In praise of Mums (AM)

Last week, J and I may or may not have been complaining about our Mums. How they can and do say things that are very very annoying to us. That somehow they annoy like no one else. That some of the things they do and say...well, it's just all very annoying. We said all of this knowing how lucky we are to have mothers, and to have such great, loving and (substantially) supportive mothers. We know were among the luckiest of the lucky. And yet. Sometimes they can be annoying. Periodically we complain about our mothers on MSC too. 

But we both know it's not cool, so today I'm going to just highlight how excellent my mum is. Yesterday, KB was sick with the kind of projectile vomiting that I wouldn't believe was real had I not been covered in it. What with Appleheart away for work and the super gross smell of vomit in my face, I panicked. I called mum and basically said "I need help!" In a panicked voice. About half an hour later she was pulling into my driveway which is weird, because she lives a 45 minute drive from my house. She then spent the entire day backing me up with everything I suggested, despite me continually snapping at her. She drove us to the doctor and waited the 2.5hours it took to get KB seen to. She bought me coffee. She cleaned up the trail of vomit destruction in the house. She poured me a beer while I was bathing KB. She did it all without complaint and then stayed over last night so I could go to work today and she could look after KB. The woman's kindness knows no bounds. Which is why I have to stop complaining about the annoyance I feel. And why I shouldn't have snapped at her when she commented, while watching an episode of Homeland after KB finally fell asleep, that Islam has more demonstrative prayer rituals than Catholicism. I should have just let her think her thoughts about that and not said a thing. 

And I shouldn't have snapped at her this morning when I whispered something so as not to wake baby KB and she misheard and thought I said it was going to be 17 degrees. I'm sorry about all of it Mum and I am so grateful for all of it and please don't ever die and I love you.

And look what just came through! 

 

Moving (AM)

I moved house on the weekend, into the place Appleheart and I bought in November.   As moving days go, it was a pretty good one. Sure, it was 35 degrees,  and there was a brief downpour at almost the exact moment we arrived in Preston to unpack. But heck, it was a moving day, not a picnic. So the fact that no extremely annoying things took place, nothing got broken and apart from having to disassemble the bed, take it upstairs piece by piece and then reassemble it in the bedroom, the movers took care of everything, well that seems like a pretty big success to me. And we ended the day with pizza and beer and crappy television, the universal reward of moving. 

So now I'm a Prestonian. Things are going to be a bit different. No more five minute walk to Barkly Square. No more being able to hear the bells at the Jewell station level crossing start to ding, bolting out the front door to run for the train, and making it. No more good coffee five minutes away. But instead, I get to live in a home that belongs to me and my Appleheart. It's hard not to feel a bit heart swelly at that. We have a back yard and a front yard. Two lemon trees. A jacaranda. A tiny little fig tree. Yesterday I planted a marigold. It feels like a pretty nice life. 

Sons and lovers (AM)

I've loved being in Belfast, and I'll be quite sad to leave next weekend. It's quite lovely here. Sure, it's grey all the time. It's hard to get any work done because people literally talk constantly (and I mean literally constantly not figuratively constantly). But it has been quite great. 

  

I've spent a good amount of my time at this particular coffee shop, because it has good coffee. It's where I'm sitting right now. Sitting here day after day, watching the people come and go, it's made me notice that people seem to have their kids super young over here, and people my age seem to have three little ones by now. Biologically it's not super young, just culturally, by our standards I guess. 

I was looking at one of these young families in the coffee shop before and saw something very adorable happen. The troop consisted of a Mum, a Dad and three little boys. I'd say a five year old, a three year old and a little one in a pram, perhaps 18 months old. The older two—lets call them ElderPaddy and MidPaddy—were those good behaved types that seem to calmly observe the world around them, rather than crazily get up in the world's grill like Midbro and Elderbro used to  some other boys might. I guess they were getting rewarded for being that way,  because the parents had bought them a shortbread to share and boy were they loving that shortbread fully sick. The little guy in the pram, TinyPaddy, was looking on, something the Mum noticed, prompting her to say:

"Boys, perhaps you could give TinyPaddy a bit of your shortbread". 

Well. 

MidPaddy was on to it straight away, instantly shoving the rest of his shortbread into his mouth and shaking his head earnestly.  ElderPaddy looked panicked for a split second, then his shoulders sank, he sighed and he got up. He walked over to TinyPaddy's pram and gave him a bit of shortbread about the size of a penny while sadly gazing out the window.

