Food, food, glorious food and other stuff!

 Friends, followers, blog readers, lend me your eyes! Hmmmm.......not sure if that works. I don't need your eyes, i mean use your eyes to read this update. I don't want to be inundated with you sending me your eyes and you need them to read my updates. OK scrap that opening.

HI!

We'll what do i have for you today? By our standards it's been a bit quiet but by others standards we've been as busy as a the tory parties business card maker, Oh, political satire there. Who was Liz Truss anyway? She's as known to me as the Z listers on these brain numbing reality shows, never mind.

Well my 54th birthday has come and gone, just how i like it. On my 50th Sian surprised me in the bar with a cake and getting everyone to sing happy birthday at me. Now then, it's not the fact that i was the centre of attention which makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, its the singing, good grief, no timing, wrong pitch, don't know my name, lacklustre effort. If i've got to stand there for 30 seconds going bright red the least you could do is get it right and at least try to sound like you want me to enjoy myself 😆

Well, this birthday was just Sian and myself in a little Italian restaurant called Villagio. The best Italian restaurant i've been to in the UK.

We have been here before but this was a surprise set up by Sian which i was very happy about. I didn't want to spoil my main meal so i just had ciabatta with olive oil and balsamic vinegar while Sian had white bait.

On to mains. Now the menu is in Italian and i haven't a clue what my dish was called but i know it had Italian sausage in a white wine, garlic and cream sauce with pasta that looked like little turtle shells, tasted amazing.

Sian had some great looking beef which i think was in a red wine and tomato sauce with pasta strips, looked better than mine and smelt so good. All washed down with a Moretti. No room for dessert, its starter or dessert for us, no way both.

A trip down memory lane for breakfast the one weekend. When i was 15-16 myself and my mates used to go in to Cardiff city centre on Saturday and go to Pillars with a couple of quid and buy a pot of tea which was the cheapest item on their menu and sit in there all day. Used to love it. I asked Sian if she fancied going out for breakfast and took her to Pillars. Sian also used to go there when she was a teenager. Our bond is now complete, we like the same music, movies, comedies, travel and now we both used to visit the spiritual home of unruly teenagers, Pillars. 

You enter Pillars from Queen Street and go down a flight of stairs to a basement.

It's a time capsule, absolutely nothing has changed apart from a fresh lick of paint, this is so weird.

The long tray run where you would scrape your tray around until the serving area at the very end and order your pot of tea.

Order your food and drink, pay at the till and head to your table.

You may think to yourself "It must have changed", i kid you not, 38 years on and nothing has changed apart from now no salt and pepper pots or bottles of sauce on the tables, it's all sachets.

And here it is, the jewel in the Pillars crown, the 12 item breakfast for £6.60 and it was all worth it.

Also another love we share is buffet food. If you offered us a night at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant (Which he's never cooking in so why pay the stupid money, IDIOTS) or a buffet at someone's party we'd choose the buffet every time. We love buffets so much we have buffet making weekends every now and again.

This weekend it was homemade vol au vents and sausage rolls. Why can't you buy vol au vent cases outside of December? That's fine, we'll just make our own.

Tuna for one flavour, egg and bacon the other, lovely.

Then we did a bake off with the sausage rolls. Sian made Pork, boiled egg and chorizo, i made a breakfast roll with pork, black pudding, beans and a omelette base, both sets of ingredients then wrapped in puff pastry.

Talk about feeding the 5000, we over estimated the size of the sausage rolls and they actually lasted 4 days but they were so good, I preferred Sian's to mine and Sian preferred mine. I think it's always the way, being as you cooked yours you prefer the other persons. I could eat buffet food every day if i could and with our sausage rolls we almost did, way to big.

Also along with that i had seen a recipe for a peach upside down cake so gave it a go. We have a brand new cooker and still getting to grips with the oven. The cake was very moist and tasty but the bottom was slightly burnt, Boooooooooo!

We have taken to pub crawls every weekend trying different pubs and routes to fit in the most in the shortest distance. Well, winter is coming and nothing worse than trudging from pub to pub in the cold.

We've done a few around our area in Heath, Whitchurch, Rhiwbina so for a change we went in to Cardiff city centre. Not our fav place, Friday and Saturday nights in town is just full of morons no matter what the age BUT to avoid these numb nuts we stay on the very edge of town and drink in the better standard of bars that charge a little more but keep the louts at bay.

Don't get me wrong, i understand people need to let their hair down but when they start letting their pants down you know it's not a good bar.

Cheers everyone, i can't tell you the name of this bar with our fireplace all cosy as you'll stalk us and nick our seats by the fire. It's all ours!

So just a short update today as we're both pretty busy at the moment but with me having Thurs-Sun off every week we can do so much more together and we do, if ever we get to that point where we're sat in most nights both on phones not talking i think we'd prefer to smash our heads against the wall.

