A lost weekend

Our little trips on weekends are usually quite fun, with minimal amount of 'we are lost!!'.I am usually on the lookout for places that serves up asian goodies...yeah, I know, I'm in whiteman's land, should be seeking out for the best roasts and creamed potatos...but Bacon serves up a mean roast whilst I am unable to fry a decent plate of rice.

So on Saturday we popped down to Nottingham for a look-see before heading off to Grantham to bunk with a mate. After stuffing ourselves with a choc coated creampuff (yum) we headed into a vietnamese noodle bar. Everything here is called a noodle bar to maintain that hip notion of food served bar-styled. Even a local eatery that serves up a menu of 50% noodles 50% rice is called a Japanese noodle bar.Seeing that I can actually serve up a bowl of steaming pho (beef noodle soup made with beef marrow & spices), I have always had high expectations for vietnamese noodles.It helps that my cha gio (spring roll) is out of the world as well. But alas I have been overwhelmed by the laziness bug, and had not made them in 3 years.

Anyway. Anticlimax to this story is that the restaurant (Phat 8 in Nottingham; I thought it was like Baby Phat or something) is absolutely horrible and an insult to vietnamese cuisine.The soup comes without a tinge of beansprout, and when asked for chilli sauce, she proceeded to produce a bottle of Yeo's Sos Cili.

WTF

After lunch, we continued on walking around Nottingham...eventually bumping into this delicious shop; Hotel Chocolat. And oh my god, what a hotel. I wish I can sleep there and never come out The selection of chocs there is absolutely amazing...we had a sultana enrobed in rum & chocolate...I came out feeling just a teeny bit drunk. How embarrasing.

After discussing on how to get the best for our money, we decided that I'm not going to get anything cute looking or designer-look-a-like blocks of chocs. Instead, we came away with the abovementioned sultana in rum and three trays of choc selection of truffles ect.By the time we got to the car, I was so high on choc I actually had a migrane and had to sit down.Worse than a hangover.

We proceeded on to the Grantham area where Brian lives. Open mouthed, I stared out of the window at this one-lane village...the whole village comprises of about 50-100 houses/farms, a pub, a campsite, a couple of farms, a church (a must have in the boondocks) and a shack which houses the village post office cum general store. No mini marts for your local paper, no mechanic shop,no markets....nada.

We had driven through countless of these mini-villages throughout England on our roadtrips, but had never stayed in one before.I was looking forward to waking up to the baaing sheeps and fresh country air will be a novelty.And then disaster strike. We realized that Brian's house is called Cliff View, with no house numbers, like how homes in villages are like.Our Sat Nav does not recognize house names, and we don't blame it. So we drove up and down the one lane village, looking for Cliff View.

After the first 15mins, I pushed Bacon into the campsite to ask a local the whereabouts of cliff view. No luck. We stopped an old man cycling up the road.No luck. We popped into the village pub; seeing that it's only a mini-village,everyone's bound to know everyone. No luck. Stopped a bloke comming out of his house, no luck AGAIN.

This is getting ridicullious. After an hour, we are still searching, and I am increasingly getting amused. We are obviously on the right road and the right village, just no houses. I found Vitamin Cottage(!!) ,Lavender home, Church View, Pasture view, Castle view.....but no Cliff view.Bloody ridicullious.

And oh, why didnt we just ring Brian up and ask for directions you asked? Well, typical of men, Bacon did not ask for Brian's number, and it soon became apparent to us that Brian did not have Bacon's number as well. We were going to have a bbq, and he obviously had bags of chilled meats waiting to go on the grill since 3pm.

In a moment of madness, I even ran up and down the one-lane-village shouting, "Briaaaaaaaaaaaan" hoping that he'll hear us and come running out. Then I realised that I could be misconstrued as mad and be taken to the village lock up.So I shut up, and just walked up and down the road looking for Cliff view, occasionally sneaking an apple from the apple trees surrounding the village.

At 5pm, we gave up. No Brian in sight, no cliff view in sight, we waved goodbye to the baaing sheeps and drove 2 hours home.

shorttalk: Blogger picture uploader don't work today...no pix.AAArgh!
shorttalk 2: Its my 200th post on blogger,no wonder the picture thingy failed.