The whole display was completely hilarious and also a little touching and made me miss my bros and my Mate and Baby and Newbie and Niecey and Little Nut so damned much. I guess the experience was not peculiar to Belfast, or to young families, but it's where I saw it so it makes me think of these things together. And how nice Belfast is. It's made me think about how nice Belfast is.  Come, if you get the chance. 

2013 - The Most Five (PM)

Woot! Holidays! Well, technically it's more like a lunchbreak for me at the moment, but holidays are just around the corner, so I no complain.
Great Most Five list Mate. 

Let's take a wander back through the year of K and settle on five of the best bits. It was a year of pretty good bits, so it might be hard to narrow it down, but lets's try.

1. Running 10 kms.
I'm not one to make new year's resolutions, or set goals really. Goals are for sitting in between at the MCG, as far as I'm concerned. Heh. Not really. But kind of. Anyway, this year I decided that I was going to run 10kms in the wild, as opposed to on a treadmill. I have never been a runner you see, so for most of my life such a think seemed quite impossible to me. But then I started running more and more so about this time last year it popped in to my head as something I might be able to. At that point, the most I had run in the wild was a lap of Princess Park. So 10kms seemed like a big deal. And I totally did it. That was pretty rad for me.

2. That sandwich I ate that time. 
I don't know whether many most five lists will contain sandwiches but goddamn it mine does. It totally does. God save that sandwich and long may it reign.

3. Iceland
My whole european holiday ruled. I mean, you saw the kinds of sandwiches I was eating. I saw and did some wonderful things. But the best thing, the very very best thing, was Iceland.

That place imprinted on me the way wolves get imprinted on in Twilight, but everyone wears shirts in Iceland. I loved it and think about it often.

That's the kind of thing you see on the side of the road in Iceland.

4. Baby, Niecey and Little Nut's grasp of language.
When J told me about Baby saying "you fucko!" I was at my desk at work. I had to laugh discretely and doing so was harder than running 10 kms in the wild.  The mouths of babes are the funniest places in the world. And now there are so many babies to say funny things it's only going to get funnier from here on in.

5. This
This year was a year where, thanks to knocking around with Appleheart a lot, coming home to this kind of thing became a possibility.

Those are roasted salted almonds. That guy, I tell you what.
Happy this time of year everybody! See you in 2014!

The five stages of grief (PM)

Yeah. Tender is my heart for screwing up my life.

I just wish I had never let myself dream this goddamned stupid dream. I thought seeing blur was something that would never happen to me and I was getting on with life just fine. Sure, there were moments when it hurt, but life hurts, am I right? I was getting on with it.
Then this impossible thing happened. They were coming. And we were going to see them. And Strawberry and Chickpea would be there and it would be just like the 1990s. We were going to laugh and cry and fall in love all over again.
And now now it has unhappened. And I have to go back to the way it was before. I have to undream the dream. And that's really goddamned hard to do. Especially when No Distance Left to Run is playing.

Maybe they've become really puffy as they've aged, and seeing them would have been depressing.

Let's check!

Fuck you blur. I love you blur.

Call for friendship (AM)

When I came home from Brisbane the other night, I encountered some frustrations.

First, I left my phone in the toilet at the Qantas domestic terminal, and didn't discover this fact until I was in the cab on the way home. 

Luckily, I had my work phone with me, so I called my regular phone a few times and before I knew it, someone answered. It was Tasmin, a woman who cleaned the bathrooms in the Qantas domestic terminal. She had found my phone and was going to take care of it until I got there. 

Hooray! I thought. Problem almost solved! 

I told the cab driver to turn around and instead, he pulled over to the side of the road and because it was a rainy night, we immediately got bogged in the mud. 

This was the second frustration. 

The cab driver tried and tried to get us out but as with all boggings, the more you try to escape, the more bogged you get. 

So there I was, stuck in a cab that was stuck in the mud on a rainy Tuesday night. 

I'll spare you the details but suffice to say, cab drivers get very distressed when they get bogged and pretty soon, they start looking for someone to blame, someone who may or may not be sitting in the back of their cab. 

Happily, it wasn't long before another cab met me by the side of the road and whisked me away from the original cab driver and his cries of  "Great, now you're just going to leave me here...". 

Hooray! I thought. Problem almost solved!

