It seems to be true, that the one piece of baggage you can never leave behind when you go on holiday is yourself…

It is a barefaced lie that Chow dogs were originally bred as the main ingredient in Chow Mein, which is actually a corruption of the Taishanese ‘chau-meing’ meaning ‘fried noodles’, ‘chau’ meaning ‘fried’ (or stir fried) and ‘meing’ meaning ‘noodles’. However, this does nothing to support the veracity of Vesta Chow Mein, despite the famous brand-dish having far more ingredients than either the traditional steamed or crispy varieties:

“Vesta Chow Mein

Description
SOFT NOODLES WITH CHOPPED AN SHAPED BEEF, VEGETABLES, SOYA MINCE, CRISPY NOODLES AND SOY SAUCE. GENEROUS PORTION CONTAINS DRIED INGREDIENTS. SERVES ONE. EASY COOK. Why not try: Treat yourself to Vesta’s Indian Style Beef Curry.

Ingredients:
Vegetable (38%) (Carrot, Green Beans, Red Peppers, Onion, Peas), Soft Noodle (37%) (Durum Wheat Semolina, Water), Tomato, Crispy Noodles (6%) (Rice Flour, Wheat Flour, Tapioca, Salt, Vegetable Oil, Turmeric, Maize), Chopped and Shaped Beef (5%) (Beef (4.5%), Wheat Gluten, Cereal Fibre (Oat Fibre, Wheat Fibre), Modified Maize Starch, Milk Proteins, Salt, Rosemary Extract), Soy Sauce (2%) (Water, Salt, Glucose Syrup, Molasses, Soya Beans, Wheat, Spirit Vinegar and Barley Malt Extract), Sugar, Dried Soya Mince (1%) (Defatted Soya Flour, Colours (Sulphite Ammonia Caramel, Riboflavin), Iron Sulphate, Thiamin, Vitamin B12), Glucose Syrup, Salt, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Parsley, Maize Starch, Garlic, Flavour Enhancers (Monosodium Glutamate, Sodium 5′ Ribonucleotide), Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Flavourings, Colour (Ammonia Caramel), Natural Flavouring.” (1)

(1) http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/

Foam: in physical chemistry, a colloidal system (i.e., a dispersion of particles in a continuous medium) in which the particles are gas bubbles and the medium is a liquid. The term also is applied to material in a lightweight cellular spongy or rigid form. Liquid foams are sometimes made relatively long-lasting—e.g., for fire fighting—by adding some substance, called a stabilizer, that prevents or retards the coalescence of the gas bubbles. Of the great variety of substances that act as foam stabilizers, the best known are soaps, detergents, and proteins. Proteins, because they are edible, find wide use as foaming agents in foodstuffs such as whipped cream, marshmallow (made from gelatin and sugar), and meringue (from egg white). The foam used to combat oil fires consists of bubbles of carbon dioxide (liberated from sodium bicarbonate and aluminum sulfate) stabilized by dried blood, glue, or other cheap protein-containing materials. Beer foam is believed to be stabilized by the colloidal constituents present, which include proteins and carbohydrates.

http://www.britannica.com/science/foam

Since one of today’s photographs is of a man dressed up as Batman riding a bicycle, I thought I’d try and put together a list of exclamations Robin the boy wonder uttered when faced with various challenges during the run of the 1960s TV show. After wracking my brains for all of ten minutes, and only coming up with a handful, I decided I’d Google “list of holy expressions robin says in batman and robin”– not really expecting anything to turn up… Why did I not think that someone has listed the lot? Below is a heavily edited compilation but if you want to see all of them, yes, go to Wikipedia! There you will also find a short essay, including the quote: “Robin exists as a media entity inextricably linked with Batman and shares nearly as much ubiquity in American culture”. The essay also cites a number of film critics and comic-book scholars, so it is clearly a serious work. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Here’s the abbreviated list anyway:

