Free Food At The Braid

This evening we went to the International Food and Music Fair at the Braid. I was alerted to this event by the peeps in the Romanian Grocery Vending Emporium in Springwell Street and thought it might make for an interesting evening. I'd got the wrong end of the stick because I thought they'd be selling us food and not, as it turned out, giving it away for free but still - I was game.
Our only problem was deciding whether we should go to the Merchant Fish Bar before or after the event. Miss Erin's tastes in food would run to the traditional. It was she decided we should go to the Fair first. Get it out of the way so to speak before we got down to the serious business of cod in crispy batter. Ach sure - we were hardly in the door before we found that every starvo in Ballymena was in for the free scoff and we had a long queue in front of us. I wasn't that hungry when we started queuing but by the time we were nearing the front of it I was starting to feel pretty peckish. It was at this point that an attractive woman wearing a tweed necktie appeared and assured us that she was very sorry for our long wait, but we weren't to worry as there was lots of food and they were not going to run out, definitely not going to run out. As it turned out this was close to a lie and she was trying to prevent a riot.
Eventually we got to the front of that queue and were allowed into a room where we got to join the end of another line. This room was kitted out with an invigorating wind machine set to hurricane and, with eyes closed, it would have been easy to imagine ourselves standing atop Slemish. At last we got to the room with the food and joined our third and last queue. And got food. I decided not to be greedy and only had Spanish paella, Romanian cheese and salad and something red and beany and some delicious Indian rice and a wonderful, fragrant vegetarian curry. Miss Erin put food on her plate because I said she had to but she only nibbled on some paella rice and a bit of delicious Indian chicken but at least she passed herself. I knew she was thinking about the Merchant Fish Bar.
We met Zoe, Dave and Martha coming as we were leaving with our heaped plates and we relieved them of Miss Martha who was sleeping soundly. Erin said everyone would be so jealous to see us coming out as they only got food and we got food and a baby. Bert arrived late and missed out on the mussels and the Polish sausage and the Chinese food but I don't know what he was complaining about as he'd already eaten half a takeaway Chinese with his Aunt Lizzie.

My best bit was when Martha woke up, caught sight of her loving Granny and rewarded loving Granny with a huge grin. The music, particularly a wonderful female vocalist and drummer from (I think) Uganda, was good but could have been far better if the acoustics had been properly thought out. Not the musicians' fault as it seems they were shunted from a room to a roofless gallery.


Home by half-eight to toast & jam for Miss Erin and wine and Deadwood for Nellybert. Bert really does need to get his hair cut for he is starting to look like EB Farnum. After Deadwood we watched a bit of The Secret Garden. Bert said,

What's it about? Suppose it's something girly?

Not atall. It's a 19th century psychosexual drama featuring Sigmund Freud. Based on a book by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Oh. Is it OK for Erin to watch?

She'll cope. It's more psycho than sexual. Ben Kingsley plays Freud.

I let Erin into the secret and we all settled down to watch.

He watched avidly for five minutes then caught sight of the DVD cover and disgustedly showed his disapproval by dealing himself a hand of patience.

The creation of cake is postponed until tomorrow.