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freakingoutthesquares · 1 year

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‘Freak Out...’ is laugh out loud funny, because, of course, pre-fame Pulp devised a stage set of toilet paper and tin foil only for it to crumble around them, of course they set fire to a prized palm tree in Toulouse with a misfired firework, and the highlight of their first ever Top Of The Pops performance was, of course, eating Mariah Carey’s biscuits.

Louder Than War Magazine, Issue 2, Winter 2015.

With the release of biography ‘Freak Out The Squares’, PULP man Russell Senior remains fiercely proud of the accomplishments of Sheffield’s finest. Louise Brown talks to a uniquely British man about a uniquely British band.

THE rock biography; that tome of scintillating scandal and sordid excess, where musicians can retire disgracefully airing all of their worst behaviours alongside shocking barbs against colleagues, rivals and the waifs and strays they met along their path of rock and roll hedonism. We, mere mortals, lap them up, each page depicting the charmed lives of music’s most notorious characters.

‘Freak Out The Squares: Life In A Band Called Pulp’, by Pulp guitarist, violinist and self-confessed “grownup of the group’, Russell Senior, is the latest in rock memoir overload, and we settle in for a wild ride of mis-shapes, mistakes and misfits. In fact, what we get is a lot of tea, games of chess and mild-mannered facts about minerals. Did you know that if you add iodine to an axolotl it turns into a newt?

But Pulp were a different class, weren’t they? They did not have the cockney cheek of Blur, not the brash Mancunian swagger of Oasis, they were the psychedelic avant garde art experiment, who had tried for a decade to claw themselves out of Sheffield’s agitprop pop scene, who found themselves in the right place, at the right time and stumbled upon the holy grail of indie gold with era defining anthems ‘Common People’ and ‘Disco 2000’.

Sardonic and as well-presented as Jarvis Cocker in one his jumble sale suits, ‘Freak Out...’ is ‘The Royle Family’ of rock biogs, in that nothing actually happens but it is in the ennui and the unglamorous truthfulness that the writer’s Midas touch is revealed.

This is not sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, more atypical British fumbling of the bra-straps, white-outs after one toke of Black Grape’s joint and playing so out of tune it actually made the band the unique freaks we came to love.

But if it’s not going to a be a tell-all page-turner of bolshy Britpop bragging, then why write it at all? “I kind of felt I ought to write it,” says Russell, his Yorkshire twang ever-giving him a tone of sarcasm and weariness. Speaking shortly before his appearance at Manchester’s Louder Than Words festival (Louderthanwordsfest.com).

“Astronauts, they seem very inarticulate. They’ve been to the moon, but they can’t say anything about it, so I thought, well, I can be loquacious hopefully, and as an eye-witness, I thought I should do it, especially since there were some programmes on Britpop a few years back and they seemed really lame. They didn’t get to the heart of it. I want to try and put people in that dislocated world, the duty of the witness really.”

Britpop, what actually was it? From the turn of the 1990s until the chimes of the new Millennium were rung in, it seemed like the British pop music, and art, worlds, for that matter, were The Zeitgeist. Tracey Emin was making headlines with unmade beds, Damien Hirst was pickling bovine and bands like Blur, Oasis and Pulp, who couldn’t sound more unlike one other if they tried, were as iconic as Ginger Spice in a Union Jack frock.

“It’s not a genre, is it?” Russell ponders. “It’s not like reggae, it’s not a sound. Saint Etienne were deconstructing dance and yet they were Britpop. It was a group of outsiders from different angles, having a go at making pop music that was vaguely credible. It was a rejection of the world that was around us at the time, but the rejection took different forms. It’s not a musical form, really. You can’t teach it. It’s a funny one, isn’t it? You look back and think, well, what was it? Because it didn’t seem like anything coherent at the time, certainly not artistically.”

“Great guitarists like Bernard Butler and Richard Hawley don’t intimidate me because we all do a different thing. They may be able to play ‘All Along The Watchtower’ better than Hendrix but they can’t do spare and spiky and proddy as well as me.”

One of the motifs throughout the book is just how bad Pulp were as musicians. It starts with Russell reviewing Jarvis’ band for his fanzine and referring to the songs as “dirges” but “the appearance of the frontman is entertaining”, however the two became friends and Russell joined Pulp not to bring any musical splendour to the act, in fact, it led the group down an even more outré and unconventional rabbit hole. This self-deprecation almost does as a disservice to the group that ten years later would give the British musical canon pop gold like ‘Something Changed’.

“We learned,” Russell laughs when challenged. “But one of the good things about not having the musical theory, is that you do things that are, technically speaking, out of tune. I think it frees things up. I avoided learning, I was of that mindset. I wanted to find something around another corner, so there’s an almost wilful determination to retain a naivety in a way. We were anti-muso.