Holy: Agility, Almost, Anagram, Armadillo, Ashtray, Astronomy, Astringent Plum-like Fruit, Audubon, Backfire, Ball And Chain, Bank Balance, Bargain Basements, Barracuda, Benedict Arnold, Bikini, Bill Of Rights, Birthday Cake, Blackout, Bluebeard, Bouncing Boiler Plate, Bowler, Bullseye, Bunions, Caffeine, Camouflage, Caruso, Catastrophe, Chicken Coop, Chocolate Eclair, Cinderella, Cinemascope, Cliche, Cliffhangers, Clockwork, Coffin Nails, Complications, Conflagration, Contributing to the Delinquency of Minors, Corpuscles, Costume Party, Crucial Moment, , Cryptology, Detonator, Disappearing Act, Diversionary Tactics, Encore, Epigrams, Escape-hatch, Fate-worse-than-death, Finishing-touches, Firing Squad, Flight Plan, Flip-flop, Floor Covering, Flypaper, Forecast, Fork In The Road, Fourth Amendment, Fourth Of July, Frankenstein, Frogman, Fruit Salad, Frying Towels, Graf Zeppelin, Graveyards, Greetings-cards, Guacamole, Gullibility, Haberdashery, Hairdo, Hallucination, Hamburger, Harem, Heart Failure, Heidelberg, Helmets, Here We Go Again, Hi-fi, Hijack, Hoaxes, Hole In A Donut, Hollywood, Homework, Hors D’Oeuvre, Houdini, Human Pressure Cookers, Hydraulics, Hypnotism, Hypodermics, Ice Picks, Iceberg, Impossibility, Impregnability, Incantation, Inquisition, Interplanetary Yardstick, Interruptions, Iodine, Jail Break, Jelly Molds, Jigsaw Puzzles, Key Hole, Kindergarten, Knock Out Drops, Known Unknown Flying Objects, Levitation, Liftoff, Long John Silver, Looking Glass, Love Birds, Madness, Magic Lantern, Main Springs, Mashed Potatoes, Masquerade, Mechanical Armies, Mesmerism, Metronome, Miscast, Missing Relatives, New Year’s Eve, Nick Of Time, Non Sequiturs, Olfactory, Oxygen, Paraffin, Pianola, Pressure Cooker, Priceless Collection of Etruscan Snoods, Pseudonym, Purple Cannibals, Ravioli, Remote Control Robot, Return From Oblivion, Reverse Polarity, Rip Van Winkle, Rising Hemlines, Sarcophagus, Schizophrenia, Sedatives, Self Service, Semantics, Serpentine, Sewer Pipe, Shamrocks, Slipped Disc, Sonic Booms, Special Delivery, Steam Valve, Stomach Aches, Sudden Incapacitation, Surprise Party, Taxidermy, Terminology, Trampoline, Transistors, Travel Agent, Trolls And Goblins, Uncanny Photographic Mental Processes, Understatements, Unrefillable Prescriptions, Vertebrae, Waste Of Energy, Wedding Cake, Wernher von Braun, Zorro… Batman!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exclamations_by_Robin

Phrases that are likely to get you into trouble:

It won’t take long

Give it here, I’ll do it

Any phrase with the word ‘just’ in it, e.g. ‘you couldn’t just…’, ‘I just need a few moments…’ ‘just one more then…’

Ditto: ‘nearly’, ‘only’…

What happens if I press this?

He’s perfectly harmless

Marry me

I like children

I was only joking

(NB: never use these last three examples in the same conversation or, for that matter, even the same relationship)

It’s an odd turn of fate that now probably the best places for bees are in towns, where there is a much larger diversity of flowers and far less blanket use of pesticides than in the countryside. This situation will get worse if the EU lifts its ban on many of the pesticides known to harm bees, a situation not only alarming, but also unbelievably stupid since, without bees, how do our crops get pollinated? No bees, no food…

Find out more. Get involved:
http://sos-bees.org/
https://www.foe.co.uk/what_we_do/the_bee_cause_home_map_39371
http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/ban-the-pesticides-that-are-harming-our-bees
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid_effects_on_bees
http://www.britishbeekeeping.com/

1660: Thomas Urquhart, the Scottish aristocrat, polymath and first translator of François Rabelais’s writings into English, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths

Antimacassar: A cover for the back or arms of a chair or sofa, originally to prevent them from being stained by macassar oil.

Macassar oil: An oil, from the ylang-ylang tree, once used to smooth the hair.

It’s amazing what you can find out just by asking.