When I got to the airport, I went to the toilets at the Qantas domestic terminal and called my phone to arrange the handover, as per the agreement with Tasmin. Like a genie in a bottle, she emerged - young and smiley and sweet and holding my phone out to me. I was so relieved and I asked her "How can I thank you?" thinking maybe she would let me buy her a cake from the nearby Gloria Jeans or something.

She said "It was my pleasure. But I put my number in your phone in case you want to call for friendship."

Um, come again Tasmin? Call for friendship? That's not the sound of a cake from  Gloria Jeans.
I said some things like "oh sure"and "well, I'd better get back on the road" and awkwardly scurried off while she pushed her trolley of cleaning equipment back in to the toilets.
In the cab on the way home I thought about Tasmin a a lot, and felt bad for her.
Maybe she is lonely and wants to make friends?
Then I started to worry about the content on my phone...what had she seen? What had she done?
I opened the photos app and found this.

The montage of photos that Pickle took that night J, Pickle and I went to David Jones to try on clothes we would never ever buy. That's the photo she had scrolled to and enlarged so she could get a better look at all the photos of us (seriously). 

I chuckled at the photos. That was a really fun night. 

And then Tasmin's request to call for friendship made sense. 

Who wouldn't want to try on spectacularly ugly pretty clothes at DJs with us? 

The hits just keep on coming (AM)

J and I have been friends for a long time now. Years and years and years. I think 22 years or something. Is that right? It's something like that.* It's a long time. It's not enough, but it's a long time.

There were many things that bonded us together in those early days. That our houses were literally across the road from one another. That we both loved the album Kick by INXS. That the film Hairspray is great, can be watched a million times and the soundtrack has got a good beat and you can dance to it. The song Maxwell's Silver Hammer...that was another one. By the time hunks came along, the glue had well and truly set. 

But though it's been many years since I bonded with J something happened on Saturday night that made it happen all over again.

While watching the footy, we saw an ad for some probiotic choc ball you can get these days, to help restore the levels of good flora in your gut. I wondered out loud how one would know whether one's good gut flora had become depleted to the point that it required restoration via a choc ball.

"Oh you know" J said "I guess you feel bloated or something?".

I could tell from the way she said it that she wasn't convinced of this. I decided to tell her something I have never told anyone before. 

"Mate...I don't know what feeling bloated feels like."

It's true. I don't. I know what eating too much feels like. I know what feeling 'fat' feels like. But bloated seems like a different thing and I don't know if I feel it. Every time I see an ad trying to sell me some product that will relieve my bloating I just sigh and gaze out the window. 

J leapt up. 

"Mate, me neither!" 

It seems that J had been in the same boat as me for yonks, only we'd never spoken about it before. A burst of excited babbling followed, in which we exchanged confessions about what it's like to live in a world where everyone knows what it's like to be bloated but us. The sweet relief of finally being understood!

It was a special moment, and made me think if J wasn't already my BFF, I would really want her to be my BFF. 

*We can actually figure this out...Mondonna once told me there is footage of me lurking about in the background of some home video from when Frandonna was a newborn baby, so we've known one another at least as long as Frandonna has been alive. And I know for a fact that there are people who read this blog who can tell us how long that has been.

Happy Birthday Miss Soft Crab Haiku Thursday! (AM)

Today this becomes

A two year old chronicle 

Of this crabby life. 

Two years of thanks to

All you who bear witness to

Crab frivolity. 

Cheese! (PM)

Oh baby. Cheese! is right.
I barely go a day without cheese. I guess that's bad, from a cholesterol intake point of view. But from the point of view that life is precious and miraculous and tomorrow is promised to no one, I can not see the sense in a day without cheese. Take cheese away from a day and what do you get? A bad day, that's what.

I guess that's part of the reason I recently spent a lot of my dollars buying Tasmanian cheese on the internet recently.  Remember last year when Miss Soft Crab went to Hobart? Remember how we went to the Bruny Island Cheese Company for a little snack? Well those fine people have a Cheese Club, where they offer a bunch of cheeses that are particularly good at that particular time for sale to club members. Then they deliver them to your door. To your door!* Or your workplace's door, if, like me, you want to make sure that the cheese stays cold after delivery because you spent a lot of money on that cheese and goddamn it, you want to make sure it gets looked after. If you like cheese, I'm pretty sure you will like it when you get a call from the woman at reception saying "there is a very ripe smelling delivery for you waiting at reception".