We had proper, in inverted commas, musicians audition for us and we just didn’t want them because we wanted somebody that was enfant savage. It sounds a bit ridiculous now, and yeah, we did get to learn about chords as time went on, so it’s strange in a way because, in the end, Pulp craft the perfect pop song, they don’t make a random extreme noise terror, but that was the roots of it. It ended up as pop music, almost by accident really.”

The band did set out to be a pop band though, Russell makes no claim to the other throughout the first half of the book, which shows a warts-and-all side to Pulp before the Britpop boom. They didn’t shy away from the spotlight, “Or want to be an underground, sell-no-records, indie purity thing,” Russell confirms.

“With the C86 movement, they seemed to take succour from how few records they’d sold, like that was a mark of integrity. We thought that was guff and saw not selling records as failure, so I think, in a way, we stood out from the crowd, in that ‘we are going to entertain and we are going to sell records’. It was not very cool at the time.”

“Outside the Cambridge Corn Exchange a young man approached me. There was something funny about him, then he attempted to pass me a wrap of drugs. I refused and then noticed a cameraman with a long lens taking photographs. This was a set-up, imagine the consequences if I’d taken the wrap. That bastard was prepared to ruin my life for a made-up story.”

The price of fame is high, though, and Russell is candid in his dissection of it. “It’s safe to say [that I hate fame]. It was a downer, there was a certain purity and innocence to the Britpop thing, despite all the excess. It seemed a bit of a charmed life really, and then you hit reality of things and you’re cynical. I had a happy view of it and I liked our fans, and it didn’t seem like this cynical rock world to me, it seemed like something light and fluffy.

I don’t know if I’ve stressed it enough in the book but we were very much ‘of’ our fans. We were jumble sale kids. People would look at you funny in the street, and then you were in the sanctity of the concert where there were other strange people, so there was this secret little club of outsiders, and it was a nice thing.”

Of all the Britpop bands, Pulp seemed the most approachable, the most down-to-earth, the most likely to invite you in for a cuppa if you were camped outside their house in December waiting for an autograph. “It’s true,” laughs Russell, as I tell him a story of a friend for whom that happened to.

“And on the whole, I have had my differences with the members of the band, but basically they’re all fairly decent. I wouldn’t say we were prudes but I suppose we were a bit, in that Yorkshire way. We were well-brought up and had decent manners, and no we didn’t hold with bad behaviour at all.”

Laughing about some of the unpretentious, no-nonsense Yorkshire-ness of ‘Freak Out The Squares’, we promise Russell that we won’t paint him completely as rock ‘n’ roll’s least likely, or as a thoroughly decent bloke too much, a real model of the common people. “If it’s true to say it,” he laughs.

“All that Northern stuff, there’s two strands to Sheffield. One is the by-heck whimsy and they get terribly excited about cooling towers getting knocked down. I can’t be doing with that professional Northern-ness, but there’s always a form of Sheffieldness that’s this Dadaist intense thing and I guess I cleave to the latter persuasion really. I don’t really do Northern whimsy.

This is an unusual interview in a way because most people are trying to get me to dish more dirt and I’m like, ‘I haven’t got any more’.

It’s honest in that it does own up to the fact that there wasn’t much in the way of groupies.”

“When we got on the bus, the back room had a general air of a Western saloon – cigarettes, whiskey and wild, wild women. The tour manager interrupted the reverie with the unfortunate phrase: ‘Excuse me ladies, we’ve got to shoot off now’. Everyone was a winner. The girls could hold their heads up high, and no one had to shag in the toilet looking at the ‘No Solids’ sign and wake up feeling like yesterday’s fish and chips.”

“The chronicle of Pulp, the true and honest chronicle of Pulp would take up a shelf of books,” Russell sighs when we do ask him if he was perhaps too polite and left out some of the more outlandish tales from the road. “If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.

There could’ve been lots of moaning about this, that and the other but it would all be rather trivial. There would be no major revelations, so even if I had the inclination to write a kiss-and-tell, put-the-boot-in book I’d have been really thin on material for it. I’m actually being quite frank, and in a way, brave, in admitting that it’s not always that exciting and if you win the ‘hang out with Pulp for the day’ prize you’d probably choose not to do it again."

“People want Pulp to live in the Monkees house and all be great mates and I don’t have to put the dagger, because people’s view of Pulp is quite a benign one. I can’t remember the last time anyone said anything unkind to me about it, it’s awfully fluffy all of this and I feel a little bit guilty that there’s not more bite but the truth is that people have a lot of affection for Pulp and I’ve no desire to change that.”

The book starts with Russell carefully considering Jarvis’ invitation to reunite the old gang for a one-off Glastonbury performance, flits back to when he first saw Jarvis “murder” (his words) ‘Wild Thing’ by The Troggs while his bass player fell off the stage, follows his acceptance into the Pulp fold and acts as a witty diary of the band’s 2011 comeback and mid-’90s highs.

