Pastie Suppers and Big Knickers

It's a well documented fact that I don't like cold. In fact, I don't do cold, which is why the other half goes skiing with his mates and not his family.

I did do cold once (before marriage - a time when you are prepared to tholl anything) but unfortunately it turned out to be the coldest I have ever been in my life, bar none, as I got stuck on a broken button lift halfway up a freezing Scottish Highland in a raging blizzard. It wasn't good, and I made sure everyone knew that too!

At one stage, as I was getting dressed in preparation for the great expedition South yesterday, I wondered would it be cold and audibly mused that I could really do wth a pair of big knickers. No sooner had the mumble crossed my lips that a pair were thrown at me (obviously the memory of the 'scene' on that Scottish mountainside still fresh after all these years).

When I said 'big', I hadn't meant ones that went from my ankles to underneath my bra, covering every square inch of flesh in between. But thats exactly what I got; cream thermal long johns, in lovely waffle fabric.

Not only did I spend the afternoon walking like a constipated duck, (I couldn't bend my knees with the volume of fabric gathered round them as gravity worked on the knickers) but also avoiding bending over in case the jeans moved down and the jumpers (4) moved up to reveal ... what an unthinkable sight!

There is photographic evidence of this, but it's not for public consumption.

What's that got to do with pastie suppers? Well, nothing really, only that when we hit the toll yesterday afternoon, I had this irresistible urge to ask the woman working in the booth for two pastie suppers and a chip. A bit like the time in the old fashioned sweet shop at the Ulster Folk Museum when I asked for a quarter of midget gems, with the greens taken out. Sometimes you just get an urge ...

PS The waffle pattern is still imprinted on my @r$e 24 hours later