Tag Archives: Swindon

Telephone call for Mr. Horrible

Posted on September 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

Blimey, doesn’t time fly? It only seems like yesterday since I was wobbling on about skunks and teacups and stuff, but it’s been nearly a month. A month of more box unpacking, lots of Christmas planning, lots of arguments and lots of miles covered in the pursuit of the chilli dollar.

So what’s been irking yours truly this month? Well, first and foremost was the product I saw for sale at a show a few weeks back. Now I’m all for a bit of license being allowed with the English language in the interests of making your product stand out from the crowd, but there is a line. And that line, ladies and gentlemen, was not so much crossed as barreled past at warp 9.9 when I noticed a fruit-based milk drink being sold as a mylkshake. Yep, that’s a y. Should bloody well be an i, and all right-thinking English speakers will be with me on that one, especially my compatriots in the hardcore pedantry front. No excuse for it, it’s just so very, very wrong. I see marshmellows being sold regularly as well, and I cringe every time I see the sign. I want to go over to their stall and write ‘3/10, see me after class’ on their A-board.

You’ll remember that I had a bit of a rant about doggy hats in my last post. Well, I have another fashion item to add to the list of Things That Simply Should Not Exist. I was at the Bath Cats & Dogs Home Fun Day, which was basically a dog show with gazebos – lots of running round in the rain jumping through hoops, being judged for the waggliest tail competition, winning prizes for having the dangliest bollocks – and that was just the stallholders. Anyway, I was next to a stall selling – among other things – doggy bandanas. Really…bandanas? On a dog? See, this is why I like cats…try to put a cat in a bandana and you’ll never play the violin again.

I’ve been trying to cozy up to the TV elite since last time we spoke, but most of the celebs at the Big Feastival weren’t interested in talking to plebs like me. Monica Galetti looked quite startling with blonde hair, Jamie Oliver stood on the tables and ponced around doing his ‘look at me I’m a Cock…sorry…Mockney’ cheeky chappie routine, and Adam Henson was as plain-speaking and down-to-earth as you’d expect him to be. Of the three only Adam Henson stayed past his contracted 30 minutes of hogging the limelight to chat to anyone, but I was too busy with customers to get any stalker-type selfies. Ah well, maybe next year.

My mind, as we know, works in mysterious ways. I was next to one of the lovely Glamorose cupcake ladies the other week in Swindon admiring her wares (the cupcakes, honest) when she described the tiffin brownie as having lots of tiffin-y bits in it. Now although I’ve led a very sheltered upbringing, for some reason I had visions of a slightly ragged, over-used and aging actress in…ahem…’exotic’ films called Tiffany Bitz. And of course, this being Swindon, I was reminded of the legendary Swindonian actress Lola Vavoom, whose monument I have yet to visit.*

Talking of actresses, when did they all become actors? I’m all for equality, nothing against women (I should be so lucky) but what was so wrong with the word actress? It seems that you’re not allowed to use the feminine version of the word any more, as if it’s a derogatory term or something. I don’t get it…anyone can now be an actor it seems, but it takes a special kind of person to become an actress – only half of the population can do it! It’s political correctness gone mad I tell you. I blame Jeremy Corbyn, that’s a sound place to start these days.

On the Christmas front, we’re preparing…and cooking…and cooking…my God, are we cooking. The store room at the farm looks like a really crap game of Tetris…more and more stuff comes in but doesn’t quite fit into the space that we have left for it…until we cook some more and create some space that we then fill with what we’ve just cooked! It’s a logistical nightmare, but we’re planning meticulously to fit quarts into pint pots, squeeze a few more crates in here and there, and somehow…somehow…have enough stock for Christmas.

But before then, we have some important news…wait, I’m not allowed to tell our readers? Really? Oh, you’re no fun…

* Top marks if you even have the faintest clue what I’m talking about there, by the way.