It allows us a bird’s eye view of Britpop in ascendance – from its biggest stories (Pulp unwittingly to blame for pitting Blur and Oasis against each other with scurrilous gossip about who said what about Justine Frischmann) and wildest excesses (Russell lays claim to being responsible for Britpop folly Menswear, who signed to Island for a ludicrous fee and actually weren’t very good at all) but while he seemed, on the face of it all, to have had a jolly good time, the reunion was a one-off for him, despite protestation from both band and fans.

“Well, phone calls have come, quite a number of times, and things didn’t entirely wind down when it was supposed to, and so I can say that [I’m done] with reasonable degrees of certainty, because there were things that I’ve not done, like playing The Royal Albert Hall and so I’ve resisted those, but I’m very romantic about Pulp,” he admits, when pushed to see if he would tread the boards just one more time and had this book maybe triggered a little bit of wanderlust in him.

“Not everything in my life is as pure as that, but that’s one thing I like to keep it pure. I don’t wish to reduce it by cashing in on it, although you could say I’m doing that with this book. I could’ve tried to pump up the controversy, and I would have sold more copies but I’m quite romantic about it, and protective about the legacy.”

Now a full-time writer he admits that “I got my violin down so I could play it but I’ve not, it’s got dust on it. We weren’t musicians, I really don’t feel like I was. I don’t know how to play any other songs all the way through apart from Pulp songs, and I don’t sit around playing the guitar. What’s next? Writing! A geology-themed mystery romance, a book on the life of Edwin of Northumbria, and another one on foraging. Eclectic and uneconomic! Choose the things that are least likely to sell and do that, that’s what I’m doing.”

Of course he is, of course the foppish, besuited outsider from Britpop’s most bizarre and stubbornly contrary and peculiar band has swapped the riches and adulation of pop music for writing books about mushrooms and ancient kings. What else would he do? Like we said, Pulp and Russell Senior were of a different class, and we wouldn’t change them for the world.

‘Freak Out The Squares: Life In A Band Called Pulp’ is available now from Aurum Press Ltd

Transcription by me.

#russell senior #pulp #freak out the squares #printed article #interview #printed interview #britpop #90s

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fizzycherrycola · 2 years

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Here's a FrUK headcanon to cheer you up and help chase the 'Rona away:

Francis accidentallylets slip that he knows Arthur has a weakness for sweets, which he teases is endearing. Arthur does not like this (of course he doesn't like sweets that much!! Not an abnormal amount, he can say no if he wanted to! He only accepts to be polite!) and denies it vehemently

In a soft retaliation, France now always has some of England's favourite baked or made sweet things ready if he knows he's coming over, and a stash of fancy chocolate he can whip out when he comes over unexpectedly. He never offers Arthur any

Francis instead enjoys watching all of the ways Arthur will try not to ask for one but still try to get one anyway

Lmao this is fantastic and so very... them.

It is no secret how much the English like their sweets; I've seen The Great British Bake Off and it's right there on full display. Cookie/biscuit tins, Cadbury chocolates, travel sweets, pies, and all those outrageously expensive cakes that they serve at high-end tea rooms in London. Honestly I have a sweet tooth myself, so I can't point the blame at England here. Sugar is good! But the poor guy can't admit that he likes something which might make him seem "unhealthy" or... "cute".

I'd imagine if France was feeling exceptionally jilted that particular week, he'd have a whole Victoria sponge cake in his fridge. He made it with fresh strawberries and cream on that exact morning before England is meant to visit. Perfectly petty. 💖

#fruk #hws england #hws france #aph england #aph france #arthur kirkland #francis bonnefoy #hetalia headcanons #ask box #srsly tho victoria sponge is so good #the best light cake you could ask for #pairs well with fancy teacups and summer afternoons #speaking from experience #tysm heroes for sharing ❤

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mr007pennyworth · 10 months

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Alfred's favourite Gifts;

1) Roses

Alf loves roses, he has plenty of rosebushes in the gardens at Wayne Manor but he enjoys having them in the house as well. Bringing him Roses is a sign that you care about how he feels - best given in more sensitive situations or relationships.

2) Gu Chocolate Puddings

Alfred's go-to evening treat is usually something sweet. If he hasn't bothered to bake for once he'll break out out the GU puddings. He loves all of them, especially the Zillionare Cheesecake and the Espresso Martini ones. Best given to him when he's been busy making you dinner or as a thank you for doing you a favour.

3) Biscuits and Collectable Tins

As a British-born and bred, Alf loves his tea and his biscuits. He is very fond of keeping a good selection in the house for any occasion, but especially if they have guests. He's a sucker for a collectable tin anything unusual or homely looking with a good set of biscuits or cookies included and it's a sure winner for the basket. His collection of tins can be found in one of the converted bedrooms. Bringing him something like this definitely bodes well for friendship because the kettle will be going on and you will be invited.

