Bland of plenty

Spag bolWe experienced the wonders of Bromley this afternoon, doing some essential shopping and decided to have lunch in the soulless centre…

We alighted on a place where we had eaten before and they offered us a kids’ menu for A. We plumped for spaghetti bolognese, given that A loves pasta.

When it turned up, she gobbled down the spaghetti, but left the sauce, no matter how hard we tried.

Frustrated, I decided to try the meat sauce and was appalled. It was the most bland, unappetising plate of slop I had tasted in a long time.

I couldn’t believe that it was being served to anyone, let alone kids.

My theory is that because only kids are going to eat it, the restaurant assumes they can serve food that doesn’t taste great, which is a total insult.

Children should be granted the same standards as adults… the blander the food they’re given, the less likely they are to grow up enjoying good food and they’ll want to stuff their faces with tasteless food from the likes of McDonalds.

I know we’re lucky because A loves strong tastes, such as anchovy, olives and pesto, but that’s only because we’ve tried them on her.

All I can say is that if this sort of food is being served around the country to thousands, any hundreds of thousands of kids, I fear for the state of cuisine in the UK!

Hobson’s choice: Nicole or Dannii?

Nicole KidmanSo Nicole Kidman has been accused of turning into a bat, according to one ’eminent’ plastic surgeon (actually, I’m not really sure a plastic surgeon can be eminent, if it’s for cosmetic purposes, but hey-ho).

Anyway this news made me smile, on the back of a recent tale from a journalist friend.

This friend had managed to wangle a whole load of cosmetic treatments and one of them was Botox injections.

She duly went along for the appointment and the doctor ran through a couple of questions before administering the needle.

Now, apparently, there are two different patterns of injections, depending on the effect you wish to achieve – something to do with the bits of the face are rendered lifeless, from what I gather.

So, what was the final query before the doc started?

Do you want to look like Nicole Kidman or Dannii Minogue?

Electronic greetings!

Birthday cakeSo today’s my birthday and I’m not normally one for proclaiming it to the world, but given that the readership of my blog is fairly select, it’s not going to be reported in The Times or anything.

One of the weirdest things I’ve found is the number of electronic messages of goodwill I’ve had. I’m not talking people sending me e-cards, more the odd websites or other pieces of gadgetry who’ve taken the time out from their busy data processing lives to wish me well.

Our Nintendo DS, on which I have a go at Brain Training, was very keen to tell me I’d passed another annual milestone.

In fact the Japanese doctor was over the moon to wish me well – although at least that makes my Brain Age another year younger than my real age!

Then ‘the Facebook team’ wrote me a little message… ahh, how sweet. How do they manage to have time to remember everyone’s birthdays? And then write the messages… impressive.

I’ve since had another couple of websites ‘reminding’ me of my birthday – sheesh, I’m glad you sent me that email, otherwise I might have spent the whole day in ignorance.

I know it’s an American thing and they think they’re being all clever and personal, but they’re not.

I don’t want an inanimate non-sentient website to sing Happy Birthday to me… if I’m that hard up for it, I can always sing it to myself.