Cats aren’t really friendly, they’re just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.
Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer

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Posted in Chilli, Christmas, General

Tagged Christmas, Swindon, WCF, Wiltshire Chilli Farm

Rubber dinghy rapids

Posted on September 30, 2014 | Leave a comment

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, mainly as I’ve not had masses to waflle about. I thought I’d save up my random ramblings until I can pad them out a bit 🙂

Though I have little to waffle about, it’s all go at WCF Central. We’ve been cooking furiously (mainly furious when the bottling machine has a spitty fit…thank you Hellmouth) so we now have more stock in place than ever before. Its’ causing us a bit of a headache, what with the need for a national crate mountain, but it puts us in a decent position in the headlong rush towards Christmas. I know it’s still only just autumn, but us trading wallahs have to be ahead of the curve, otherwise there’s a danger of us getting caught with our trousers down if something unexpected happens. A good productive day can see over 3,000 units produced without having to work till midnight – we’re getting good at this efficiency lark, you know. Bond will claim it’s all down to his ‘floating’ role as Efficiency Bitch – soaking up all the odd jobs that sometimes get in the way of smooth running – but for the most part it’s down to good planning and days of monster batches in the big cooker. They’re a pain to prepare for, but once cooked it’s just a case of bottle, bottle, bottle till you get bored of hitting the pedal. Needs must though, we need the stock, and we have a lot more days like that to be prepared.

On the trading front it all goes a bit quieter at this time of year. Yes, there are still plenty of markets and festivals, but the monsters of the summer are gone and everyone’s focussed on the upcoming horror that is the festive season. Since my last update I’ve been to Reading, Gloucester, Tetbury, Royal Wootton Bassett and Wroughton – mostly places I’ve been to before, although the day in Wroughton was unusual. I was asked to give a presentation to the Wiltshire WI for their Produce Day, which was fun. I suspect the average age of the audience was the wrong side of 70, and the average natural hip quota significantly less than 2, but they all listened attentively to the producers there on the day, and asked plenty of questions – thankfully no difficult ones – not to me. anyway 🙂 I’ve been asked back to give a similar presentation at their anniversary event next April, so I can’t have scared them too much with my Don Estelle shorts and tales of incinerating potential Prime Ministers!

I’ve had a bit of a weekend off before that, taking a Sunday off to head to Wembley for an NFL game. Now I know it’s still fairly new to the UK and so it’s a bit of a novelty, but it’s so much fun going to one of these games – the glitz, the glamour, the cheerleaders, the vastly overpriced pretend food, the cattle market that is Wembley Stadium Station afterwards…it’s not like that at the County Ground, I can tell you. And you certainly don’t get Def Leppard as pre-match entertainment at Swindon, though many would say they’re glad of that.

On a totally separate subject, something caught my eye today, and frankly I’m baffled. I followed a brand spanking new Fiat 500 through Devizes, and I’m sure the owner is really, really proud of her shiny new toy…but why in the FSM’s name did she choose beige as the colour? Now we all have our preferences. I realise this. I seem to have developed a preference for loud colours recently that can leave your retinas in a state of shock. But beige? For a car? A little research leads me to believe it’s actually a colour they call ‘New Age Cream’. Seriously, what the hell’s that all about? It’s beige, people! Eeeeuw.

Since my last post one of the most important decisions in British politics ever has been taken, with the result of Scotland’s independence referendum. The result was, of course, the safe option of the status quo – one I think is probably the best for Scotland – but it does lead me to believe that far from it being decisive, we’re just going to have to go round the loop all over again in a few years until they get the answer the nationalists want. I think, by the time voting day had come round, everyone in England was utterly sick of Alex Salmond’s weaselly fizzog appearing on every screen, and if the English had had a vote we’d had voted a resounding Yes just to get rid of the bugger. A really vindictive part of me would have loved to have seen a Yes vote win out, just to see how an economy built on shortbread and little drummer girls in plastic tubes would actually work in the real world. However we’re all still one big happy family, but just wait till Andy Murray wants a big cheer at Wimbledon next year…I think he’ll find a few less supporters next time round!

I was going to buy these but they were two deer

A busy few days coming up – cooking at the farm followed by days trading in Temple Quay (Bristol), Salisbury, Devizes and Frome. The Pink Chilli Hobbit will be in Marlborough on Sunday, and the WCF Massive will also be in Neath, Reading, Petersfield, Oxford, Bath and of course Swindon. We’re always in Swindon. We try to leave, but just like Number 6 in The Prisoner, we get caught by the balls and dragged back. Oh…sorry…caught by one big ball. My bad.

That’s all for this week folks, apart from one very important question. Take a look at the poster below, spotted in a local health food establishment. WTF?

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Posted in Chilli, General

Tagged Pink Chilli Hobbit, Salisbury, Swindon, WCF

Wheeltappers and shunters

Posted on July 21, 2014 | Leave a comment

Firstly, a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a tin of heavily processed meat. And contained herein, dear reader, lies a confession.

