Pump am y Penwythnos / Friday Five - 20/06/2014

Welsh
#1

Here we are again! Hope you all have a fabulous weekend filled with great weather and good people! :slight_smile:

1) What is the best and worst culinary experience you have ever had in a restaurant?

2) Describe one photograph you look at every day - what is it of/when was it taken/what does it mean to you.

3) Choose a city and give us one ‘must do’ tourist activity.

4) Name one thing you really want to do in 2014 and describe 4 steps you’re going to take to make it happen.

5) What was the last powerful memory to burst in to your head?

#2

  1. What is the best and worst culinary experience you have ever had in a restaurant?
    The best: an evening in a Trattoria in Genoa, Italy. It was in the backstreets, family run and the food was baked in a brick oven. It had checkered table cloths which for some reason pleases me. The food:
    I’m salivating as I type…
    The worst was in a Chinese place Rainham, Kent. Everything seem to have been re-heated and the service was the worst I can remember. I politely mentioned it to the manager…

  2. Describe one photograph you look at every day - what is it of/when was it taken/what does it mean to you.
    Well not every day but its a picture taken 20 years ago with my dad, mum, brother, sister, niece and brother in law; myself very shortly before my father died. We all look so happy…

  3. Choose a city and give us one ‘must do’ tourist activity.
    Caernarfon: well it’s a city to me. Have a pint and the Lobscows in the Blackboy while chatting to the locals or other tourists.

  4. Name one thing you really want to do in 2014 and describe 4 steps you’re going to take to make it happen.
    Spend more time in Wales. I only need one step - to get of my arse and earn some money

  5. What was the last powerful memory to burst in to your head?
    Watching the useless England team last night and someone commenting: “If, the England squad and Premier English players are so great, why aren’t there queues of foreign teams waiting to sign them?”
    Good point! England totally sucked!!! We don’t even talk a good game…Their losers!!!

#3

1) What is the best and worst culinary experience you have ever had in a restaurant?

Worst - calamari in a restaurant in Accra, Ghana which resulted in a pretty awful dose of Salmonella.

Best - a special meal out with Aran at the Porth Tocyn Hotel, Bwlchtocyn, above Abersoch - 5 courses of incredible food at an antique table in a beautiful setting which made me feel as if I was in a Jane Austen novel.

2) Describe one photograph you look at every day - what is it of/when was it taken/what does it mean to you.

A set of family portraits of the 4 of us, taken by a local photographer last Christmas - they are full of love and happiness and fun and were a way of celebrating what we have and what we are and also of accepting and marking the end of our baby making days.

3) Choose a city and give us one ‘must do’ tourist activity.

Get to know the locals.

4) Name one thing you really want to do in 2014 and describe 4 steps you’re going to take to make it happen.

Finding ‘me’ underneath the ‘stay at home, full time mam’. It’s been 5.5 years and Beuno leaves the nest for the first time in September to start morning sessions in nursery class at school. My mam is going to need more care and attention, but my plans also include more SSiW input, drawing, writing, photography, gardening, cooking, DIY, more part time teaching and… well that’s probably enough already.

5) What was the last powerful memory to burst in to your head?

Yesterday I had to talk to a health professional in detail about Beuno’s birth - little dude came so very, very close to not making it - brought it all back.

#4
  1. What is the best and worst culinary experience you have ever had in a restaurant?

Best - I don’t remember food very much, but I had a lovely birthday meal with the family last year. We went to a middle eastern cafe in Cardiff. Lovely food, great service, very family friendly.

Worst - Falafel from a street vendor in Cairo. Spent a week in bed with the taste of rotten eggs in my mouth. I still remember the taste 25 years later.

  1. Describe one photograph you look at every day - what is it of/when was it taken/what does it mean to you.

A picture of my family when my daughter was just able to sit up. It reminds me of what’s important in life.

  1. Choose a city and give us one ‘must do’ tourist activity.

Cardiff - visit St Fagans. (It’s practically a legal requirement I think).

  1. Name one thing you really want to do in 2014 and describe 4 steps you’re going to take to make it happen.

Leaving aside Welsh, for which I have many many goals - live a healthier life. Cut out dairy products (20 years after the first clues, I find out I’m probably lactose intolerant - duh!), start running again (10k in September would be lovely), eat 5 a day (that’s up from 1 a day, so a bigger challenge than it appears), focus on the now, not the tomorrow.

  1. What was the last powerful memory to burst in to your head?

Last week I was paddling a dug out canoe on a lake in Finland. I was suddenly filled with the spirit of adventure that I enjoyed when I was 18 - a very dangerous sort of memory given what 18 was like!

