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.

Wedding Planning

This week I have been doing wedding planning, the fun but unimportant type like buying fabric to make bunting and investing in my 3 to 1 ratio long term underwear strategy, which I guess isn't long term any more. I also collected the blue bit of paper that means I can legally get married. We're not doing that thing where they read your bands of marriage in a church 3 times because we're getting married in a Methodist church and they do things differently from my family church. so we both have to register that we want to get married and then they put up a notice in this building and if anyone has got any objections they write on the notice and then you can't get married. I thought going a writing funny reasons on other peoples marriage notices would be a fun day out but apparently they have to be proper good reasons though you can't just put 'coz they both like the same sweets in a box of roses and this could cause arguments' or whatever. In fact they actually put the notices on a notice board behind glass so it's not really accessible for people with objections. Also we didn't inform anyone that it was going to be up that week so how are people with objections ment to know? I personally think a more up to date and logical way of doing it would be to make engaged couples write who they intend to marry as their facebook status, and if you've got an objection leave a comment. People kind of do that anyway. There's really know need for registry offices anymore, I bet mos people announce the birth of their child on facebook before filling in the birth certificate. I quite enjoyed going, I liked looking at the people waiting and decided whether they were regetering a birth, marrage or death. There were 2 old guys who looked like they were just waiting to die and then register the fact they'd just died. I liked reading about other people marriage notices and guessing whose would last longest based on their jobs and their age differences. I quite enjoyed being interigated although I couldn't remember my father's job, something about trains and palestine...but he's definatly not a palestinian train driver. When they asked if we were related I should have answered 'no' but instead I answered 'I don't think so but I don't know for certain' to which she answered 'first cousins is alright' eww. I thought they should do a DNA test just so we could know for absolute certain, because no one can atually remember who gave birth to them. Anyways if you've got any objections next chance is at the alter.

Emo Oil

You know emo's? have you ever wondered where they get all that grease that makes their hair so greasy? I found the answer whilst driving on the M602.

smoke on earth- smoke in hell!

inspired by my non smoking campaign eagle, I have come up with my own anti-smoking campaign which I feel should be made into the warnings on fag packets. This was a re-invention of a campaign I did years ago to help my friend Rachel stop smoking....most of the posters got lost (she probably used them as rizzlers) but a few remain and I have made some new more topical up to date ones such as: 'every time you smoke inside you devalue your house by £4000 that's what caused the recession'

Eagle

I haven't blogged in a very long time, this is because I've been doing things in real life, but now those things are over I have free time to inform the Internet of such things.

The thing that has taken up most time recently was making an Eagle and then covering it in cigarette packets- why was one making an eagle? I you you cry....well according to a online quote supposedly from me:

"The eagle sculpture is a visual way of celebrating the successes of all those who have already stopped smoking, and will hopefully inspire other to do the same."

That's not what I actually said, if they had bothed to ask why I was making it I would have said.....

" Well my mate Pheobe sent me a facebook message saying she was looking for a artist to make an Eagle sculpture for Non-smoking day the artist would get to be a little bit famous, and there was a big budget for it as everyone knows the NHS have more money than they know what to do with. Then she said lots of stuff about resin and polystyrene which are not things I know what to do with, so then I chatted on to her about willow and wire and metal mesh which are materials I get, and kind of pretended I knew exactly how to make an eagle and she let me do the project."

or if I was to give a shorter answer as to why I made it I'd probably go for "fame and money"

So I made the structure and then on non-smoking day we went to the most run down shopping center I've ever seen and asked people to stick their cigarette packets to it. We were meant to go in a van but ended up going in a Nissan micra. The only way me pheobe the eagle and the plinth could fit was if I went inside the plinth. which is what I did. I was retelling this tale through the medium of text message to Dan and he said 'what makes me think you didn't have to go in the plinth but volunteered to?' (yep we could have gone in 2 cars and yeah he knows me too well.)

In the shopping center we found that even if people wanted to quite smoking they didn't want to give us their cigarette packets, which meant that I had to take the eagle back home to finish it off. As a non smoker with very few smoker friends this was pretty annoying because it meant I had to trail the streets looking for empty cigarette packets- an activity that I enjoy less than most things but more than doing a tax return. It's pretty grim when people give you odd looks for picking up soggy fag packets, but on the plus side several people have commented about how my area is one of the best areas for finding rubbish on the streets. I even found 5 unsmoked cigarettes which I briefly considered smoking before concluding that 25 is too old for and experimental first smoke and it would be too ironic if 20 years from now I'm a chain smoker all because of non-smoking day.

My Sexy Notice Board

Just like someone once 'sexed up' a Dossier about Iraq I haved just sexed-up my notice board. Hopefully it won't lead to any suisides or wars though.

I challenge anyone to have a sexier notice board than mine. It's important to have an attractive looking to-do list so that doing borring things seems more atractive, (although I think I did this to pospone doing other things.) The only way I could improve on it is by having a life sized Dan made from cork for my lip shaped post-it notes to go on. He might find it a bit weird though, and also if it was too realistic I might get cork Dan and real Dan confused and start sticking post-it notes on the real Dan.

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