Now I know that you’ll all have been thinking that as a purveyor of fine chilli foodstuffs my kitchen must be well stocked with all manner of food loveliness. Well it might come as a shock, but no. Open my kitchen cabinets and you’re more likely to hit with an errant Pot Noodle than foie gras. I am, if nothing else, a typical single bloke in the eating stakes, and that generally means one of two types of food – either a takeaway or ‘how fast can I cook it so I don’t miss the football/cricket/cycling on the telly’. And one of those things often found Chez Hobbit is that wartime favourite – Spam. I tend to have a tin or two knocking around for those occasions when I need something in my sandwiches and have been too busy, tired or just plain lazy to get to the shops.

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, it came to my attention last week as I opened a tin of the Python’s favourite foodstuff (with it’s attendant inadvertent self-mutiliation possibilities) that Spam has its own website. And Facebook page. And Twitter feed. And Pinterest page. And Instagram account. Seriously dudes, WTF? Now I know that in this day and age everybody, everything, has to have an outlet – I am proof of that. But Spam? A quick perusal shows that the manufacturers are cashing in mightily on the current slew of Monty Python dates, even offering up a recipe for Spam Popcorn, which just defies comprehension. I guess kitsch has many guises.

On to more mundane matters, and I thought I’d tell you of a role I’ve picked up lately as a direct consequence of working with the chilli farm. As I (or the Pink Chilli Hobbit) attend a number of markets in Wiltshire it sort of made sense to take an active role in the Wiltshire Farmers Market Association (WFMA), so I am now a full-blown committee member. It gives me an insight into the way the association runs, and a voice in the way the markets are organised. I’ve attended a couple of meetings so far and whilst sometimes it’s tricky doing the schizophrenic thing of representing the market community as a whole – as opposed to what’s best for the Wiltshire Chilli Farm – it’s fair to say that most of the time they go hand in hand. One task I took on last week was to represent the WFMA at a Royal Wootton Bassett Town Council meeting. Now I’ve never attended a council meeting before, and several things struck me:

it was very old fashioned in it’s language
it was woefully poor on timings
when you’re just there as an observer, waiting for your slot, it is soul-destroyingly dull
it’s even more dull when you can’t even play Candy Crush Saga (on silent, I’m not that much of a berk) ‘cos you’re low on battery

Now to be fair, of course, the subjects being discussed were of great importance to local residents, of which I am not one. But I couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was all a bit…well…1930’s in approach. I got a real blast of nostalgia when some comment or another suddenly brought to mind ’70s variety show The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, which if you’ve not seen it is worth a look on YouTube just to remind you that however tedious Celebrity Masterchef and Strictly Come Dancing are, at least they don’t feature Bernard Manning. It was a show definitely of its era, with the host prone to cries of ‘It’s been brought to the attention of t’committee…’, hence why it sprang to mind last week. But nevertheless I survived the RWB Town Council experience, tired but triumphant, but only in the knowledge that it probably won’t be the last time I have to do it 😦

The other major event for yours truly was a feature in Friday’s Swindon Advertiser. You may recall that we’d had a visit from them the week before to take some photos and listen to our random thoughts, but I was pleasantly surprised by the article when I read it. Thankfully my age didn’t get a mention (the fact that I can remember the Wheeltappers & Shunters is a bit of a giveaway), the photos did sterling service in chin limitation duty, and it had the desired effect of getting a few punters along to the Swindon Chilli Festival the next day. I bought a copy to show my Mum, of course.

The Festival itself was a bit underwhelming, but I’m pretty sure that our old nemesis – the weather – had the largest part to play in that. It was, as I’m sure you will have noticed, a stormy old few days, and the rain – whilst not constant – was absolutely torrential when it did arrive. The BBC’s weather droids did their level best as always by frightening people, advising them not to leave their homes in case of Biblical floods, typhoons, krakens and other things they needed to use up their graphics quota on. It was also the first festival of this type in Swindon, and these things need a bit of history before the crowds flood in.

The local samba group tried to liven things up, though all they really managed to do was deafen the audience (customers and traders alike) which left us flailing around in a very poor attempt at sign language, trying to describe the incendiary properties of Red Septenary among others. And really guys, samba is meant to be a joyous thing…

Prior to that I’d tried Gloucester (or Gloooooooooooucester, as it’s spelt at Kingsholm) Farmers Market. It was on Friday (weekdays are never fantastic), the last day of school (everyone rushing off on holiday), and it was our first time there (no loyal audience), so it was no surprise that takings were lower than Vladimir Putin’s popularity ratings. Will I try it again? Maybe, as long as it’s en route to somewhere else – it’s a long old trip for an experiment.