4) Novelty T-shirts

Now, this is a new one, started by Dick and continued by Jason, Tim then Bruce actually joined in...

Alfred has an ever-growing collection of 'lazy weekend wear' which his family enjoy adding to every Father's Day, birthday and Christmas. Alfred's current favourite shirt is the one that is plain black and reads 'If your reading this, you're a cunt' in Morse code. Bringing him one of these is likely to put a smile on his face and perhaps even have him tease you with some dad jokes.

#mr007pennyworth #bvs verse (irons)

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ifreakingloveroyals · 2 years

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1 March 2012 | Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall chat to members of the British Forces who received tins of tea and biscuits as part of the Gifts For Troops scheme during their visit to Fortnum & Mason store in London, England. Together with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Queen Elizabeth II met military personnel and staff, viewed the store's Diamond Jubilee product ranges and unveiled a plaque for the restoration of Piccadilly. (c) Jeff Spicer - WPA Pool/Getty Images

#Catherine #Duchess of Cambridge #Princess of Wales #Queen Camilla #Duchess of Cornwall #Britain #2012 #Jeff Spicer #WPA Pool #Getty Images

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nvrcmplt · 11 months

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Mister is a simple creature, though an oddity that many don’t wish to know more of, he is simply being.

If a being closes their eyes, they can and will no longer feel his presence around them. He is out of sight and out of mind. This is because he is a entity of the eyes, a peripheral demon / creature, that lives in the in-between of light and dark that bounces from ones iris. He is more commonly noticed by those with Eye-sight issues due to the bouncing of light being different, however, even then they may not know what he is, but enjoy his presence all the same.

Mister’s weakness of humanities foods is; Shortbread biscuits. Not cookies. He isn’t american. These biscuits can and will disappear from any open biscuit tin or plate of tea nibbles first and foremost.

He makes a mean brew. Tea leaves and tea kettles are a gods given gift to his talents of brewing a strong or milk mug for anyone who visits him.

His clothing is nothing short of a Victorian era style, three piece butler-gear, sometimes updated with modern times, but mostly three pieces. Striped pants and a white blouse. Wrist watch, cufflinks, tie clip and pen pocket.

He smells of nothing, not really able to give one off. Though he has been told he can sometimes feel cold to be around, like a quick shiver up the spine, passing chill.

He has fur, but it looks so static and sooty like he is often given the description of being a ’scribble of black ink’.

He is rather a fan of modern time TV though he can not watch it for more than 20 minutes at a time, or he’ll be there all day watching a series with some family or friend.

He is a listener of a good deal of music, mostly instrumental gems or slow dance types that make him sit and drink tea. Though he is also very fond of Punk. Just likes the energy it gives him.

His own sight is one of three sights together. He is able to see in various ‘visions’ that humans kind of understand. He states it to be a mirror of two worlds melded at a singular point. He kind of describes it to be like a 2 player split screen when gaming with a friend on the Television.

He is British in accent.

Mister has been known, very well to be honest, to wiggle his ears when he is intrigued, excited or whenever he is presented with shortbread biscuits.

He can read and write in nearly a hundred languages, some too ancient to be remembered outside Linguist sciences.

He isn’t religious nor believe in humanities belief systems, however, he won’t dismiss their comforts of having that faith.

He loves a community that works well.

Has been known to torture abusers before his friends arrive to solve the case. Mister can often be seen a Guardian to Children and a Punisher of Adults. Though he’ll laugh the title off but still nod in pride.

His methods of collecting his escapee’s is consuming them in his own body - which is just as it sounds. His body parts in two, like a vertical mouth to consume to his core.

His eyes are white on gold. Golden sclera and white iris and a black pupil.

He has a mouth… You just can’t see it move. Though if you watch him eat, he tucks the biscuit under his curved features.

Loves to observe humans and groups of humans.

He will sometimes walk around with a candle and glass lantern like it’s the 1800s. He likes the eeriness it brings.

Polishes his shoes every week, if he spots a scuff, he’ll make new shoes.

He has a tail, don’t touch it. It fights back.

His horns can sometimes hit door frames, low hanging lights, stab pillows and smack ornaments on high shelves. He is sincerely sorry for the mess.

#« ( Mister ) » HC.