So right now, I have all of this in my fridge, waiting for the night (next week, hopefully...Chickpea, are you free?) that J, Chickpea and I will have a little cheese eating/Hobart remembering salon at my house.

You can read all about them, and join the club, here.

Also, just because I like cheese so much, I also have these in the house at the moment. Cheddar, cayenne and spring onion biscuits.

I made them on Saturday because I had a bunch of cracker barrel in the fridge and I wanted to consume it quickly and efficiently to make may for the Bruny Island cheeses. In my experience, if you want to eat something quickly and efficiently, put it in a biscuit.

After writing this, and taking that photo, I have two less of those biscuits.

Cheese!




*Writing that makes me think of the Paul Kelly song To Her Door, which makes me picture a bunch of cheeses in a box singing that song as they wing their way towards their cheese loving homes and it's a nice thing to think about.

An account of my second solo bike ride (AM)

I got a bike for my birthday. 

This is what it looked like in the darkness yesterday morning, when I got up early to take it for what was only my second ever solo bike ride. 

Hard to see, sure. But the main thing you need to take from this photo is that it is very beautiful. 

By way of background, I should probably mention that the fact that this was only my second solo bike ride is not because I insist on riding in a peloton. No. It's that I didn't know how to ride a bike until, well, about two weeks ago. 

But now I have some rudimentary bike riding skills. And my very own bike, a bike so lovely it makes you want to take it out every day of the week and twice on Sundays. So that's why I took her out for my second ever solo bike ride yesterday morning. 

It was a beautiful still morning, and the balloons were up.  

After a shaky start, I found some rhythm and decided I would take her all the way to the park. This meant crossing Glenlyon and Brunswick Roads. I know! I was acting crazy!

But readers, I crossed those roads, I crossed them good.  And as cars and other cyclists overtook me, I felt like they couldn't even tell that I barely have the first clue how to ride a bike. Those suckers were none the wiser! Geez it felt nice. And the feeling of the wind fanning my face and rustling whatever hair was sticking out of my  Melbourne bike share scheme $5 helmet... well. It was enough to make me pull over and take this photo of my bike because I was loving it so much. 

The other reason I stopped was because there was a 'For Lease' sign blocking my way and I really had no idea how to negotiate it. Pick up your 'For Lease' signs, Nelson Alexander! 

I crossed Lygon Street. I peddled down Canning Street.  I rode along the bike path back towards Lygon street and even had to stop at the lights where all the people on bikes have to stop at the lights!

Score!

I eventually returned home and discovered that Moreland's garbologists had been and left the bins strewn along the footpath in that way they like to do it. Lucky for me, because how pretty does my bike look alongside the yellow of their lids? 

I love you new bike. Now if only I knew what to call you.
She has a working title of 'Delilah' because she is from a place called Samson Cycles. But I don't feel good about naming her after a biblical double-crosser.
I like that she is so white. Can we find a name that relates to how beautiful and white she is?
J?
Chickpea?
Anyone else?
Please direct your suggestions to misssoftcrab@gmail.com

I'm not kidding you guys, please help me. 

Apollo Thirteens (AM)

This post was going to be about baking these biscuits as christmas gifts for Chambo, Lil and AB, who I am having dinner with tonight.

They look so good on the interwebsite of David Lebovitz...

They're called Baci di dama. Should their fancy name have served as a warning to me? Maybe. 

Something went wrong along the way. 

Was it how I roasted the hazelnuts, then skinned them like some latter day furrier?

Hazelnuts to the left, their skins to the right.

I don't think so. 

Was it how I used my coffee grinder instead of a food processes to grind the nuts?

Probably. Whatever it was, when it came time to roll out the dough it just was not happening. It kept crumbling and seemed like it was game over. 

This was disappointing because baking failures cut so deep. Also because I wouldn't have presents for my friends. And also because I would have to tell you guys about the failure because I hadn't prepared anything else to post about today. Despite my disappointment I went ahead with the remaining steps in the recipe because I am a TROOPER. 

I put the dough in the freezer as instructed and left if there for 20 minutes.
When I took it out and started rolling it in to little balls, it seemed to be holding together quite well. Like, exactly how it was meant to.

Things had taken an unexpected turn.

Then I baked them and shit you guys, they totally worked.

These are the actual biscuits I baked. I know, right? 

I guess I shouldn't have been so hasty to dismiss them. And lucky I followed through, because I really almost didn't. And if I hadn't I wouldn't know how thoroughly effing delicious taste, truly like the kisses of a lady (which is what Baci di dama translates to), if the lady who is kissing you is made out of biscuit.