One other thing that has been cemented in my consciousness this week is just how abused our glorious English language is. I’m not talking about the grocer’s apostrophe, or the seemingly inevitable invasion of Americanisms such as nite, donut and pants when you mean trousers (pants are undercrackers, people!). It’s the abuse it gets when well-meaning organisers label their event as being ‘awesome’, as has happened for the chilli festivals I’ve been at over the last couple of weekends. Fun, enjoyable, good-natured yes…but awesome? I have extensive knowledge of Swindon and nothing – nothing– has never been awesome in the town. Not Diana Dors. Certainly not Mark Lamarr. Not even the football club’s promotion to the top tier of English football some 20 years ago, and I was there so I should know. It was remarkable, exciting, heart-stopping and nerve-wracking – but it was not AWESOME, especially in caps lock. So I say to these people – just don’t. You’re not fooling anyone. Not in Swindon, especially.

+++ RANT OVER +++

Sunday was spent trading for the day at a delightful village event in Sutton Veny, down in the south of the county. The event was a village fair at a lovely nursing home, and it was thankfully not billed as awesome, or any other irrelevant adjectives. It was a proper village event – run by volunteers, all profits going to charity, and with no pretensions. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and even if you didn’t you felt like you did by the end of the day. There were proper stalls like a coconut shy where you got to win a coconut, not a fluffy toy made in a Chinese sweat shop. There was a bouncy castle that the adults ended up playing on. There was ice cream and candy floss. There was a raffle, where of course one person kept winning all of the prizes. And above all, there was a feeling that everyone there was having a good time, including the stall holders. I went expecting to make a few quid and no more, and that’s what happened. But you know what? I don’t care, I really enjoyed it. The sun was out, there was live music being played by a variety of people that could actually play in tune, and when it wasn’t busy on the stall I just sat on my stool and read a book. I could almost certainly have made more money going further afield to a bigger event, but it did me the power of good just doing a quiet one for a change.

I shall stop burbling on now, for I fear I have overstayed my gibbering welcome once again. I’ll just give you a quick update on this weekend’s events. I will be in Lechlade Garden Centre on Friday, en route to the Cosford Food Festival for the weekend. The Pink Chilli Hobbit is in Royal Wootton Bassett and Bradford-on-Avon. We’re also out and about at the RNAS Yeovilton Air Day, Brindley Place in Birmingham, Hylands House Game Show, Glasgow Food Festival, Lincoln Food Festival and our regular haunts in Swindon, Bath and Oxford.

Another hectic weekend then, but that’s just how we roll.

Hope the weather stays nice for you, try not to work too hard, and ladies – now that I’m famous – if you really want me to autograph any body parts, just form an orderly queue…

No-one claimed their free lollipop by providing me with an answer to last weeks quiz. The answer was Richard Z. Kruspe, lead guitarist with that jolly German boy band Rammstein. Be ashamed that you do not know these things.

+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++

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Posted in Chilli, General

Tagged Chilli festival, Spam, Swindon, WCF

A funny thing happened on the way to the market

Posted on July 15, 2014 | Leave a comment

I hate the internal combustion engine and all its attached gubbins.

Basically, it goes like this. I was due to work a market in Reading last Friday on my way to Sussex for a chilli festival. A large part of Thursday was spent packing the van, rearranging things, loading up camping gear, working out which stock I needed just for Friday so as not to need to unload everything in Reading. Got up at sparrow-fart in order to trundle off to Berkshire in good time to set up (I hate being rushed), fed the cats, set up the automatic pet feeder for the weekend, checked the lights, locked up, all the stuff you usually do before going away for a couple of days. Jumped in the van, rather chuffed that I was getting away dead on time. Put the keys in the ignition, put my foot on the clutch pedal…and realised that there was no clutch pedal. Or rather…there was, but it was irreversibly sucked into the footwell of the van, resisting all entreaties to lift up it’s little French head and be used to enable me to change gear. Now there are a number of ways in which I could have reacted, but it’s a testament to the rather more stable mental space I now inhabit that I didn’t go all Basil Fawlty on the Silver Machine. I suspect that it was largely because – frankly – I’d seen this coming and knew Monsieur Clutch was rather unwell and not long for this world. Also, if you’re going to break down it’s best to do it at home where you can just go back indoors and put the kettle on…so much better than catching fire on a roundabout. Which has happened to me. That’s a story for another day.