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godaesthetics · 2 years

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Hestia

Kitchens that are constantly warm from baking and cooking. Hearths. Open brick fireplaces. Fresh fruits and herbs. Biscuits in tins everywhere of all sorts of different flavours. Tomatoes in drawers and herbs on the windowsills. A small greenhouse in the garden containing tomatoes and only tomatoes. Cringey slogan aprons covered in flour. Flour handprints on her skirt even though she's wearing an apron. Sticky dough fingers. "Can you get the tap, my hands are covered in dough?" Turning off the hob in the middle of cooking because she ran out of an ingredient. Existential crisis in a supermarket because she's out of tinned chopped tomatoes. Favourite TV chef is Gino D'Acampo. No kids means more time for baking. Cat lady. Accumulates loads of stray cats because she feeds them and they like warm places. Also accumulates stray children. Half a dozen different types of cooking oil. "Do you think that's enough garlic?" "It's too much," "Okay," *triples it*. Lemon tea in glass beakers. Mary Berry cookbooks. Watched Great British Bake Off religiously every year but stopped after it changed. You leave her house with biscuit tins of cakes and cookies. Short Mediterranean Aunty. Pictures of neices and nephews at first holy communions and christenings and graduations and weddings all over the walls. Speaks virtually all of the romance languages and uses a different one for each ranting topic. Cats named after philosophers and heroes. The person to talk to for a chat and some nice tea. Has a PHD in Psychology, wrote her dissertation on family psychology and whenever anyone asks how she got so good at cooking when she never studied it at uni, she just tells them that she's been doing it her whole life.

#Hestia #greek gods #modern gods

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cookieclickercookieeater · 2 months

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Round chocolate british tea biscuits with heart motif will be the cookies rounding out this week. (The audience starts booing and throwing tomatoes at me for using the same bad joke two weeks in a row) The name of these is long enough to be a bit funny to me. I went with Ikea Kafferep cookies with chocolate filling for these, and had them with milk.

These are crunchy with a bit of softness from the chocolate filling. Theres a good amount of chocolate flavor, and these are definitely my favorite of the british tea biscuits. These are great cookies, and dunk quite well.

5/5

#cookie clicker #round chocolate british tea biscuits with heart motif #tin of british tea biscuits

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scarletunit6 · 3 months

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Britain has always been a great trading nation. Saffron was first introduced into Cornwall by the Phoenicians at a very early date when they first came to Britain to trade for tin. Derived from the dried and powdered stigmas of the saffron crocus, saffron is still used today in British cooking. The importation of foods and spices from abroad has greatly influenced the British diet. In the Middle Ages, wealthy people were able to cook with spices and dried fruits from as far away as Asia. It has been said however that the poor people were lucky to eat at all!

In Tudor times, new kinds of food started to arrive due to the increase in trade and the discovery of new lands. Spices from the Far East, sugar from the Caribbean, coffee and cocoa from South America and tea from India. Potatoes from America began to be widely grown. Eccles Cakes evolved from Puritan days when rich cakes and biscuits were banned.

Turkeys were bred almost exclusively in Norfolk up until the 20th century. In the 17th century, turkeys were driven from Norfolk to the London markets in great flocks of 500 birds or more. Their feet were sometimes bandaged to protect them. Upon arrival in London, they had to be fattened up for several days before market.

The growth of the Empire brought new tastes and flavours – Kedgeree, for example, is a version of the Indian dish Khichri and was first brought back to Britain by members of the East India Company. It has been a traditional dish at the British breakfast table since the 18th and 19th centuries.

Johnson, B. (2019). The History of British Food. [online] Historic UK. Available at: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/History-of-British-Food/. ‌

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eyra · 2 years

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You’d be the patron saint of British coziness. Soft sheep and handmade sweaters made from them, antique tea tins filled with sun dried flowers, clouds breaking to make way for sun rays and fields of wildflowers waiting to be harvested into flower crowns. You save cracked books spines and the last biscuit in the tin. You’re the patron saint of comfort and warmth under grey skies my dear.

To say that this made my day would be an understatement! How utterly gorgeous and how very kind. Thank you! x

#ask

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pwlanier · 3 years

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A COLLECTION OF TWENTY ONE BRITISH NOVELTY TOLE BISCUIT TINS

VARIOUSLY DATED FROM LATE 19TH CENTURY- CIRCA 1930S, MAKERS INCLUDING HUNTLEY AND PALMERS AND MACFARLANE LANG & CO.

Comprising of a number of different forms including Vizagapatam boxes, books, a miniature chest of drawers, handbags, tea caddies and attic-style vases, with various stamps and manufacturing marks.

Christie’s

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bitletsanddrabbles · 3 years

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“English” Breakfast In America

Still working on my write up from my stay at Thornwood Castle, but I thought I would amuse all of my friends on the other side of the pond on typing up a quick bit on what we ate while we were there. You see, you have to provide your own food and since this was a ‘placeholder’ holiday for our trip to the UK - postponed twice now, thank you Covid19, just wear your damn mask already, I wanna see the isles damnit! - my parents decided to make it as British as possible.

