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Pinch and a punch, it’s the first of the month!!!!
Oh my God, I cannot believe that it is the first of December! Where has the year gone?? (I must be getting old now, if I am starting to ask questions like that!!)
Allegedly, it was the first day of Summer here today, (which is still messing with my mind, seeing as though Crimbo is just 24 days away!!!) And, when we set off walking to the Town Centre in the morning, it was gray, and miserable, and rainy as a wet Wednesday in Wigan!!
It took about half an hour to walk to the Center, known as “Canterbury” (which, surprisingly, bears quite a resemblance to the English kind, as it is modeled on it! There are little punts going up and down the River, and an “antique tram” service, and everything!), where we ended up at a place called the “Canterbury Arts Centre” which is a place where there are load of little craft shops and stuff.
Interestingly, the place was originally home to Canterbury Boys School when it was built, before being the home of the University until the 1950s when it relocated, and the site was gifted to the community as the Arts Centre.
It does look somewhat similar to the Oxford and Cambridge Universities back at home, only a lot smaller, as it was modeled on them, and was designed in the same “Gothic Victorian” style. Very nice!
Anyhow, in the Arts Centre, we happened upon a little place called “The Fudge Cottage” that we had seen a leaflet for, which is a place where you can get a tour of a working fudge kitchen at work. So, we booked onto that for 2pm, and as we had an hour or so to kill, we headed off around the corner to the Art Gallery to hang around there for a while. (No pun intended!) Which was highly amusing at some points, not due to the lovely works that were in there, but due to Mum and Paul taking the absolute piss out of all the “Arties” in there, and due to some rather unusual conversations that I was ear-wigging into!
There was one, for example, where a teacher pointed to a yellow part of a sculpture, and asked a boy, “What colour is that?”
He hesitantly replied “Erm…yellow.” To which she asked, “How do you know that it is yellow?”
Now, unless the kid was colour blind , which is unlikely, I cannot for the life of me think why she would ask such a ridiculous question! I had to physically restrain myself from bursting out laughing!! My…you do see some strange folk!!
My favourite part of the Gallery has to be the “Art Detective” room, which is obviously designed for the benefit of children, but we went in anyway, and had great fun with the interactive displays!
Paul, immaturely, found great amusement in writing the word “piss” from magnetic wall tiles, whilst I had great fun doing some wax rubbings of a plaque. (The inhibited Art Student in me surfaced once more, and I did about 5 of them, thinking how good they would look in my scrapbook…until another man-child was huffing and puffing around me as he wanted a go, so I had to leave the table!!hehe.)
They should have those things for adults! I think that they are great!
Anyway, we went back to the Fudge Cottage, where we were alarmed by one elderly emplotee there, who was rather scarily enthusiastic,and appeared to be either utterly wired, or just plain mentalist, gushing "we are all like one, big, happy family here, you will all see that when you go to the kitchen!" whilst hastily shoving out bowls of sample fudge around the room, which caused Mum, Paul and I to conclude that she had over-dosed on Fudge or Glucose produce, and was now on a delusory high from it! ( I then reffered to her as OD-OAP from there on after!!lol)
We were then picked up by a guy called Kevin, who was to be our tour guide,(who happened to be as dull as dishwater) who took us around the corner to the factory. I was rather disappointed by this, as I had convinced myself that we were going to go through a hatch under the shop counter through to an undergroung lair!!
The "factory"(which we did have to go down a good few steps to get to, so I did get my underground thing in a way...) turned out to actually be a room, devided in half so that the cooking was going on on one half, whilst we all sat around on benches watching on the other side.
I actually didn't take in most of the things that he was telling us, because I was falling half asleep with the excitement of it all, but I did stir myself awake to catch the samples of all the fudge that was rotating around the room, and for when he was running through their product repotoire of products, along the lines of holding things in the air, and saying, "we make this..."and, "we make these..." to which I thought, "erm...obviously!" Because evidently, they existed!! Its not like they were going to say, "Oh, some other company make these things!!" And half the time, he didn;t even tell us how the things were made, anyway!!
The most marginally interesting part was when they poured a vat of hot fudge out onto the table, (which actually looked like the product of a dodgy Curry!) and allowed us to have a spoonful each to test, which was rather yummy!! However, after a while, we all became to feel rather nauseus by over consumption, but luckily, Mum, Paul or I didn't begin to display any of the eratic behaviour that we had seen in the shop!
But, one woman, who appeared to be of the "Martha Stewart fanclub" variety of woman, shall I say, (who was getting scarily excited by the whole thing, and had obviously overindulged,)randomly grabbed one of the sample bowls and began relaying it around the room, although Kevin was like "you know, you really don't have to do that!" Which was absolutely hilarious! She was acting more and more like OD-OAP by the second, buzzing around and speaking at 100mph in a high pitched squeel!!lol. She was off her t***!!haha. Housewives of today, eh....
Our suspicions were further reinforced when a batch of something suspicious looking arived through the kitchen window, and was handled by the staff in there that looked like half of them were the greatful dead, and the other half of them were losing the will to live! (They must have either been sedated to keep their fudge production at a steady rate, or may have just had the high, and were on the come-down from it!!lol)
During the whole "fudge pouring" display, as everybody else was crowded around the kitchen, Paul was sent on a mission to pocket as many of the little sample pieces as he could out of the bowls that had been left out for everyone to eat out of. He actually did quite well, and didn't get sussed by anybody whilst discreetly reaching into the bowls and putting the pieces in his pockets.
Unlike one old dear who I spied out of the corner of my eye, who was shamelessly scooping bits into a food bag that she had brought along with her! Bold as brass!!lol.
I reckoned that she was probably a regular on the circuit, who came every week to stock up on her supplies, as the price of the tour was cheaper than her having to buy blocks of the stuff!! How else would she conveniently have a handy food-swag-bag with her?? I bet her, and OD-OAP have Fudge parties with all their mates from Bingo and all get off their faces every Friday after they have been to the Social Club!!hehe.
After the tour had ended, we braved the shop again, to claim our "momento of the tour" by handing our tickets to a lady behind the till. Luckily, the scary OD-OAP was serving (scaring) another unsuspecting innocent bystander, and the lady that served us evidently had just started her shift, because she seemed completely sane.
We weren't too impressed by the gift, which was basically a small cardboard cottage, with a oiece of excess Fudge that had been squished into a ball and dipped in Hundreds-and -Thousands, but, you should never look a gift Horse in the mouth I suppose!!
And after that, we all felt distinctly gross having consumed so much fat and so many calories, so we decided to have a healthy salad for dinner, (although I actually do on most days, anyway) and then we have just chilled out in jail for the rest of the night, which isn't very exciting, but, as I said earlier, gives us a good idea of how boring it may be to actually be in prison not of your own free will!!
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