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Alan's Birthday

Friday was Alan's Birthday.
We got him a birthday card.
This is the front of it.
This is the inside.
Well it made me laugh.
He seems to have enjoyed his birthday.  I made him a birthday cake.  A chocolate one.

It looked like this.
It actually is quite yummy.
I put candles on it and he seemed to really enjoy it.
I am glad he had a good birthday.  We bought him gifts and took him out for a meal.

Today, Saturday, we got Bubba some more jollop from the vet and then set off to do some shopping.
I needed new jeans as the zip of my favourite ones broke this morning.  We also wanted to look at mattresses and bed linen too.
It was one of those days when everything in my favour was against me.
I couldn't find jeans I liked, the mattresses were pants and we couldn't agree on the bed linen.
But,  my day was saved by a trip to the Chinese take away shop.
I had been perusing the menu and as we don't often have Chinese I asked the young girl behind the counter what Hunan Shrimp was.
She looked very puzzled and found an older lady to consult with.  After some discussion she piped up....."Shlimp, callots and cerery."
Oh...ok....what about the Szechuan Shrimp?
More puzzlement and another consultation with the older lady.
"Szechuan Shlimp.....shlimp, callots and cerery, " she announced.
I sighed at Philip.  I wanted to know what the dishes were.  Were they sweet, spicy....what flavours were they.
So, this time I asked her what sort of sauce the Szechuan Shlimp...I mean shrimp came in.
Oh this was a very hard question.
She consulted with the older lady.   The older lady started to look puzzled and then she became quite frantic.  They both set off to the back of the shop where they winkled out a man who looked like he might be the chef.
Intense consultation this time.  All three became quite animated but, of course, we had no idea what they were saying.  Eventually they all seemed to reach an understanding and the young girl returned to us at the counter.
"Sauce is brown," she proclaimed triumphantly.

I thought I would collapse with laughing.  Oh that was alright then, I would have the 'brown' sauce.
This kept me giggling all the time we were waiting for our dinners.
I couldn't get over the degree of discussion that went on to get to the resulting description of this exotic Chinese sauce.   Brown.
Now ya know.

posted by Sue Banks @ 5:54 PM