Of course, much faffing ensued. The good people of Enterprise (alas not the starship variety) were more than happy to rent me a behemoth of a van for the weekend, and to be fair it was rather pleasant to blat down to Shoreham in a ’14 reg Ford Transit with lots of toys, and more to the point toys that worked. And being frankly enormous it was much easier to load up, though of course the fact that I had to completely unload the van that I had only loaded up the day before was a tad irritating. I need the exercise, I kept telling myself.

With all of this larking about I actually headed off to Sussex a bit earlier than anticipated, and beat the worst of the M25’s Friday afternoon mayhem, so there was definitely a silver lining to it all. Not that I can afford a silver lining this week after the hire costs and the impending clutch replacement!

So how did the weekend go, I hear you not ask? Another one of those events that frankly left me bemused…a multi-day chilli festival that was definitely a game of two halves. Saturday was busy enough and reasonable numbers were shifted, but Sunday had the tourists in – lost and lots of people mooching in to a free event, eating samples , and then buggering off without so much of a sniff of interest in shaking the moths out of their wallets. I know, we all do it, but by gum it’s irritating. I don’t have it as bad as some of course, my samples being tasters on sticks, but those giving out samples on crackers were going…well…crackers. It was if the people of Shoreham had taken their cue from the seagulls that plagued the event by coming in for a free feed.

As is usual from this kind of event I came back with several pots of other vendors stuff – we may be in competition with each other, but there’s some damned good stuff out there that we don’t make…we don’t have a monopoly on great recipes.

Still, I made enough to pay for the van hire, had a lovely stay at a nice camp site, managed a visit to the in-laws and jump-started my enthusiasm for reading thanks to there being no phone signal to distract me at the camp site. I was even far enough from any decent pubs to keep me out of mischief, the downside to that being that I had no idea that Germany had won the World Cup until I asked my mother-in-law on Monday morning 🙂

Jamie had a much busier event at the Cardiff International Food Festival, selling more than everyone else combined. Thankfully he’s not smug, mainly because it costs a lot more to get into these things than the events the rest of us were doing. Everyone else’s events were pretty steady, though the Pink Chilli Hobbit had a good day in Chippenham on Sunday. The Food Festival (essentially an expanded monthly Farmers Markets with knobs on) seems to have been well attended so that bodes well for the future. PCH is currently on missionary work in the far north (OK, Harrogate) for her own business PinkBox Boutique. She’ll come back talking all incomprehensible and northern after a few days up there. Makes a change from incomprehensible and southern that we’re all guilty of!

The chilli plants are getting big…it won’t be much longer before I’m able to lose myself amongst them. I realise that’s not much of an ask, but even so it shows they’re on the way up an a hell of a rate.

We had a nice visit from the Swindon Advertiser who wanted to interview us for the Swindon Chilli Festival, which happens this Saturday. If things go to plan there should be a piece in this Friday’s Adver and – assuming the camera didn’t break – some piccies of yours truly trying not to look to self-concious whilst posing in front of the tunnels. I’m just just hoping the camera angle keeps the chins down into single figures.

In other news…Jamie cuts a sinister figure in his Naga Salt making outfit…digging the marigolds….

Miss Bristol and the Mayor of Bristol appear mightily unimpressed by being asked to ‘taste’ some of our chillies for a photo shoot. I don’t think they were keen. If this is what Bristolians think of their chillies no wonder I’m having trouble at Temple Quay! (And before I get a sackful of abuse from Brizzle – yes I know you love our stuff really 🙂 )

So what next for this intrepid chilli adventurer? Well, the aforementioned Swindon Chilli Fest (in the centre of town, Canal Walk to be precise) is Saturdays gig. Before that on Friday I will be trying out Gloucester Farmers Market to see what that’s like. Sunday is a mystery right now. I have the possibility of four events spread across Wiltshire. Oxfordshire and Dorset. There is also the possibility of none of them happening…but we’ll just have to wait and see. I’m not one, as a rule, to enjoy being unsure of where the heck I’m meant to be this close to the weekend, but all of them are an easy drive away so I’m less fazed than usual. Something will happen. It may be good. It may not. It may rain. It may not. Whatever.

We’ll be in our usual haunts, as well as more exotic surroundings such as the Bristol Harbour Festival, Tatton Park Foodies Festival and the Gower Chilli Festival. That’s the Welsh place, not a festival held by the former England cricketer. Really, really can’t imagine him enjoying a slug of Ghost 3.2.

