The stuff from before on NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown ...

Irish Tea Tour 04

We've just got back from our Irish tea tour most of which we spent in lovely County Mayo. The landlady of NCOTAASD's field HQ enquired what it was we did for a living. Good question. I told her that this year I was mostly writing a book about tea and biscuits. Being Irish she looked pleased. However, her mood quickly changed when she asked if we use proper tea and I replied that we had acquired some nice Nambarrie tea bags for our tour. Barely containing her disgust and pity she said "I couldn't drink tea made with tea bags, it would have to be loose tea", she then beat a hasty retreat.

We also tracked down the elusive and hard to find ToffePop, which seems freely available in most shops in Ireland, so expect a review of that very soon.

A traditional Irish scene: The holy mountain of Croagh Patrick, some tea, Kimberley, Mikados and Coconut creams Fullsize image

No, I wasn't looking for you

Lionel Richtea and his mates, Simon le-Bourbon, Abraham Lincoln, Vanilla Iced Gem and Sid Viscount

We have seen rather too much of Lionel Richtea over the last fortnight, site regulars, friends, family, people I've never heard of and our literary agent all sent him to us with their best wishes. His creator FiST got in touch to say sorry and to let us know that Lionel is not alone. So before you reach for that forward icon in your email package, its OK we've seen them. Part of Lionel stared life as a biscuit image on our site, FiST used it to make himself an amusing avatar for the www.no-future.com message board from where he quickly escaped and started doing the rounds via email. Cyberspace is a very odd place where a bunch of pixels that you made several years ago can suddenly turn up in your mail box in your own personal spam deluge. A very similar thing happend in the Star Trek the movie when Voyager turned up as giant robot the size of a planet after falling out of a black hole. Well I can see the similarities. Mind you they never said how they got rid of V-ger after they calmed it down, "Alright you've touched the hand of the creator, now shove off".

NCOTAASD wins a proper award

Well it was off the glamourous east end of London for the Wife and I last night to the first eMap Fanzine awards. eMap are the people behind tons of different magazines, like 'The Face', 'FHM', 'Heat', 'Empire' and 'Steam Railway'. We had a nice cup of tea on the 17:45 to Kings Cross and a HobNob flapjack, so we hit the event all guns blazing. We were thrilled to come top in the Webzine category, and also thrilled to find out that we are a 'Webzine', something which we were largely ignorant of till now. At one point we were offered a lovely bottle of Champagne to celebrate with, and I think we were meant to open it up in a triumphant Formula 1 sort of way. However, I said that we would take it home with us and probably have it Friday evening whilst watching telly.

That's not any of your old GIF files, its a proper thing that can go on our shelves