The Urban Cheese Awards

A work of fiction by Hannah Marshall. Dedicated to Grace Snow my number one blog fan and blog evangelist.

Everyone gathered around the fire in their hoodies chanting aggressively, two stocky men were starring each other out across the fire. One had a beard and a tattoo of his favorite cheese (edam) on his arm. This was extreme street fondue at it's most exhilarating! The eight mystery cheeses were grated into the giant fondue by an independent adjudicator. Who would be the ultimate extreme street fondue champion 2011?

Both contestants etched their initials into the side of a babybel which was tossed by the ref to decide who goes first. 'BB' Barry Bennet. 'Wooo' his supporters cheered as he steped up to the giant fondue pot that was sizzling over the fire. He got his infamous lucky spoon dipped it in and then dolloped a load in to his mouth. It tricked into his beard but Barry was concentrating to hard on the flavour to notice. 'Emmental' he shouted, there was compleat silence all eyes were on the ref, 'correct' he announced and the crowd roared. Ralph went next, 'wensleydale' 'correct' the crowd leaned in closer for Barry's turn, it continued 'Saint Agur' 'Roquefort' 'Ricotta' 'Double Gloucester'...it continued until there were only two cheeses left unidentified. Ralph took the spoon 'Brie?' he said hesitantly, 'incorrect' the ref said. 'Ooooh' growled the crowed.

The Ball was in Barry's court now four years of training could finally be paid off. Would he be crowned extreme street fondue champion? He had one guess left and there were two possible cheeses, Barry took another spoon fun and smelt it before shoveling it into his mouth. A silence fell upon the crowd, Barry licked his lips and braced himself for the moment he had been dreaming of for so long. 'Camembert' he shouted confidently. 'Correct!' yelled the ref, and everybody cheered. Barry punched the air several times while Ralph held back the tears. The crowd started stamping their feet and shouting 'cheese him! cheese him!' the ref lifted the giant fondue bowl away from the fire (as is the custom in all extreme street fondue finals) and poured the entire contence of the pot over Ralph's head. Barry chuckled to himself as he thought of his prize, a solid gold cheese grater, a solar powered cheese tostie machine and a life sized statue of himself made from a cheese of his choosing by the most incredible cheese sculptor.

The rowdy crowd shuffled away. The 'urban cheese paraphernalia of the year award' was soon to be announced. It was rumored to be another win for European champion Florence Twidle with her multi award winning cheese gun, which she invented when she accidental put a cheese string in a glue gun.

The End.

p.s I would like to thank www.cheese.com for their help with the cheese spellings in this story.

The golden rule of teaching

If the golden rule of teaching is don't let children draw nazi swastikas on their art, I've broken it. Whoops. I was teaching about indian art at the time and showing a slideshow of pretty indian patterns one of which had the swastika in the background which I didn't notice until a child said 'isn't that a Nazi sign?' I explained that it was a Hindu sign before it was a Nazi Sign according to wikkipedia where all truth is found 'it is one of 108 symbols of the Hindu deity vishnu and represents the suns rays' Then they asked if they could do swastikas in their collage, and I thought in my head 'yeah lets bring it back for the Hindus' when I should have thought 'would the headmistress want to display this work in school' and so I said yes. I hoped that my 'yes' came accross as 'yes but it's fround upon' but I don't think it did. Oh well, sorry teachers, sorry parents sorry Jews.

On a more positive note I tried to start a little revolution in a school yesterday. I heard some kids complaining that they couldn't paint very well because their brushes we're too thick. This is one the things that annoys me most in life, when children are given rubbish materials and therefore create rubbish art and get fustrated. I overheard one year 3 girl say that they could write to the school council about it, so I encouraged them to do 2 peices of art one with a good thin brush and one with a thick brush and give it to the school council explaining their case. They got really excited and wanted everyone in the class to sign a letter about it. I'm well up for petitions and protests, (in secondary school I once got in a lot of trouble for my protest against our lesbian PE teacher and the lack of shower curtains.) They didn't have a really thin good brush so I gave them my best one for the cause.