine-run, rapid transit air transport base. It has just one large room, and locals pop in for cups of tea, and discussions about wind currents with the staff. Everybody seems to be related to each other.

Since the airport also serves as the local internet cafe and community centre, it is well kept and systematically run. There is no underlying scent of bleach that you can taste in the back of your throat, and no space sandwiches with a 50 year shelf-life, and no angry passengers storming around saying, "this is bloody ridiculous", (probably because Ryanair don't fly from here). There is also no irritating announcement warning passengers not to leave their bags unnattented. I think this is because they don't have an announcement machine, when they need to make an announcement, the lady at the one and only check-in desk stands up and says, "excuse me, i have an announcement," (which I imagine is generally followed by, "the kettle has now boiled if anyone would like a cup of tea and a chocolate Digestive.") There is one door which says 'arrivals' and one beside it which says 'departures'. I think they lead to the same room. Everyone gets very excited when a plane comes and runs to the window to watch.

quickly, put these packets of jam in your bag

Way back in January, during one rather upsetting thesis-writing evening,  myself and my friend Clare sat feeling thoroughly sorry for ourselves. We decided to book some cheap flights and go somewhere, which always seems like a fabulous idea until the day of the actual flights comes along and suddenly you realise how absolutely inconvenient the timing is, how little money you have, how you have no idea where you are going or what you will do when you get there, and how little you now actually want to go.

Nevertheless, the day after the Graduate show finished, Clare and I did not uninstall our work as we were instructed to, we went to Norway. For €20 return. We brought a tent.

Determined not to spend any of the money we didn’t have in what we had gleaned was an utterly terrifying Norwegian economy, we stocked up on chocolate and packets of dehydrated Mexican rice in Lidl before we left, determining to buy a spectacular amount alcohol in the airport. (Which we did - God bless duty free).

We had cycled to town to catch the airport bus at the ungodly hour of 3am, leaving the keys for our bike locks on top of a phone box, and a series of enigmatic clues as to their whereabouts for a friend to follow. Then the plane was delayed by 5 hours anyway, which rendered our midnight cycle pointless. But it was ok because we saw Nick Cave in the airport. He was with a man who we decided was probably one of his Bad Seeds. We followed him for a while, clutching the Joker cards from our deck, which we hoped he might sign and think we were cool. But we didn’t really know who Nick Cave was, only that he is a fabulous celebrity, and we were scared that if we talked to him, he might ask us which of his songs was our favourite.  And that would be embarrassing for everyone.

Mr Cave

In the end we pottered off to the gate and someone gave us food vouchers, which we successfully exchanged for a sort of limp tomato sandwich. GOOD JOB RYANAIR. We made up for this by discreetly but efficiently stuffing our thermo-mugs with condiments: butters, salts, peppers, ketchups, mayonnaises, marmalades, jams, more butters and a packet of tartare sauce just because it was there. This is not stealing, but I think it is generally frowned upon. And if someone sees you, and you catch their eye they'll make a face like, "sorry, what?" and probably whisper something to the person next to them and then they might come over and ask you what you think you are doing. Under normal circumstances you could just quickly leave before they get to you but if it's in an airport you have to stay in the building, so there's a chance you might run into them in the bathrooms. Discretion is critical.

angry passengers

So we flew to a place called Rygge. A shuttle bus took us from the airport to the train station and then we got the train to an area we vaguely thought might hold a campsite, based on a map we found on a chair in the airport. We accidentally left one of the condiment-filled thermo-mugs on the train, so some lucky varmint got all our marmalade.

All the banks were now closed because we had arrived so late which meant we couldn’t get any Norwegian money. Which effectively meant we had no money. No money and no marmalade. Neither of these are good things to have none of.

We walked about 6km up a mountain in the direction we thought there might be a campsite. Luckily we had obtained a large bottle of gin in the airport and a rather dusty bottle of tonic from a small shop that took euro and seemed to have been in possession of the bottle for a great many years. We had two gin and tonic breaks on the way up the mountain, which increased the length of the journey dramtically but made it infinitely more enjoyable.

A funny thing, every time we took something out of our rucksacks, they seemed to shrink so the thing wouldn’t fit back in. Certainly not without a repack. So along with our rucksacks, we now carried a large cardboard box given to us by a sympathetic lady in a shop, filled with all the things that couldn’t fit in our backpacks anymore. This box got harder to carry the drunker we got.

We arrived at the campsite, red and sweaty and quite drunk, explaining that, em, actually, we had no money but, em, ah, could we please just pop our tent up and stay here anyway? The owner, a large balding blonde man in tight denim shorts wearing no shoes, observed us for a moment over the bridge of his nose. The two of us were slumped sideways against the ice cream freezer, Clare holding a bottle of gin and a saucepan, and me clutching a cardboard box filled with socks, tupperware and hundreds of small packets of butter. Then he said quietly, "I do not think that this will be a problem."

That night we got drunk with a group of Americans, agreeing that the next day we must all haaaaaaang oooouuuuut! In the morning after a night of heavy drinking in a place where the sun doesn’t actually set, we poked our fragile heads out of the tent to see that the Americans had run away. Tents gone. Everything. Not even an indentation in the grass. I think they were a bit scared.

One morning we were lying on a jetty overlooking our local Fjord, feeling hungover, swollen and increasingly sunburnt. Clare wanted to go for a swim but I didn’t feel up to it, and she didn’t want to go in on her own because the water was dark and something might get her. I wouldn't have gone in on my own either. Then the wind picked up my notebook and threw it into the sea. I always keep a notebook, for drawing and writing down things I need to remember in my busy and interesting life, and normally it would be expendable, but this particular notebook had the contact details, deposit slips, and framing orders of everyone who had bought work from me during the show. Which would really not be a good thing to lose. So I took off all my clothes and jumped in after it. I didn’t have time to take off my socks.

I got it back and the apart from the wrinkliness of the pages, the only noticeable damage was that the ink on each page had printed onto its neighbour page. And nothing in the water got me. Phew.

We hitchhiked around the area. There happened to be a major Scandinavian Art Biennale taking place in the tiny town we were accidentally on holiday in. So we went to that, which made the trip feel very purposeful and worthwhile and we saw some really great work. 

The whole thing was spectacularly lucky. We were remarking on how well things had worked out and discussing some of the curatorial choices in the biennale, when we saw a roadsign that said 'farts'. Who were we kidding, we started screaming and ran over to take pictures of ourselves in front of it.

€7.20 indeed?

Today I found a new coat in a charity shop for €7.20, which everyone in the shop agreed was a splendid bargain. We all conceded the coat was fab and I was encouraged to go through with the purchase by all parties. It is a beige trenchcoat which makes me look like a news reporter or Inspector Gadget (as I was informed by a friend post-purchase). I donned it immediately I left the shop. Someone shouted "Weapons!" as I walked by, which is a bit obscure, but I imagine is probably an enigmatic Inspector Gadget reference, as opposed to a shopping list for an impending secret revolution I might have accidentally overheard. Fab indeed. I hate Inspector Gadget, he is a hopelessly irritating character, but that little helicopter that comes out of the top of his hat could come in pretttttty handy...

I am now in the market for a helicopter hat. If anyone has one that they need to shift.