To be fair, they didn’t do too badly. There is a lovely little import store/deli near their place called the British Pantry (sandwiched between the Three Lion’s restaurant and the Three Lion’s pub, also very Themed) that they hit up for baked goods, and World Market is a reliable source of more nibbly type bits.

They were even nice enough to give the folks a 4 bag sampler of Twining’s Lemon Ginger, which I appreciated. (One of the few disappointments of Thornwood was the tea selection. Two bags of Lipton Decaf per room? I know we’re a coffee country, and The Starbucks State, but c’mon! I expected at least Bigalow English Breakfast! ...thank goodness I thought to bring my own...)

We ate on the way down Wednesday, so we had four meals at Thornwood. Breakfast on Thursday consisted of some very nice personal quiche from the pantry, available in ham and cheese or spinach. They looked so dang picturesque in the morning light that I actually took a picture. See?

Isn’t that pretty? ...then I ate it.

Lunch was steak and mushroom pie (or a curry chicken pasty, but none of us ate that one), crackers with various condiments (cream cheese, hummus, or deviled ham), or chicken wings. To make everything as British as possible, along with the BBQ wings, they got salt and vinegar wings. Desert was a selection of tarts and individual pies from the Pantry. I devoured one of the steak and mushrooms and an apple and blackberry pie.

I did not take pictures.

Dinner was the rest of the steak and mushroom pie, or, in my case, the curry chicken pasty. It was tasty, but not what I’d go to the Pantry for. Bakewell tart for desert.

Didn’t take a picture of that either.

Then there was breakfast Friday.

Wait for it.

Ready?

Okay, here we go:

AHEM! In the bag we have scones. That statement will confuse the Yanks in the audience, but, yes, those are scones. Then we have Hobnobs, Pim’s, Biscoff with chocolate (I didn’t know these existed?!?), under that is a thing of Walker’s shortbread, and boiled puds - both chocolate and spotted dick. The tea is just there for decoration.

...

These are all standard breakfast fair in the UK right? RIGHT?!?

...

Yeah, didn’t think so.

Anyway - assessment!

Scones: Tasty! Could have used some butter or cream or something, but hands down the most actually breakfast-y food on offer.

Hobmobs: Oatmeal biscuits. A bit dry, but otherwise enjoyable. While the texture was different, the taste was quite similar to Graham crackers, so if you’re in the UK and want to try a S’more variant, skip the digestives and use these. They’re closer.

Pim’s: Spongey biscuit with a thin layer of jam (raspberry in this case) and topped with chocolate. I’d encountered these before and, most generously, did not devour the entire sleeve myself.

Biscoff w/Chocolate: I actually filled up before I tried these, but having had plain Biscoff, I remain skeptical of the chocolate. It just doesn’t seem like it would add anything, and possibly detract. ....dang it, now i want Biscoff.

Walker’s Shortbread: I’m not sure we actually opened these! Doesn’t matter, though. It’s tasty, it will get eaten. It’s just that we’d all had it before. Repeatedly. In fact Costco sized tins make a fairly regular appearance at family Christmas parties. Only in America would Walker’s Shortbread be seasonal! *cue eye roll*

Boiled Puds: I am not a raisin fan, so I passed on the spotted dick. My step-mother had one and quite enjoyed it. I had a chocolate and found it amazingly tasty, if too rich to finish! My Dad, who polished off the last three bites, quite agreed. Would absolutely do it again, only I’d want some milk or whipped cream or something to cut the “HI THERE I’M CHOCOLATE HOW ARE YOU?!?!” ....possibly the least breakfasty of the options...

#food #breakfast #is it breakfast?#we ate it for breakfast at any rate #edibles from the uk

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himboskywalker · 4 years

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I’m going to uni in the states and my local supermarket has one very sad shelf of british/indian foods that I guard jealously!! today they had a single jar of blackcurrant jam and if you think I bought that jar despite having jam at home you’d be absolutely right ALSO they have exactly four varieties of biscuits and @hobnobs anon while I too love hobnobs my heart beats solely for ginger nuts; the store just replaced them with Jaffa cakes and I am disconsolate

The British food discourse I’ve stumbled into astounds me 😂 I never knew I would be met with so many strong opinions over Hobnobs but same. I need all of you to just send me these delicious sounding foods and drinks,Black jelly seed juice???Picadilly tea????GINGER NUTS???? I do love Jaffa cakes but I have to eat them in moderation,as opposed to Bakewell tarts and Hobnobs because the orange jelly hurts my teeth like a bitch.