And that folks, is that for this week! Keep the faith!

If you can name the gentleman in the ‘Smugness’ poster above I’ll give you a free lollipop if you see me this weekend – regardless of your age or marital status 🙂

No cheating!!!

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Posted in Chilli, General

Tagged Chilli festival, Chippenham, Pink Chilli Hobbit, Shoreham, Swindon, WCF

Image

Growing up

It’s Monday, it’s raining, so time to write a blog entry.

The big news this week is that the Wiltshire Chilli Farm will have a new regular pitch in Union Street in Bath. This is a huge opportunity for us and one we’re really excited about. The pitches don’t become available often, and we were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to nab one. We’ll be there pretty much every day (aiming for 7 days a week in summer) so staffing is causing us a few headaches at the moment! We’ll figure it out, and we’re looking forward to getting cracking with it next week 🙂

It’s been a busy few days at Chilli Hobbit Central. Last week I had my first taste of production proper at the Wiltshire Chilli Farm, helping Jamie with a bit of cooking, bottling, capping and labelling of batches of Mango Hot Sauce and Hellish Habanero. It’s an insight into a world I’ve never really been party to (27 years in IT doesn’t prepare you terribly well), so whilst not a complete culture shock it was certainly a different view on earning a living.

Things I learnt from my days work:

Mishka. Slobber not shown.

it’s quite therapeutic, especially the bottle labelling machine
it’s tough on southern softy hands like mine
it’s a precise business, even with hand-made products
I really must buy Jamie a new radio for the capping/bottling area. Need Planet Rock, not Heart FM.
Mishka the farm cat is noisy and slobbery

Growing at the Farm is in the early stages. Lots and lots of chilli plants, but very young still and needing to be planted out. As always there are lots of varieties being grown, from the mild to the frankly loopy, and somewhere in the mix (not found them yet) are some Reapers, the hottest in the world. I dread to think what Jamie has planned for them…I will, in my professional capacity, have a taste – but probably just the once. I love the taste of chillies, but I don’t go for the super hot ones!

DSCF7856 - cropped

The big polytunnels are looking a bit sad right now, but that’s normal for this time of the year. Very soon there will be a work party descending on them, waving their magic wands to turn them into fully functioning Gardens of Eden – only instead of forbidden fruit, there will be the wonderful world of chillies. And not forbidden at all. Forbidding maybe, but not forbidden. It promises to be a hard few days labour, but if we don’t do it – we have no product!

20140403_120145[1] The weekend’s events were many and varied. Thursday saw my debut at Bristol’s Temple Quay Market. Well…when I say debut, I mean debut as a trader. I used to work in one of the offices overlooking The Square (my desk was just above the peak of my red gazebo in the photo), so I’ve been a customer on many occasions. It was somewhat surreal being on the outside looking in this time round, but it was nice to see some friendly faces. It’ll be a regular market for me this year, at least twice a month.

Friday was another new one, in Tidworth. This is a monthly market and was well supported, so looking forward to doing that one again. Saturday saw me on home turf in Devizes – where I had visits from my daughter, granddaughter, brother, sister-in-law, and several friends! Made for a lovely morning 🙂 Sunday was an old favourite, Swindon Designer Outlet. A visit to the Cadburys shop happened. Diet on hold. Again.

Marlborough Community Market was supported by Pink Chilli Hobbit, it was by all accounts wet and windy, and was closed early thanks to general miserableness. That’s the second month in a row for that market – we’re not getting much luck there 😦

Stalag Polytunnel #3

On the non-chilli front it’s welcome back to Game of Thrones. I’m pleased to see that it’s now being broadcast here at 2am on Sunday morning, to tie in with the US broadcast. Thank heaven for Sky+, one quick press of ‘series record’ and I was enjoying it first thing Monday morning, with no danger of accidental spoilers sneaking up on me. What a way to start the week 🙂

Remember…winter is coming!

DSCF7858 - cropped And with that folks, I will sign off. This promises to be another busy week and I need to prepare for it by…well…having a bit of a snooze actually. I’ve been up for hours already, and I’m not getting any younger you know 😛

Speak to you soon.

TCH

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Posted on April 7, 2014 in Chilli, General

Tagged Bristol, Devizes, Game of Thrones, Swindon, Tidworth, WCF

Tag Archives: Swindon

Telephone call for Mr. Horrible

Rubber dinghy rapids

Wheeltappers and shunters

A funny thing happened on the way to the market

Growing up

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