It's not just about what goes into your mouth

Blimey! Did anyone else see Heston Blumenthal's Christmas Special on the Beeb last night? If, for some inexplicable reason, you didn't then you can watch it online here. My goodness but it was fascinating stuff ... s0b I think we may have found a rival for you!

What impressed me was not so much the effort that he put into the food itself (though that was incredible in itself), it was the trouble he'd taken with the surroundings and the specific aromas that astonished me. From edible glass tree baubles, to dry ice infused with the smell of a leather armchair and pipe tobacco and the dining table in the Narnain glade ... the whole thing seemed utterly magical. Even the party hats weren't silly! Of course had I been sat at table bewteen Terry Wogan and Dara O'Briain it would take a meal like that to distract myself from teh sex.

In other news, cast your vote for anatomical accuracy ... though I do think the man's shoulders are a little hunched.

Rings Around the Moon

In response to Caddyman's Christmas Ghost Story Challenge, I offer my entry ... 500 words exactly according to OpenOffice:

"It'll be a cold one tonight," the farmer pronounced as he showed David to the guest cottage, "there'll be rings around the moon and no mistake. You'll be whisked away to the fairies if you get caught under the rings they say." Quite who the mysterious 'they' might be was left unspoken but David suspected that 'they' could be found propping up the bar at the local pub.

After a cup of tea and a bite to eat, David decided to take his cases up to the cottage's tiny bedroom. The little kitchen had a wood-burning Aga which was something of a challenge to use but fun in its way and gave a welcome warmth to the tiny house, which was just as well because frost had already been starting to form on the ground when David had arrived. The bedroom was cosy, much like the rest of the property, and had a splendid view over the moors. That is, the view during the day was splendid, the night time view was less interesting. Except, David glanced at the moon shining full and pale over the barren fields, that there! There were the rings the farmer had spoken of! Around the face of the moon, radiating in the blackness, David could see the palest ghost of a ring. As he watched, he saw another form, slightly further out from the first, and then, he thought he could make out another still further from the moon! Thinking that this must be some illusion caused by frost and breath on the window, David stepped outside and into the moonlit field the better to observe the strange phenomenon.

His new vantage point did indeed give a better view yet what he saw as he stood there, shivering in the cold night air, puzzled him still further. For the rings were not concentric as he had, at first, thought them to be. Rather these ghostly halos were slightly offset, closer to the shining lunar disk on one side than the other. Puzzled, David continued staring at the rings pondering as he did why they might be skewed so. He stood for a few moments staring up at the cloudless night sky, and gradually he fancied he saw the rings moving, slow as the minute hand on a watch, surely they had been more offset than that a moment ago? With a shake of his head he looked away from the coldly radiant disk, thinking that perhaps he was seeing things. But as he glanced away from the spectacle above, he was struck by another curiosity in the field before him. Advancing toward him David saw a shimmering veil of mist, thin as cobweb and sparkling in the moonlight. As the mist front drew nearer to him, David fancied that he saw tiny motes of frost drifting upward, dancing and twinkling their way up through the night sky to the moon and its rings.

Its concentric rings.

God but it had suddenly turned co...