And I did try Quality Street when I was in the UK,if you’re talking about the tins of candies? And for anyone studying abroad in the US trying to find foods from home that you don’t have to pay an obscene amount of money for online,if you have a TJ Max near you they tend to carry a lot of international brands of food. I can often find Black Currant Jam and those little red foil wrapped caramel biscuits that I can’t remember the name of there. Too the higher end grocery stores,like Publix,Ingles, or Fresh Market or Earth Fair (if any of those still exist) carry more international snacks and while they’re more expensive,they’re always far less stale than biscuits from Walmart. I have a British tea subscription so I don’t struggle on that front,but I get my PG Tips from Fresh Market and they also carry a really good variety of Chinese and Indian teas and it’s the only place where I live that I get my oolong and Masala Chai. Depending on how rural you are and what part of the country you’re in will really determine your accessibility and I know Amazon is wretched but US Amazon has a much larger variety of international food than UK Amazon and can be a great resource for snagging foods from home. I order my Scottish oatmeal,most of my British biscuits,and my Twinings online and it’s surprisingly stuff like spices and pastes and oils that I have no issue finding in stores. There’s a megaton of horrible fucked up shit about the US,but we do have great grocery stores!

#not Star Wars #british food #anons #asks

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imagineclaireandjamie · 5 years

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I NEED MORE HRH 😩 and Loss, obviously

Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)Part XXI: A Woman’s Speech

Claire woke from a dream within a dream.

In the first, she was suspended in a dreamless trance against Fraser’s chest. It was warm. Too warm for Scotland. Perhaps there had been some noise (a crash or faraway disturbance) that roused them both at the same time. Silently, Claire traced a single gray hair in a sea of unruly auburn lightly breaking against the centerline shore of his chest. Cool air filtering through the window lifted curtains she had never seen before. Perhaps it was a honeymoon – a gauzy, bikini-clad getaway ensconced in the carefully-controlled bubble of one of the British Protectorates. The Maldives maybe? She had seen a postcard once (pressed into the pages of a scrapbook maintained by her sister, a memory of a beautiful holiday to trot out to make a younger royal grow emerald with jealousy), but she had never made it there before.

She curled closer to him, felt the burr of speech rumbling in his chest like an oncoming storm, realized she couldn’t hear him. Jerking up, she pressed a hand to the center of his chest, felt her facial features contort. His mouth was moving, curled into a lazy, slow smile. His hand was on her naked hip, urging her closer, but she had the sensation that she was being pulled backwards. It was as though she was being tugged by a lead threaded into her spine.

Then it was pitch black (like blindness itself, an endless blank slate of darkness upon darkness forever and ever).

In the second dream, Fraser was stripped bare to the waist and in a courtroom. Scars criss-crossed his back like the map of a chaotic, unplanned city center. Lined, bloody wrists were secured in fetters and chained behind his back. Scar tissue (his past) and fresh wounds (their future). Claire shouted for him (for her Fraser, for him to pay attention god dammit, that she would fix this), voice raw. He turned, calling to her and shaking his head. His mouth was frantic, needy. There was no trace of a smile. She tried to move, but she was bound to the spot (hip-deep in cement, locked in place). The courtroom lengthened, the lights dimmed. It was a corridor then, and he was getting further and further from her.

“Stop!” she attempted to scream, but no sound emerged. She scraped at the cement until her fingertips were bloodied; she touched her mouth. Only the narrowest indentation remained where her lips (appendages designed to kiss him, taste him, tell him the darkest parts of herself and hope she had for a future drenched in light with him) had been sealed together.

“Claire!” he bellowed, the single syllable bellowing from the deepest part of his belly.

Her fingers clawed at the indentation, her toes curling uselessly inside shoes entombed in cement.

He continued, “I’m doing this for you.”

She tried to call out, shook her head furiously, and refused to blink. She couldn’t bear the thought of tears falling as her lipless mouth screamed, “No. No. No.”

She woke, gasping and kicking through layers and layers of covers until her legs were free of the obstruction. The soles of her feet found solid ground.

Edinburgh. She was still in Edinburgh.

Her nightgown clung to the sweaty parts of her (lower back, breasts, armpits, lower stomach, thighs), made her feel like a thousand colonies of insects had taken residence under her flesh.

She launched herself from the mattress, tearing at her nightgown, ripping it off and over her head, leaving it in a puddle on the rug.

“Fraser,” she whispered, taking her robe from its resting place over the settee next to the window. “You bloody stubborn Scottish martyr.”

It had been nine hours since she had left him in that jail. Nine hours since he had declared himself a martyr, announced that he would take the fall without seeking her input. Nine hours from the moment she turned her back on him, left him alone with his mouth full of lies and his daft self-sacrificing nature.

It had been six hours since she had made clear her intentions to her staff. Three hours since she gathered three of her most trusted advisors and explained what she would do to head him off at the pass, to put an end to this (the media spectacle threatened by her ring, the hushed speculations about how it got there and why). She knew that her plan would start something else entirely (a cannibalistic feeding frenzy for information, which she would publicly respond to with a regal dismissiveness appropriate to her position), but she did not know what else to do.

And perhaps, most importantly, she had ceased to care.