But you know, because I touched the void a little during the moments when I thought they hadn't worked, I am going to call them Apollo Thirteens after the famous failed moon landing brought to life by Tom Hanks and Gary Sinise in the movie Apollo Thirteen. Because like the Apollo Thirteen voyage which was unsuccessful because they didn't land on the moon but successful because they didn't die, I feel like these biccies both did and didn't work.
You can get the recipe here. Don't give up when the dough appears to lack integrity!

Merry Christmas Lil, AB and Chambo. 

Highlights of a weekend where I ate well but lacked focus (AM)

On Friday night, I drank vodka on an empty stomach. Then, I did that about 50 more times.
What followed was one of the most ineffectual weekends of my life. Honestly, I feel sorry for the people that had to interact with me this weekend.  Talking and making sense, keeping focussed on what other people were saying, observing basic rules of human interaction like not yawning in people's faces - all of this was pretty hard for me over the last couple of days. And I kind of had a lot of stuff to do, like:

• make chutney
• attend chutney club
• interact with my brothers and sisters of chutney
• make something out of Plenty for the second Plenty Pot Luck dinner
• attend the second Plenty Potluck dinner
• interact with my sisters of plenty (I love how that sounds like a religious order). 

So it wasn't a good time to say goodbye to cognitive function. And the really unfortunate thing about it is that it was a weekend that involved a lot of really great food that I would have loved to have talked about today. But do you think I managed to photograph all that delicious stuff? No way, no how, readers. Happily, J was on hand to be the sensible and responsible one so this afternoon we should be able to count the ways we ate so well on Saturday. I'm on my own for Sunday's Plenty Pot Luck of course, but I was feeling a bit better by then.

Anyway, before J sweeps in this afternoon and returns respectability to Miss Soft Crab,  I can share the following snaps that I managed to take during brief moments of lucidity.

Here we have the chutney table, at the beginning of the session.
David pickled some beans and then turned them in to a salad that was like a sauce gribiche, but in salad form. With prawns!

Miguel made leek and garlic jam that he lathered on toasted cheese sandwiches for all of us.

Blizzie made tomato and tamarind chutney, which they served with delicious bagels and cheese.

Some other people we don't know grew some grapes then made them ferment and carbonated them and turned them in to prosecco which everyone seemed to enjoy a lot. I had a can of coke (not pictured).

I'm afraid that's the only  chutney photo I have to share, with the exception of the one at the top of this post, which is what it looks like when Miguel uses tongs to put a toasted sandwich on your plate and the following, which is what it looks like when a dog wears a baby's bib.

I can say that David and Welly were first class hosts and a lovely time was had by all, even me and I'm not sure that would have been possible anywhere else.

Right, on to Sunday night.  Crimpy hosted Legsley and I for the second Plenty Pot Luck dinner, which is what we call it when we get together and eat things we make from the book Plenty.

I made the Very Full Tart which is Very Effing Good. Legsley made a zucchini and hazelnut salad which was delicious and Crimpy made eggplant croquettes (not pictured). (Idiot).

Again, it was a lovely time and Crimpy was (as always) a first class host.
As you can see, I'm still a little tired and spaced out, so I think it's best for everyone if I press on. Don't worry readers, I'll be fine, and J will be here in the afternoon to make everything better.

Pickle is back! (PM)

YEAH! Pickle is back! And what better way to celebrate than with some pickles?! What a great night. The food! The laffs! The delicious complimentary gum they give you at the end of a meal at Rumi.


It's true, there was one dish K did not mention that I loved. It was a pilaf. Rice with dill and broad beans.

It was so damn good. The dill I guess. It's my heritage. I also loved the zucchini dish but for me that was all about the chickpeas, chilli oil and crispy pita chips. The zucchini was kind of redundant if you ask me.

Oh and although at the end of the meal we all said, 'We are so full, we aren't getting dessert.' We got this:



A trio of ice-cream served on a bed of seeds. Pistachio, chocolate halva and cinnamon. Does the phrase 'fucking yum' mean anything to you? These were so creamy and flavourful and delicious. And if you ever thought that coriander seeds and cumin seeds did not belong on a plate of ice-cream, um you were soooooo wrong!


Anyway, it was so great seeing Nikki and I am looking forward to spending the weekend with her and then the rest of our lives. You know, not every day, but regularly for the rest of our lives.

