The official line is that cake can never be pudding if only for the fact that you are denying yourself the opportunity to eat both pudding AND cake after your dinner, (or main course for those posh people), It is a well known and universally accepted etiquette to have pudding, then bring out the coffee and cake - why would you want to deny either.

However, just last week I ate cake that was a pudding, yes indeed, for I had one of those Bords trifles that you buy in a box and in the box is everything you need to make a Birds trifle including the squares of cake that go in the bottom.

It did feel a little incongruous combining two course like that, a bit like pouring soup over your beef and yorkshires but nevertheless it is the one exception that proves the rule, you can have your cake and eat it in your pudding - then I had cake with the coffee course, of course.

I do apologise, having read my previous reply I realise that I slipped back into the Geordie vernacular with the use of the word "Bord" for the more correct "Bird".

It won't happen again, whey not likely man.

Dear Mr Field,

Are you likely to be bringing cake to the Dogs Trust open day on Sunday (shameless plug for a good cause)?

If so, can you please keep it in a sealed container so Jackson doesn't slobber on it before I get there?

Thanks in advance.

I will most certainly be in attendance at the Dogs Trust Open Day on Sunday 7th August 11am onwards (shameless plug) in order to attend the auction of two pieces of artwork by a famous local artist (shameless plug 2).

However I am not sure of the etiquette of taking your own cake to an event where cake will undoubtably be offered as part of the fundraising effort and in the event I will already be carrying a bag of hot dogs in order to tempt the large German Shepherd Dog known to all as Jackson from my car for his appointment with the dog behaviourist.

I expect to be there around noon, I am the one with a big black and tan dog, and sausages.

PS - I have already been warned and continue to be warned on the hour NOT to return home with another waif and stray.

Dear Macca

I recently made a comment on the Sin Bin (see below) and wondered what your take was on this subject. Would you welcome a regime change and the resulting liberation?

The subject discussed the hot topic of the London riots ......................




My response.........




So, what say you Mr Field? Would i be wise to support a regime change to free myself from the tyranny of my wife and thus reverse the role?

Absolutely.

As Sam Cooke once sang, "A Change Is Gonna Come" and all we need to do is mobilise ourselves, the down trodden masses, the enslaved kitchen sink husbands, we need mobilising, we need a leader to show us the way, to break free of these chains and regain the ground lost over this past generation, these years of cow-towing to females must be put behind us and we need to take the upper hand again.

I'm buying a shed for starters, I've not been allowed a shed since we moved into this house four years ago but as soon as the shed yard winter sales start I'm taking her housekeeping money and I'm buying me a shed and in that shed will be placed an old armchair, a TV set with Sky Sports and a fridge for beer and not one lawn mower or garden implement shall pass the door and she certainly won't be putting curtains up at the window, not when I have cardboard.

Join me in my crusade, let us take to the streets, refuse to wash the dishes for at least two nights running and see how the b1tches cope, a change is gonna come, this is our time...

S'cuse me a minute, I have some tarts in the oven that need turning.

That shed sounds like utopia. I am mobilized!! just going to finish the housework rota (it's just got my name all over it anyway) and then I am going upstairs to rip my wife's trousers off and reclaim my dignity.(I'm going to nick a couple of dresses too - they suit me on the odd occasion I've tried them on while she's been out)

This is it. I am ready. You are an inspiration!! Move over Pankhurst you b*tch, General Field has spoken!!

Having seen [url=http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1793480this[/url building a few times again this weekend

Is this the most ugliest building in the UK?!


Oh BTW, I am never going down the 'Bay for a night out again after last night

My first German Shepherd Dog came from Monkseaton


After every thing I told you about going in The Rex for Grab a Granny night you couldn't help yourself could you - did she have at least some of her own teeth (usually a couple of molars at the back if you're lucky)

Wasn't far from there

Ended up in a place called "Pier 39", I think my trainers are still stuck to the floor in there....

