Ambushed! The Wizard's Unofficial Chocolate and Books Blog Hop Challenge

Yesterday, while I was vainly chasing £15m on the Scoop 6, Terry Tyler wrote a blog post about chocolate and books after being tagged by top UK romanticist chickliterati, Tara Ford.

Tara's Chocolate and Book Challenge


Terry Tyler's Post about Chocolate and Books

While I wasn't explicitly tagged into it, I decided that these are two of my favourite subjects so I have AMBUSHED the challenge.

...being a Wizard, like

Infinite Bounties of the Earth

Chocolate has always been a part of my life and a positive one too - but as you all know, it has a sting in the tail.

While I smoked - up to fifty a day, and I still miss it seven years on - I could eat as much chocolate as I could handle, but after I packed it in, I carried on eating like I did before - with the consequences you would expect.

I've lost much of the weight since then, but in 2007 I put on four stones (that's 56lbs to American readers).

The flab enhancing culprits? Double Deckers, Mars Bars, Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut, Dairy Milk and some of the chocolate I am going to showcase here -particularly Bountys. 

Bountys - a taste of paradise. 

I could stick my head in an upturned bucket full of unwrapped Bountys and munch for hours.

Chocolate and I go back a LONG way...

I come from a "blended" family, at least at weekends, and one of the strange cousins to visit during my childhood, and who I never saw again, was a soldier who was serving in Northern Ireland. 

He visited one day, in his dress uniform, and out of the blue he escorted me, and my younger brother, to the newsagent around the corner. I was ten and he was six. 

"Do you like chocolate?" He asked. 
We nodded simultaneously. 
"Have what you want. Let's have a feast." He said, reaching for a Mars bar.

I'll tell you how long ago this was - the newsagent was grumpy, white and old, wearing one of those atrophied beige wool cardigans with a belt, his copper coloured fingers, like pale sausages, topped with horny, greying fingernails, holding a half smoked Rothmans.

Mind you, the old git cheered up when the three of us filled every pocket we had with chocolate bars, which we ate one after the other while watching Stoke Versus Birmingham City (featuring the great Bob Hatton) on Star Soccer. 

The chocolate horde included Nutty Bars, which, if you remember, looked like a particularly healthy stool after its emitter had spent the previous evening feasting on peanuts. 

My hard working dad was fast asleep in his vest on the sofa, as my stepmum cooked Sunday dinner tutting loudly every time we unwrapped another bar.

Anthony, my military distant cousin, bought one of these.

Cadbury's Dairy Milk

which is a classic bar, almost ubiquitous. If you really must eat chocolate and you can't make your mind up, this is the go-to bar. And Anthony didn't bother with the fun size version either - he went straight for the kill with the proper family sized bar. Oh yes...a lesson learned.

Student Days

My first proper girlfriend - i.e, one of the ones where rings were involved - was a big chocoholic and many a night was spent munching chocolate in our Plymouth bedsit watching a tiny black and white portable TV, with flickering, unstable images. 

I once informed her that the visual noise you can see on an untuned TV originates at the beginning of time and comes from the Big Bang itself, but she just nodded and passed me one of my favourite chocolate confections, perhaps to shut me up. It worked.

Creme eggs. OMG, to quote a random eighteen year old

Julie was the only girl I have ever been involved with who enjoyed chocolate and cakes to this extent, and neither have I since had a military benefactor who has treated me to a chocolate feast, so chocolate has ended up being a solitary pleasure, often while reading. 

I don't watch TV, except boxed sets - currently Breaking Bad -  and horse/greyhound racing, so I read prodigiously, while eating chocolate. 

Like everyone else, it seems, I am currently reading

which is a dream of a book, a modern retelling of the rascally boor Henry VIII and the passage of his six marriages. Its a belter, accessibly written and clever. I had a session with Annette and the gang the other night and nibbled at one of these delights while I did so.

Ladies, if you live near a Waitrose,
clear the shelves. This is da bomb. Tip courtesy of
my tops friend, Clive La Court

Accompaniment to the chocolate feast

I've read so many decent books lately including:

Crime fiction based in Kent.
Well written, clever and full of tension.

The aftermath of the Allied destruction of
Dresden must be read. Headsplitting.

Great fun novella about flying snakes
from Antipodean thriller writer
AKA Rebecca Raisin

One of the best graphic novels
I have read in years.

Interesting and thought provoking "faction" about one
woman's fight with multiple sclerosis

that I am surprised, with all the parallel chocolate eating, to have maintained my weight at its present level. 

Simultaneously a jest and serious as the night...

My good friend, children's author Ngaire Elder, bought me a gift recently and I am reading a chapter a week. It's Infinite Jest by the genius David Foster Wallace (RIP) which is a modern day Ulysses, an unread classic which would grace any self respecting bookshelf.

It weighs about 3lbs so I will be reading this slow and gentle and when it comes to slow and gentle, every woman knows there is only one chocolate bar that can do the trick and that's the garden of earthly delight which is the Fry's Chocolate Cream! Luxury!

If anyone wants to join in with the Chocolate and Books Blog Hop, then leave a comment below. 

Or just ambush it, like I did!  

Love you all. Wiz xx







___________________________________________

Advertising feature: Great Cinematic and Televisual Night Porters of our time #317

Dexter Fletcher, star of "The Rachel Papers", "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and top rated BBC hotel drama "Babylon"

The Night Porter - BUY HERE UK

The Night Porter - BUY HERE US