Don't Rain On My Parade

Saturday mornings for me have long been defined by recooperating from the night before and settling in to the weekend. Part of this recovery process involves a long stretch on the sofa watching Saturday Kitchen, a cookery programme with two live guest chef's and old episodes of Rick Stein, Keith Floyd, Masterchef etc which lure me into the sense of false security that the afternoon shopping trip will be painless and worthwhile.

The fact that the people on TV have had to get up hours before I did makes me feel better and the process of watching chef's make mouth watering dishes gets me in the mood for lunch which in turn provides me the energy to go to the supermarket for groceries and enivitably crush the goodwill built up in the last few hours as my willpower is slowly sapped by some nimrod in aisle seven.

However, there was no Saturday Kitchen. Instead of watching delcious recipes that I want to make but will then have no inclination to follow through because I've been half sleeping and forgotten the ingredients, there was some marching band or what-not parading about the place and dulling up my morning. I figured it had something to do with the Falkland's and turned the TV off after failing to find my programme on another BBC channel. So I did the only decent thing and went back to bed.

After rising a second time and showering to wake up more than to get cleaned, we made our way to Connswater Shopping Centre, possibly the most soul-destroying place one can shop at on a weekend (or possibly any other day) but we had good reason. It was a friends birthday and we were buying him a Bop-It which could only be purchased in Argos which is to be found inside said Shopping Centre.

On reaching the outer perimeter of the complex, there was bumper to bumper traffic coming and going from all sides of the roundabout and immediately my heart sank - this would be a long shop. Again I wondered what was going on and chalked it down to a Falklands memorial or something. What else could it be?

Later on at the party, I was recalling my above dismay regarding the lack of my TV show and the gut-wrenching standstill and pain of shopping and was told, in humourous terms, that it was the Queen's birthday. To make matters worse, it wasn't even her real birthday. Cheeky cow :P

She was born on 21 April 1926 but has another birthday celebrated on the first, second, or third Saturday in June, and is marked in London by the ceremony of Trooping the Colour, which is also known as the Queen's Birthday Parade. So I can blame that for my lack of Saturday morning culinary delight. However, I'm sure she'd rather be watching Saturday Kitchen than watching a slow march around the palace.