I checked on Google Earth to see exactly where on South Parade that place was and I can confirm that its within 50 yards of where my wedding reception was held in 1983, just a few doors up the street is the Ambassador Hotel, there's a blue plaque on the wall there that reminds those who ponder to read that here is the place that with the aid of a shotgun and lots of angry relatives my (still) wife usurped control over my wallet and there is still nothing legally that I can do about it.

And its just at the end of that street where the bar now known as 42nd Street was once named "Rio" and was owned by Andy Taylor of Duran Duran.

Duran Duran ?

A 1980s popular beat combo, oh never mind...

Well there is a club that's on the bottom floor of that old "Grab a Granny venue" as I nearly got dragged into which were charging £5 to get in, even though it was only open for another 40mins till 3am



As for Duran Duran, they always got Girls On Film

£5 to get into The Rex ?

Are you sure you read the sign properly ?

Its wasn't £5 to get out of The Rex ?

Mr Field. My face feels like it’s had sandpaper scraped across it. Is they any way of getting rid of this pain?

Get some wet and dry on it!

Off to do that now.

That cake was merely an ingredient, not a pudding in itself.
How dispiriting it is to think of cake in that way ... but the world is a very odd place sometimes.

Jimmyz bar it was called on the ground level, Some Coronation Street Actor was doing a "Personal Appearence" on the night

Betty from The Rovers ?

I actually lived in the street next to The Rex for some years and just behind The Rex and directly opposite my boarding house was Matties Bar, and in the past on the blog I have writ this about Matties Bar ...

[iThe best thing I can think of to say about Matties Bar is that it was local, right over the street in fact, not ten yards away, and when you came out of Matties Bar you knew that you didn’t have to bother trying to focus your beer sodden head, just line yourself up square on to the door jambs and walk striaght ahead of you, count ten paces and you should be back at your digs, if not then you’ve pointed yourself int hewrong direction at Matties doorway, go back and start again, some nights I could manage to find the digs after as little as four goes.

Mattie, if indeed there was a Mattie, had spared his life savings when designing his bar.

It was actually just a spare room at the back of The Esplanade Hotel, when I first moved to Whitley Bay thats all it was, an empty spare, unused room at the back of a hotel – then Mattie (if indeed there was a Mattie) rented it off the hotelier, or maybe he just broke in and didn’t tell the hotelier, didn’t bother to sweep it clean or put curtains at the blackened and filthy windows or anything, scrounged two beer barrels and two scaffold planks to make a bar with, then went to the off licence to buy some bottles of Newcastle Brown – his only stock.

The only nod to any semblence of a real bar-room was a pool table, a brand new pool table with new cues as well, christ knows what tale he spun to the pool table hire company but he managed to con his way into a new one, and it bcame the only attraction to drinking in Matties Bar, that and the fact that it was the cheapest bottle of Newcastle Brown in Whitley Bay, that helped too.[/i

Sadly, when I was up there two weeks ago, I noticed that Matties Bar had been demolished

Chris Fountain

He won that Dancing On Ice Programme few years back

I've just googled his name and I still don't recognise him, had rather hoped it was Geoffrey Whatisface who played Eddie Yates, I once played against him in a game of table tennis at Billingham Forum, he didn't like it at all if you kept calling him Eddie Yates.

I'd like to make two things clear here...

1. I do not play table tennis, I think that was the first and last time I have ever played table tennis
2. I was not in the habit of stalking Eddie Yates, he and I just happened to be there, me accidently.

what's wrong with Table Tennis?


I remember being on a school residencial just outside York where the only entertainment we had on the evenings on our week long stay was playing Table Tennis which did bring out our compeitive sides



.....ahh yes, thats whats wrong with Table Tennis

This is a true story...

I have a friend who used to play table tennis (boy did it annoy him when we called it ping pong) in a competitive league, a league of a very high standard, they wore little blue shorts and everything, stood twenty yards back from the table when they were serving (why don't they just make the tables longer), and he used to get so worked up about the game that he started to black out during competitions - his doctor prescribed him beta blockers to slow down his heart rate and recommended that ping pong wasn't healthy for him, we just thought he was an idiot.

He should have just taken up golf, on a bigger scale but you do get a walk from it

after all its not good to be whacking a ball that small on a little table is it?!