Swadlincote International Food & Drink Festival

Last weekend (the 13th, 14th & 15th October) was Swadlincotes annual food and drink festival. I’ve been to a few localish food fairs and festivals over the last few months, most notably the monthly Bustler street food market in Derby, and I’ve had some pretty good experiences and enjoyed a really nice variety of decent quality foods and drinks. Barring that, and the fact that this years festival was supposed to be bigger and better than previous years, in mind I had fairly high hopes for the Swadlincote food and drink festival. Unfortunately after visiting the festival and spending an hour or so wandering around taking in the sights, sounds and smells I was left feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

There was a fair number of stalls, I definitely couldn’t argue with the turnout, however rather than there being a huge variety of different foods and drinks available there was just a plethora of same old, same old. There was 4 different stalls literally just offering roast pork cobs, with little to no variation between each stall, and it was the same for cheap frozen “gourmet” burgers, “premium” hot dogs, noodles etc. This is what the bulk of the festival was made up of and it appeared to be what the organisers had given priority to. These stalls seemed to have been given the largest pitches right in the center of the market, where they would get the highest footfall.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t a few good stalls, offering something a little different or of a higher quality, but these had been pushed out onto the fringes of the festival, some situated on smaller side streets with very little space and considerably lower footfall. In my opinion these are stalls that the festival should have been about, they should have been show cased and given pride of place. A food and drink festival should be about celebrating variety and celebrating artisanal food & drink producers, not pushing the same old mass produced thing and branding it as “gourmet” or “premium”.

Why don’t toilets have arm rests?

It’s the one place you’d actually quite like to be comfy, instead you end up giving yourself pins and needles from resting your elbows on your thighs.

That Autumn Mood

It’s getting late in the year and the weather is starting to cool off, the nights are dropping cold and that always puts smile on my face. I love waking up in the morning to the feeling of cool air against my skin, it makes my blankets seem extra cozy. I love nothing more than to wrap myself up in them, with just my head sticking out and enjoy those last few minutes before I know I have to get up. The only problem is that it makes it extra hard to get out of bed and get myself ready for work Monday to Friday.

I Once Killed A Boy...

I once killed a boy with a fender guitar. I don’t remember if… ok, ok it was a fucking cheap assed peavey guitar. I don’t remember if… god damnit, fine it was a fucking MDF board with 3 fucking elastic bands pinned to it. You think I won’t fucking kill you too if you don’t shut the fuck up?

Sometimes All I Want To Do Is Sleep

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve had fairly regular periods of Insomnia, when I get a bout I feel constantly tired, incapable of concentrating for even short amounts of time and just generally low and negative. That said I’m fairly lucky with it because it only happens once every few months and only tends to last for 4 or 5 days at a time. I’ve known people who have suffered for months and even years at a time, to the point where it’s almost completely controlled their lives. It’s hard to explain to someone, who doesn’t get insomnia on a regular basis, just how bad not being able to sleep properly can and does effect your ability to function.

There used to be a time when if I needed to escape the real world I could nearly always rely on a book, I would quite often find myself lying in bed reading until the early hours. I’ve read so many books over the years that I can’t even begin to remember half of them. Books have always given me the best and most meaningful adventures. I’ve touched on hundreds of lives, visited a thousand different places, seen a million wonderful things and all through the pages of books. Books are incredible, magical things and deserve to be revered as such.

Unfortunately a few years ago that all began to change, I’m not sure what caused it, when it happened, whether it happened all at once or if it was a gradual process, but at some point I realised that I could no longer lose myself in a book. It doesn’t matter how well the book is written, how interesting the story is or even how compelling the characters might be, books simply no longer hold my attention and I find this quite upsetting.

One Of Those Days...

So it’s been one of those days today, I feel like I’ve been struggling all day and have absolutely nothing to show for it. Work is really starting to drag me down again, promises of things getting better keep being made, but nothing ever changes. I feel like I’m being completely ignored and I’m not the only one. We lost another member of staff today, that’s the fourth one this week and management don’t seem to want to do a thing to stop it. Management don’t seem to want to do anything but pat each other on the back about how hard they’re working and how well they’re coping, whilst their teams fall apart around them. We’re coming up to our busiest time of year, if we lose anyone else we’ll be absolutely fucked.

I Think I Need A New Life

I need a new phone, new glasses, new shoes, a new comfy chair, a new TV, a new wallet, some new jeans, a new tablet, a new stereo. I need so many new things, but absolutely everything costs money and I’m flat broke… I think I need a new me, can I get this one with some actual skills and talents though please.