Pickle is back! (AM)

Yesterday, one of Miss Soft Crab's favourite daughters, Pickle, returned to us from England where she had been living for 18 months or so. 

We went to Rumi to celebrate. Me, Legsley, J and Pickle - (back) together at last.  

The first highlight came early in the evening, when we watched as Pickle walked straight past the restaurant because even though she knew it was at Rumi, her brain interpreted this as Bar Idda. 

It had a been a long flight, apparently with a lot of turbulence. 

Legsley ran down the street to get her and brought her back. 

We laid a lot of questions on her as soon as she sat down, but you know how it is when you've just returned from overseas. It's hard to summarise the experience, however much people might want you to.  And there is always so much other stuff to talk about. Who's pregnant (pretty much everyone), who's doing what, where everyone is living, things we've eaten lately. Before you know it, it's the end of the night. Anyway, it was so great to see Pickle. She looked great, and it was great to see her.  

It was also great to see the actual pickles we ordered. And all the other things. Lets go through it, shall we?

Ok, pickled vegetables and giant olives as big as your thumb (if you have a small thumb). You can imagine how long they lasted. The only thing that preserved their lives was the arrival of these school prawns. 

I was going to say that the only time I stopped talking about myself all night was when these babies arrived but no, I'm pretty sure I kept talking while I ate most of them. 

Next, a curly haloumi salad. No really, that's what it was called.

Utterly delicious. Those mint leaves and that pickled onion can get down with my curly haloumi any time they want. 

Here we have zucchini with chickpeas and almonds and a yoghurty sauce, as you can see.

This was my favourite dish. Hands down. 

Here are all the things on a table with pitta. 

There's one other dish we had (before dessert) which I haven't mentioned because J loved it so much, I think she may want to talk about it herself. 

Over to you, Mate.

A tribute to Neville (AM)

On Friday, Neville, my most beloved work colleague of all time went on maternity leave. It's super awesome for her, but it's pretty much the worst thing to happen at work since the HR lady started going out with the Accounts Payable guy, which is a truly unholy union and so creepy that I am mad at myself for recalling it right now. 

I've worked with some great people over the years. Fragy. Wicketoni. Bumblebee. Oh the stories I could tell (if I could remember them, which I can't, but I know they're good). But Neville is one in a million, which is not to say that there's five more just in New South Wales, but that there can never be another Neville. 

Neville and I have worked together for about 5 years. She got me my current job, more or less. She is one of the funniest people you could ever meet, with some of the best dance moves you could ever see. She is also the best kind of colleague, because she and I think pretty much exactly the same way about work matters, and most other matters too. Though I think she finds Ben Cousins attractive, which is where our paths diverge. 

Neville is the person who would always says "yes" every single time I asked the question "is today a pork roll kind of day?". 

She would narrow her eyes and nod every single time I said something like "you know what really shits me about this place?". 

Every single time I'd walk out of a meeting in my boss' office, Neville would crack the same joke. She would look at me sympathetically and ask "do you need me to help you pack up your desk?" and honestly readers, it killed me every time.

Drunk at some Christmas party, Neville decided that the celebrity that she most looks like is Lily Tomlin, and about once every six months she would email me the picture above and say "seriously, I look just like her". She kind of does. 

Everyone should have a Neville at their workplace. I guess I was lucky that I had such a good run of it. And that I still get to see her in real life, like I did last night when we went out to dinner and she sang me a Kevin Bloody Wilson song as she drove me home. Or the other night when I went over to her house to watch the footy, and when she opened the front door she told me "I've taken my bra off - I'm just letting you know." 

You're the one Neville. I'm going to miss the shit out of you lady. 

Imaginary TV Show Workshop! (AM)

You know readers, in all the years (one of them) Miss Soft Crab has been around, we have never ever used anyone else's content in our posts. Sure, we refer to other people's stuff, but on the whole, all the stuff eaten, seen, thought about then communicated in these crabby pages comes straight from our brains to you. That is, until now!

Readers, hold on to your hats because have we got something pretty special in store for you.

Today, Miss Soft Crab is delighted to bring you the results of  MINUTES and MINUTES of creative effort put in by Miguel, Legsley,Tickle, J and I in a little electronic-mail based game we like to call Imaginary TV Show Workshop.

First, What is Imaginary TV Show Workshop and why is it a thing?

Ok, very quickly now because I have a tendency to go on about things.

