I've finally made it back to San Diego. The vacation was great, but it's good to be back home. I'm also glad to see that the site wasn't completely overrun by spammers in my absence. Here's a few snapshots from the trip:
Posing with Nessie in Drumnadrochit.
The relatives I was staying with in Gloucester had a weird, mutant goldfish swimming around in their backyard pond. I dubbed it Nessie. Later we learned that the poor fish was suffering from dropsy and had to be put down before it popped and infected all the other fish in the pond.
I was amazed by the meats they sold in French supermarkets. On the left is lapin, otherwise known as rabbit meat. Since the rabbits were already skinned, I couldn't tell if one of them was
Bernd. On the right is pigeon meat, which isn't really very shocking, though you'd still be hard-pressed to find it in any American supermarket.
Here I am posing in front of the
Piltdown Man Pub located in the town of Piltdown. Unfortunately the pub was closed when I was there, so I didn't get a chance to go inside. Plus, it was raining when this picture was taken, so I didn't stick around for very long.
Finally, here's an odd advertisement that was painted on a wall next to the hotel I was staying at in York. I had no idea if 'Bile Beans' were ever a real product, and no one I asked knew either.
Comments
Good you're back . . . now give us more hoaxes, dangit! 😛
No pigeon in the USA? How about Quail (Another bird), the eggs are popular(ish) in the UK, well they had them in Safeway.
Better still is the Edible Doormouse... mmmmm! (We don't generally eat them anymore, but by the name we obviously did once.)
If you're from the USA and you meet a Brit do ask them to explain what pudding is (Several thing go by the name) - especially Black Pudding hehehehe
I've had quail once that I recall, and if I remember correctly, it tasted pretty dang good.
"especially Black Pudding hehehehe"
The cousin to Gray Oozes and Gelatinous Cubes, by any chance? :lol:
*tries to supress nerdish tendencies, fails*
As for pigeon, I think Americans view pigeons as being somewhat on a par with flying rats, thus the lack of pigeon in American supermarkets. Though I'm sure farm-raised pigeons would be quite tasty.
http://www.ehgp.com/public/bile_beans_bottle.jpg
That's what makes it black....right? No?
On the subject of Black pudding - It really is delicious with a good old English (or Welsh) breakfast. It may be full of blood and Fat but the Massai in East Africa virtually live off Cows milk and blood and they are really healthy!
Yes, of course Bile Beans were real. They were a product similar to Liver Salts and Made by Fisons. Latterly thet were available in compressed pill form. Fisons phased them out in the 1980's.
I was involved in repainting this piece of 'Industrial Archaeology' in 1986. I founded the York Arts Forum in January of that year. It was to be an interdisciplinary Arts group designed to get the citizens of York involved in the impending 1987 York Festival. I had been a successful artist since the mid 1970's, selling hundreds of paintings, - but this was different!!!
We organised several exhibitions throughout 1986, then locals asked us if we would repair the crumbling wall mural which is much treasured by some locals. We approached Fison, the owners of Bile Beans about this and they paid us a sum of money for the paints and agreed to sponsor the effort, though they did stress at the time that Bile Beans was a product they were trying to discontinue and did not want it to be re-popularised. We were due to begin repainting in August 1986, but unfortunately I had become seriously ill with a severe early bout of Multiple Sclerosis. After a week in hospital undergoing tests I was 'sprung
funny enough, one of them said was a small, roundish kind of bottle and says bile beans(embossed) on it.