Happy Halloween from The Giant Goram!

Happy Halloween and thank you to Dawn, Kim and all at The Giant Goram Pub, Lawrence Weston, for making me so wickedly welcome!

The Chilli Day of Reckoning

The Chilli day of reckoning had arrived, and fortuitously ( or not, as it turned out) it was Friday 13th. September 20..13.  Yes, it was a bad plan from the start.

 Jay, from the Clifton Chilli Club turned up to BBC Radio Bristol to present Steve Lefevre and myself with a beautiful second-breakfast plate of chillies which we were to consume, live , on air.

Second breakfast. After a strategic large bowel of milky semolina

Jay is a nutter. He showed us a mean red looking ******* of a chilli, called the Trinidad Scorpion, hottest chilli known to man ( I think?). 1.5 million-2million scovilles. It's top right hand corner, dark red, and you can't quite see that it has a genuine sharp 'tail' on the end.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, yes?...

 Jay, it turns out, had eaten FOUR of these on Saturday and laughed in the face of the Million Scoville Dorset Naga (nuzzling next to the Scorpion on the left, orange) that I had pledged to put through my digestive system in my ridiculous bid to join the 'Million Scoville Club'*


There was a bit of civilised conversation between John Darvall and Jay  and his wife Alice about the flavour and economy of chillis, and suchlike ( the West is an unlikely hub for chilli-gormets and gor-madmen, as it turns out, and the Clifton Chilli Club is a red-hot organisation of which Bristol should be proud). Then there was a break for Bob Marley's One Love, with the ironic (in the circumstances) chorus line "Feel Alright", and Steve LeFevre and I were shoved on air.

It started off quite gormet and posh, talking of 'earthy flavours', with a bit of chilli tasting, then we got to the business. Steve and I had started off competitive but got increasingly more chivalrous as the extent of the pain we were about to put ourselves through became apparent.

In the end, we jointly did the 1 Million Scoville Dorset Naga, and you can hear our restrained reaction, live, on Radio Bristol

..Yes!     -With fellow (also stronger) victor, Steve Lefevre

It was quite an experience. The eating alone was painful enough, then comes the shakes, the sweating, the running eyes and nose ( not great live on air) , and a strange euphoric high breaking through all that discomfort like a sunrise through rainclouds and other poetic stuff like that. That's why Chillies are so addictive; however painful they are, they are strangely exhilarating and make you feel most definitely 'alive'.  I'm very grateful to Radio Bristol for letting us out of the studio shortly after the chilli had gone down however.

The rest of the day was... interesting. My staff, constituents, and constituency businesses ( yes, you know who you are ) were very tolerant of periods of distracted pain, the odd sudden absence and a very contorted speech at the end of the evening. However, I can completely recommend pushing yourself to your capsicum limits ( er, safely!) and eating more chillis. The proven health benefits are numerous, and however much it hurts even if you do it stupidly like this radio presenter and politican, it does make you feel invigorated, purged of any lingering lurgey and re-energised. As my old swimming coach used to say, 'no pain, no gain'.   I'm not sure a Dorset Naga is always necessary, but a nice safe bit of chilli on your meal is proven to do nothing but good. Enjoy!

* Scoville is the unit of heat of a chilli. Tabasco sauce is about 5,000 scovilles. Some zeros short of the 1,000000 I was about to attempt. Just saying.

Hot Weekend with a Chilli Challenge!

Trepidation and milk at The Mouse Pub's infamous chilli challenge

So it seems  I've accepted the challenge from BBC Radio Bristol's Steve LeFevre to join the 'Million Scoville Club', for (ominously) Friday 13th next week, Live, On Air. [LINK TO RADIO: at 2h 40]

For those sensible enough not to spend their time testing their taste-buds and sanity with chillies with the word 'scorpion' in their name, the Scoville is the measure of hotness of a chilli. As we found out  from expert Nick ( also known as Dr. Burnorium, of the Hotsauce Emporium) on Radio Bristol this morning, Tabasco sauce is around 5,000 Scovilles, which gives you an idea of how hot a Million Scoville beastie is.