#5
  1. What is the best and worst culinary experience you have ever had in a restaurant?
    Best: Indian restaurants in “Little India” in Singapore (I lived out there for two and a half years.). You eat off a banana leaf rather than a plate, the food is all vegetarian and so much better than Indian food in this country.

Worst: A youth hostel cafe in the Lake District. The staff had no idea how to cook. The specialty was custard that was mostly water with a thin film of yellow powder.

  1. Describe one photograph you look at every day - what is it of/when was it taken/what does it mean to you.
    There’s a photo in my front room of one of my great-grandfathers with his children when he was home on leave from WW1. He is in his uniform. He died long before I was born but I somehow feel connected to him through the photo. My granny is in the photo and it looks like she has been told to sit still at all costs.

  2. Choose a city and give us one ‘must do’ tourist activity.
    Singapore - go to the botanical gardens early in the morning and sit under one of the huge trees.

  3. Name one thing you really want to do in 2014 and describe 4 steps you’re going to take to make it happen.
    Improve my Welsh: SSiW every day - finish course 2 and 3; as much Welsh conversation as possible; practice reading short texts and learn the vocab; keep listening to Radio Cymru and watching S4C.

  4. What was the last powerful memory to burst in to your head?
    My granny (the one in the photo) - she was a big part of my childhood.

#6
  1. What is the best and worst culinary experience you have ever had in a restaurant?

Best - can’t remember what I aye, but it was at a Thai restaurant on a cactus farm in the middle of nowhere. Delicious!

Worst - aeroplane eggs. Not a restaurant but honestly there is no worse dining experience.

  1. Describe one photograph you look at every day - what is it of/when was it taken/what does it mean to you.

Meeting Bradley James at supanova, I see it every day because it’s on my desk at work, and to me it means meeting somebody I admire greatly and finding out he’s just as nice a person in real life.

  1. Choose a city and give us one ‘must do’ tourist activity.

If you go to Perth, you have to go to Kings park at night.

  1. Name one thing you really want to do in 2014 and describe 4 steps you’re going to take to make it happen.

Bootcamp, so - have breakfast, have a shower, pack up my suitcase, and wait for my ride!!! :smiley:

  1. What was the last powerful memory to burst in to your head?

I was in the big wall at Cardiff castle and they played audio clips of King George’s speech sounding the war, and the sound of air raid sirens. Just remembered all the stories my grandma told me about growing up then - it was awful, but it felt really important as well to keep those memories.

#7

1) What is the best and worst culinary experience you have ever had in a restaurant?

Worst: in a Japanese restaurant our daughter took us to, crouching down at a too low, poorly-lit table in an expensive part of London, for insufficient not very nice food.

Don’t really like restaurants and best eating out experiences are almost always in nice country pubs. The best recent example being Sunday Roast at the Fleur de Lys, Dorchester, Oxfordshire. Bendi-flipping-gedyg.

But best culinary experience is actually at home: steak with almost anything, cooked how I like it. Often for breakfast. (Although I usually leave out the red wine / beer at breakfast time :slight_smile: ). (Eat lightly if at all the rest of the day though, honest! :slight_smile: ).

2) Describe one photograph you look at every day - what is it of/when was it taken/what does it mean to you.

Well, my laptop desktop picture is a view of the Thames in Abingdon which I quite like.

3) Choose a city and give us one ‘must do’ tourist activity.

Berlin: Cycle tour of the “edgy” parts. Or: go out along the bank of the Spree as far as you can in one direction and come back along the other bank. Not as easy as it sounds, but interesting.

For a less strenuous day, take the S-Bahn to Potsdam, then take one of the open-bus tours.

4) Name one thing you really want to do in 2014 and describe 4 steps you’re going to take to make it happen

Would be nice to get on the September Bootcamp if there is space.
Would want to finish the new Level 1, and do as much of Course 3 as possible beforehand. Other than that it’s partly a question of finance and partly family logistics.

5) What was the last powerful memory to burst in to your head?

Not sure if the last, but one I like to refresh from time to time, thanks to YouTube:

(that’s one of at least 2 versions)

Used to introduce the start of Radio 1 and Radio 2 each morning, before the days of 24 hour radio. Brings back lots of poignant memories.

#8

Too late to edit the above, but now see Sept BC is full, which is great for those able to go, especially first-timers. Have added myself to wait-list just in case though. :slight_smile: ).

Edit: Can still edit this one, just to say this is probably the version I used to listen to:

Lots of memories, but especially of my Dad who was an early riser and would get up and switch on Radio 2 (he wouldn’t have been a natural Radio 1 fan! :slight_smile: but they had the same intro at that time) and have his breakfast cuppa and read the paper, and I’d hear it blasting up the stairs, and (although not being a natural early riser!) occasionally go down and have a cuppa with him. sigh. The things you remember…