Imaginary TV Show Workshop is a series of imaginary TV show concepts we have come up with to add some colour and movement to the emails we send one another when arranging our weekly catch up at the Edinburgh Castle of a Wednesday night.

We do it because one night, whilst at the EC, we were discussing how lame it is when TV shows put too much double and sometimes triple entendre in their names. Par example: Hart of Dixie, which, as Wikipedia advises, stars Rachel Bilson as Dr. Zoe Hart, who after her dreams of becoming a cardio-thoracic surgeon fall apart, accepts an offer to work in a small medical practice in Bluebell, Alabama.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. 

Oh, brother.

The day after this conversation took place, Tickle sent us an email with his very first Imaginary TV Show Workshop concept and from then on, there was no stopping us. Readers, you would not believe how easy and addictive coming up with fake TV shows is.You know how Thomas Edison said genius is 1 per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration? Well there is no doubt in my mind that that brother NEVER played Imaginary TV Show Workshop because all the gold you're about to read came out in about 25 seconds flat. We are the 1 per cent, everybody!

OK, ok I've gone on long enough and I don't want to make you guys wait a second longer for what's coming. It's time to let the imaginary TV shows speak for themselves.

First up, let's check out the original concept Tickle sent us. 

The Real Paige Turner

The Real Paige Turner follows the story of ghost writer, Paige Turner, who struggles to get her talent recognised, even though she’s written the last four manuscripts for famous romance novelist, Lacy Silke.

Note: We didn't discuss it, but I'm picturing Melissa Joan Hart from Sabrina the Teenage Witch to play Paige. 

Next, from Miguel. 

Autumn Leaves
When her mother's latest no-hoper boyfriend gets fresh, Autumn Winters, a sassy teenager whose incessant wisecracking is just a defensive mechanism, has had enough. She steals a car, rescues her frail and demented grandmother from a nursing home, and goes on a wild cross-country ride to find her father.

That man has a gift. I'm picturing Suri Cruise as Autumn, and Fran Drescher as the Grandmother. 

Not to be outdone by this, from Legsly:

Frieze Frame

Penelope Frieze, a successful TV executive, is about experience life in an unflattering spotlight. When her star actor and toy-boy lover Splice Jordan goes missing, she is framed for the murder. Her assistant Frieda might the footage to clear her name ... if only she wasn't missing too.

And here's a little something I came up with. 

Saul O'Wit*

Father Saul O'Wit is devoted to two things - God and stand-up comedy. Every Sunday he combines the two at the parish of Saint Mary's, where the worshippers are on their knees alright -  doubled over in laughter! With his sympathetic ear and gift for one liners, he's giving the community at St Mary's - still hurting from 9/11- the kind of spiritual leadership that would make any blind man see. Watch out Father Saul, you're gonna give the Catholic Church a good name! 

*Truth be told, Miguel had a hand in this one too...

There are many many more I could share, but I think I should save some for  a future spin off post.
So let me finish with something from Miguel that, in my opinion, is the best show anyone has ever thought of ever, not just as part of Imaginary TV Show Workshop. I sure do hope all the American TV producers read Miss Soft Crab, because the world needs to see...


Wieners & L'Ouseurs
In early twentieth-century Vienna, the von Wieners (an establishment Austrian sausage-trading family) are feuding with the L'Ouseurs (upstart nouveau riche French bankers, who are revealed in the last episode of the first season to be secretly Jews named Lewinstein) over a Dalmatian land deal gone wrong. The beautiful and feisty Katharina L'Ouseur goes undercover to sabotage a von Wiener sausage warehouse from within, but sparks fly when she meets handsome von Wiener heir Franz, who is working incognito as a sausage-grader to learn the family business. Can their love survive their parents' hatred and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire?

Tagline: Not everyone can be a Wiener.

NB: With minor revisions it could be moved to Vichy France and retitled Brest & Wurst.

A daughter "to be proud of" (AM)

My Mum and Dad sent me a Christmas card yesterday.

This is what it looked like on the front:



Yikes.


This is what it said inside:



Note addition of quotation marks.

I don't know whether it's because of the Christmas fever we were talking about on Monday, or the fact that I am over tired from work, or some other reason, but this card makes me so happy I want to cry.
Mum and Dad, you may be "proud" of me, but I effing love the mother effing shi+ out of you guys.

(Sorry I said the eff word)
(You know I'm seeing you guys on Christmas Day, right?)
(Right?)