She swallowed hard and went to the window. Crossing her arms across her waist, she squinted down at the stables (they were dark, lifeless, her stock transported to Balmoral ahead of her). Quietly, she shook her head and let her fingertips sink into her hips, an attempt to replicate Fraser’s touch. Her efforts failed miserably.

Then she said it aloud – the thought that had dwelled unspoken in her mind since she’d left him, since he’d vowed to take the fall for them both. “I hate you right now.”

She heard footsteps outside her door and turned, watched shadow interrupt the creamy sliver of dim light beneath the door.

“Come in,” she called, turning her attention back towards the stables before the corridor’s lurker could enter.

Mrs. Fitz.

Claire could tell. She knew the cadence of the woman’s step (the soft shuffle, the clank of a tea service on a tray), the gentle way she closed the door and flipped the lock into place.

Swallowing back the bitter taste of a fitful sleep in her mouth, she summoned the question that had roused her, replaced a dream within a dream. “Is Fraser still in the jail?”

“Aye, ma’am,” Mrs. Fitz confirmed quietly.

Without meaning to move from her vantage point at the window, Claire felt herself being pulled as if by gravity itself towards the table where Mrs. Fitz was pouring two cups of what smelled like perfectly-steeped Earl Grey.

How properly English, Claire mused. Fix it with tea.

Claire would have given anything for a taste of the cabin (jewels that were not hers to give, a title that only felt precious when she thought of giving it away). To have the gritty, smoky flavor of Fraser’s too-strong coffee in lieu of her usual morning tea (the concentration in his brow as he poured hers, dropped a single sugar cube into its depths, stirred it into a sparkling whirl before handing it to her with the smallest of smiles, a hand on a bare hip). To taste tinned peaches (to pluck the wiggling, gelatinous, too-sweet preserved stone fruit from the tines of a fork held by Jamie; to squeal as the juice dribbled onto a sheet wrapped around her breast; to let her noises magnify as she feigned a fight against his efforts to take the sheet from her.) To bite into a crumbly icebox biscuit (his fingers dusting the flakes of icing from her lower lip, kissing them from his finger, promising to teach her how to drive his motorcycle) or stovetop-charred sausages (his laugh as he promised her with sparkling, fibbing eyes that he actually preferred them cooked to charred, unrecognizable logs). To lick yogurt from the side of her thumb beneath the sheets (the warmth of their joining evaporating with the leisurely lack of urgency that seemed to define all things on a cool Scottish summer morning, and their tongues meeting to mingle clover honey and berries).

She blinked hard, turned, and offered what she could of a smile.

“How much longer?”

“The broadcast will be at 8 o’clock. Fraser will be escorted from the jail to his sister’s home three hours earlier… they are probably waking him right now.”

Claire nodded, her mind suddenly fixated on the sound of his name from her lips.

Fraser.

It was just a last name to Mrs. Fitz. To her it was something more, intimate syllables that tumbled from her mouth to represent someone to her that had defined love and sacrifice and lust and passion and hate (just a little). She focused her attention outside, feeling her cheeks redden at the thought of him believing he was doing her a favor by declaring himself a common thief.

She dried her palms on her robe, inhaled, let loose a cosmic question to which she did not have an answer. “Do you think that he will hate me for this?”

The cadence of Mrs. Fitz’s familiar plunk-shuffle-plunk step neared, and Claire closed her eyes as the woman’s hand closed around her shoulder. “I ken the man loves ye. I ken that solely from the look in his eyes when I slipped him a wee note, the way his shoulders squared when ye had to postpone a visit or two. The way a lad becomes a man, he looks when he’s longing for someone, not out of lust, ye ken. It’s no’ his cock–”

“Mrs. Fitz,” Claire gasped, tears burning along her lower lash line as she chuckled.

“Ye ken just fine that ye’re no’ some innocent doe-eyed girl. Ye’re a woman, and he loves ye. You’re ban-druidh. Ye conjure things for him, ye ken? He’s given himself over to ye, to yer spell, ma’am, just the way of ye enchants him. So no, he’s no’ thinkin’ wi’ the parts that make him a man, but from spiritual need.”

A dribble of tears tickled Claire’s chin and throat. She uselessly attempted to mop at them with the back of her hand.

“And what he needs now is for you to be strong. Stronger than he is.”

Claire nodded, her chin tilting up as she snuffled back a second round of tears.

“Strong enough to show him that he doesna need to take a fall for ye, that ye’re the bloody Queen. That ye’ll do this for that rare love that ye kent ye needed, that led ye into his arms in the first place. Now, wipe yer face and find yer smartest dress, and give the speech of yer life, ma’am.”

Claire intended to do just that.

#crookedfestivalalmondknight #;mod kate #HRH #Her Royal Highness AU #jamie x claire #Part XXI

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