Sunday, July 23, 2006

The Rocky Mountaineer Is Better Than The Ear We Had



This is the corner of our fridge (freezer section). You can keep a cow or a sheep in here for 7-9 months. A goat will last a year.

As you can see, the outside is tastefully decorated with fridge magnets, mementoes of places we haven't been to. Look, there's a San Francisco cable car. It would be nice to have Karl Malden's autograph on it but you can't have everything.

And below that, to the left, there's a Spanish pepper. We've been to many areas of Spain but none where you can get a Spanish Pepper Fridge Magnet.

Above the pepper you can just about see, glinting in the sunlight, a bespectacled German crow. He's looking at the top of what I can only translate as a Bovril cube. Has he eaten it and put the packaging back together? Or is he just savouring his lunch-to-be? "...der richtige!" means "...the straight tip!" I am none the wiser.

The magnet to the left of our feathered friend is useful in that you can hold a whole notebook in its claws. So you will never be short of paper to write things like "Don't forget Willie's PE kit" and "And God said, Let the earth sprout tender sprouts, the plant seeding seed, the fruit tree producing fruit according to its kind, whichever seed is in it on the earth. And it was so." The magnet is from Vancouver and displays the Canadian flag in all its glory.

We have never been to Vancouver and we have never taken the Rocky Mountaineer tourist train from Calgary to Vancouver. But look, there on top of the fridge proudly stand our two new mugs, an embossed, patriotic, naive bear waving to us from the front of the mug and an illustration of the train itself clickety clacketing through the mountains, looked over by the omnipotent Mountain Goat God who could strike me down with lightning if he/she could be arsed.

11 comments:

  1. Please turn over the mugs and see if they're actually made here in Canada.

    Funny post title, by the way. Uh huh uhhh.

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  2. But Geoff, our Dudley Do-Rights really do look like that.

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  3. Why do they have to make fun of the good coppers (Dudley Do-Right, PC Penrose)?

    The world seems to love a bent copper and it's not right!

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  4. Anonymous2:45 AM

    We have two fridges in our kitchen. One bears magnets from places we've been (currently at 15), the other, miscellaneous ones bearing legends such as "make yourself at home! Clean my kitchen" (4 nos). The best place for fridge magnets is the souvenir shop on Llandudno pier, he's got loads. They're all of Llandudno and Wales in general though which is slightly restricting if you want one, say, of Berlin.

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  5. My favourite mugs are Welsh (we really have been to North Wales and Pembrokeshire).

    "To be born Welsh is not to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth but with a song in your heart and poetry in your soul."

    Or some such nonsense.

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  6. Your fridge looks very clean and ordered...unlike mine which is covered in drips and splashes. I bet Betty keeps it clean.

    As for the fridge magnets..I think they are quite nice actually. Better than some you can get.

    My mum bought me two fridge magnets for Christmas once. (Yes, that was all.) And one was a Father Christmas with a dodgy yellowing beard as if he smoked 40 Gitaine Extra every day. And the other was a cocktail glass, which contained some green stuff that was meant to be the drink, rather like green jelly. Needless to say, I took the Father Christmas to work and my friend cut his beard off and stubbed a cigarette out on his nose. Somebody else ate the green jelly and has never been seen since...running down the M4 naked and screaming: 'I am the jello monster!'

    So, yours are very tasteful in comparison.

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  7. Molly, confession time - Geoff had to wipe the fridge clean before taking the photo because (in his words) there were bits on it, although I don't think it was THAT bad ...

    I'm not very good at being the 1950's style housewife with every surface devoid of germs and dust. Too lazy.

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  8. Molly - I like the idea of Father Christmas smoking like a chimney.

    And I only wiped the fridge for the photo as I knew my superb camera technique would show up every slight imperfection.

    Whaddya mean it's dark and out of focus?

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  9. Geoff, I'm afraid I have very strong opinions on comedy mugs.

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  10. We have the crappest fridge possible in our flat.

    It's one of the small ones, and with 3 of us all consuming milk, salad, beer, butter, jars of olives and hummus it's always so full everytime you open the door things fall out promoting many a late night swear when you're planning to make cocoa.

    Oh and there's no point having things on it because you'd never see it unless you were walking around on your knees, say doing drunken impression of Toulouse Latrec.

    Which we have never done, although it seems like a fun idea.

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