Last year, I was unwise enough to compete in The Mouse Pub's annual Chilli Eating Contest. Silly me, I thought it might have been nice bowels of chilli-con-carne, but no. It was raw chillis. We were handed nice raw chillis, getting increasingly hotter and hotter, to eat whole. No drink , water or beer, allowed - just big cartons of milk in the middle of the table. When you grabbed in anguish for the milk to sooth the inferno in your mouth and stomach, that is you out.

Suddenly the fun was wearing thin

I was quite proud to come joint fourth, with the only other lady taking part ( out of 19 I think), jointly bowing out just before a Habenaro (Orange, I think), in fear of the Scotch Bonnet...

My recollections of the evening are a bit hazy as the chilli has an extraordinary effect - all the contestents got increasingly jittery and hyper, and , yes, 'high'. And my memory isn't that clear...

What I do remember is a night of exceptional pain as the inevitabilities of digestion took their course, and swearing I would never do anything so stupid ever again.

But somehow, the good people at Radio Bristol have turned all that around. Steve LeFevre is himself a member of the 'Million Scoville Club' and it just seemed wrong to let that go without attempting to join him. All this was to celebrate Bristol's Chilli Festival this weekend.

Mad, maybe. But some say the chilli has real health benefits and, scientific or not, last year's chilli extravaganza certainly saw off a rather stubborn chest-infectiony-thing that I'd had hanging around too long...       But, political pundits, stand-by. Come next Friday's 'Million Scoville' test with Steve LeFevre, it might be by-election time...

A bit of a break from the norm...

Yes, I know, there has been a scarcity of blog posts recently, for the simple reason that by the time I get back to my computer after a day out doing things, there's a stack of email related stuff to do and updating the blog is always the thing that is next on the list to do at the point when I decide to call it a day and get some sleep.

BUT... this video I got sent prompted me to a quick blog - and a break from the political norm, since we're all going to be getting so much politics over the next few weeks.

It's my mum. She's 60 ( and won't thank me for advertising that fact) but has taken up Street Dancing. I'm not sure what our generation is going to be like when we get to that age, but the Baby Boomers just seem to keep on going! See if you can spot her. ( Hint, she's in the dark t-shirt in the middle and knocks someone in the face by accident at the end. Well done, mum. )

One of Britain's strangest pubs ?

This has little to do with Bristol, but it is so extraordinary, I thought it merited a blog anyway:

On my way up to the Conservative party conference in Manchester, I couldn't resist stopping by at what must be one of Britain's strangest pubs: Somerset House, in Stourbridge.

From the outside, an unremarkable red-brick pub. But Somerset House holds a secret - as yet unexplained by scientists: it is possible to suspend a full pint glass from the wall by rubbing it up and down on the wall until it 'sticks'.

One theory, when the pub was wall-papered instead of painted, was that it was the wall-paper-paste underneath that somehow stuck the glass to the wall: but the wall paper has since been stripped off and the wall painted over. And the pints still stick. A real mystery.

This picture isn't photo-shopped, it's real. Go to Somerset House, in Stourbridge and see for yourself.

One of life's little luxuries

There was a significant moment during one university vacation when I made the decision to pack away the SNES. ('Super Nintendo Entertainment System'.) It was a choice between doing ok in my looming exams, or battling my way through three more Labyrinths in the SNES version of the classic game 'The Legend of Zelda' before I went back. I like to think I did the right thing and removed the offending console to its box, where it stayed more or less ever since.

But thanks to a friend's recommendation, I recently stumbled upon this 80s gaming website - a feast of early console games for the gaming glutton. Life's more demanding outside university and time wasting really isn't an option. But it does provide, I find at least, an occasional dose of one of life's little luxuries every now and again...! Happy gaming for anyone who shares the same memories!