Talking of smashing our heads against a wall......we went to an operatic society soiree on the weekend in the Angel Hotel, Cardiff for a 3 course meal and entertainment. The meal was really good, ham hock starter, pork belly main and chocolate tart for dessert (All small portions) and they had given the women a engraved champagne flute and the men a engraved whiskey tumbler which was a nice touch. Couple of bottles complimentary rose wine and the night was on it's way. Had some nice conversation and then the entertainment was to begin with DJ Slipped Disc. Now i'm not saying he was making easy money but when you put on the soundtrack to dirty dancing and let it play then lead on with ABBA's greatest hits you can tell its a lazy DJ, some of the songs i hadn't heard since i started as a DJ which was back in 1985. No way was this guy taking requests and we sure as hell wasn't going to get any Foo Fighters or Metallica, nice food, nice company, free booze shame about the music......TAXI!

Sian looking as beautiful as ever, as for me.........I hate having my pic taken, hate my smile, i look like someone who's on the run, wanted and been caught in a photograph and thinking, "SHIT!" 😅

What have we got coming up? Well quite a bit surprisingly as i thought that was it for our travels this year but no, we have a few things. Cardiff Devils in European ice hockey competition, UK Foo Fighters in Birmingham, London for the Christmas lights weekend and then New Years eve at our steam train porters lodge in mid Wales, it was Barcelona but i'm all flown out for this year what with Paris, Milan and Canada.

Looking to 2023 we've already booked Rome, Zakynthos, Munich and Paris for Depeche Mode and Hydra for our main holiday so another busy year of traveling, one year we may stay in UK and go camping...............NAH, just joking. Sian will read that and go, "NO FREAKING WAY", i think it's the sharing bathroom facilities that's not for her which i can understand.

So then folks, shall we say meet back here in OOOOOOooooooooo 4-5 weeks?

Until then.........

Serve All, Love All, Peace All......Kevlar Out!

God save the Foo Fighters, Long live the UK Foo Fighters!

 Well friends, blog followers and blog readers, how are we all? Hope your all well and safe out there.

Before i start this blog update i would like welcome the new readers in Japan, Luxembourg and Colombia. Yokoso, Wellkomm and Bienvenidos.

5 weeks ago today we were making our way to London to attend the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert in Wembley. Even 5 weeks on Sian mentioned to me that even though we have read all the articles about Taylors death and were at the tribute concert it seems like we're still in denial, it just doesn't seem real or right that someone so in love with life and loved their job is no longer with us, such a waste of a beautiful person.

I watched the LA tribute concert via a Facebook live stream on youtube and it was nowhere near as good as the Wembley concert. The Wembley concert was a true tribute to Taylor with huge emotional pull, where as the LA concert was a celebration concert with more of a party vibe so i'm glad we had the tribute concert and not the celebration concert.

2 weeks after our Wembley concert we had tickets for the UK Foo Fighters in Cardiff.

We've seen them in Birmingham and in Cardiff last year.

We've seen many tribute acts over the years, Guns 2 Roses, Oasish, The Smyths to name but a few.

Now when i talk about the UK Foo Fighters these guys are in a league of their own.

I have never seen a tribute band so tight, musically note perfect, dedicated to honoring the Foo Fighters and giving the Foo Fighters fans an almost mirror image of the true band, even down to Dave's Shoulder head bobbing combo by Jay.

When you walk in to a venue they are going to be playing in the atmosphere is one of enjoyment and anticipation. I've been to see other tribute bands and sometimes the atmosphere has been that of it could kick off any minute but not with the UK Foo Fighters, it feels like hundreds of friends meeting up to let their hair down.

The lights go down in the venue, the lights come up on the stage, the hairs stand up on your arms and then........instant euphoria from the first note, the first two times we saw them it was "I'll stick around" this time it was "Bridge Burning" that set the room bouncing from the off.

As they make their way through the set it is flawless, it just builds and builds making you feel higher and higher. The venue is a sea of rock moshers, pogoing punks and head banging everyday men and women. Strangers grab strangers to sing out loud arm in arm as the band preach to the masses from the alter of a lit stage carrying the congregation along on the wave of high decibel perfection.

Our personal experience of the gig this time was of high emotion. We wanted to treat this gig as a fun celebration to Taylor but as soon as Jay started to sing "My Hero" a tear was shed, we got ourselves together. "These Days" with one of the opening lines being "One of these days your heart will stop and play it's final beat" chocked us up even more. Then "Times like these" it was like being taken back to Wembley as Jay sang it perfectly and with feeling, it broke us.

Apart from those 3 songs the rest we just let ourselves go and moshed, pogo'd and head banged until our bodies were broken but it was all worth it. 

If your a Foo Fighters fan you wont find a better Foo Fighters tribute band anywhere, in fact the UK Foo Fighters are without a doubt the best Tribute band of all tribute bands out there at the moment and i'm saying that from a live music lover point of view NOT just as a Foo Fighters fan.

We have even said when we get married we want the UK Foo Fighters to play at our party and we would set our wedding party date around them when they would have a free date to spare for us.

The UK Foo Fighters are not just for Foo Fighter fans, you'll love the energy, atmosphere and true musicianship of the band, you all need to see these guys as they are pure class and perfection personified.

To check out if the band are near you anytime soon please visit:-

https://ukfoofighters.co.uk

GOD SAVE THE FOO FIGHTERS, LONG LIVE THE UK FOO FIGHTERS!

Until the next update.........

Serve All, Love All, Peace All.....Kevlar Out!