Review: The Cricketts Inn, Acresford

The Cricketts Inn
Burton Road, Acresford, Swadlincote DE12 8AP

From the outside this is a nice looking pub, clean, tidy, well kept and set in beautiful rural surroundings. Inside it is a fairly standard looking country pub, rustic and welcoming, if a little bit on the scruffy side.

I arrived early and sat at the bar to have a couple of drinks, despite the pub not being particularly busy, the bar clearly hadn’t been cleaned properly in some time and had become very sticky and was giving off a smell of stale beer. Being a Marston’s affiliated country pub I was expecting a reasonable selection of ales, disappointingly they only had two ales on tap, one of which was Pedigree and the other was Lancaster Bomber. I ordered myself a pint of Pedigree and took a long swig the beer was definitely off, it tasted of nothing but sulphur, I didn’t drink the rest. I mentioned it to one the girls serving, she seemed not to care at all and didn’t do anything to rectify the situation, again this was somewhat disappointing.

After about ten minutes they called us through and we were seated, I ordered a starter of black pudding bhajis. When they were brought out they were nicely presented and looked freshly cooked, I cut into them they were still hot and nicely crisp. They had a very pleasant texture and taste though they didn’t seem to contain an awful lot of black pubbing, which being black pudding bhajis, was a bit of a let down.

Shortly after the starters had been cleared away they started bringing out the mains, I had ordered a 16oz ribeye steak, chips and grilled mushrooms, I asked for the steak to be cooked rare. I was glad to see the chips were not frozen chips and had definitely been hand cut, they were nice but nothing spectacular and the portion size left a lot to be desired. The steak was what really let them down in my eyes, it was nowhere the size or thickness that a 16oz should be, I would put the size somewhere between the 10 and 12oz mark. When I cut into it, it was definitely not rare, it was quite dry and after the first bite I could tell it had not been seasoned at all. Because of how my earlier issue had been dealt with by the staff, I chose not to raise it and continued to eat. Fortunately one of the group I was with had a pot of black peppercorn sauce and was willing to share, this actually improved the meal enough for me to finish the plate.

Some of the group chose to have deserts, I decided not to as nothing on the menu really appealed to me and I had been a little bit put off by how disappointed I was by the rest of the meal.

Unfortunately I had heard good things prior to eating at The Cricketts Inn, coupled with the fact that menu read very well and the prices weren’t particularly cheap, I went in with high hopes and I think this is partially why I was so disappointed with my experience. The food itself wasn’t actually that bad but it also wasn’t particularly good, it was disappointingly average.

Review: Beard Lab Darwin Beard Butter

I've been a regular customer of Beard Lab for a few years now, I've got a fairly decent collection of their products and without exception they're all fresh, interesting and great quality. So when I found out they were re-branding and bringing out a whole new range of products I felt like I needed to get myself at least one of the new range to round out my collection. I already own a good selection of different oils so their Darwin Beard Butter seemed like the obvious choice, something new and completely different from any other product I've used before.

Now this is no cheap and cheerful balm, this is a premium beard care product and that is obvious from the outset. The very first thing that you notice is the quality of the container, there is no cheap plastic tub or a dented little metal tin, this product comes in a sturdy, dark tinted glass jar with a nice screw on lid and it certainly wouldn't look out of place in any man's wash kit.

Opening the jar for the first time and you're immediately hit by the smell of fresh citrus that fades out to a gentle sweetness reminiscent of Opal Fruits (or for those of you under 30, Starburst). The butter itself looks fairly similar to a balm and even has a similar feel and consistency to a balm when you first touch it, but that really is where the similarity starts to end. With a balm you usually have to pre-warm the container and even then you often have to work the balm with your fingers to get it to melt, this stuff starts to melt the moment in comes into contact with your skin and by the time you've spread it over your fingers it's completely melted and ready to apply. As you start to massage the butter into your beard you get occasional wafts of the very pleasing citrus smell, this smell lingers in your beard for the better part of a day. The butter itself is very easy to apply and is quite easily absorbed by the hair, leaving your beard feeling soft but not at all greasy as can sometimes happen with oils. Whilst I've found this definitely gives your beard more hold than an oil, it doesn't give you anywhere near the stiffness of a beard balm and in my eyes that is actually a good thing because balms can often leave your beard feeling fairly coarse and a little unpleasant. For me this product really shines when you wash your beard the following day as it almost feels like you've conditioned it, it really leaves your beard feeling amazing and not all dry.

I have to say overall I am very pleased with this product and I'm more than happy to have a couple of jars of this in my beard product collection.