a crash course in pudding

I was born with a curious mind. Ever since my tender years I've sought to get to the bottom of things, to divine the world's mysteries, to plumb the unexplored, venture into the unknown. I wanted to know why ants became lost and confused if you put a twig or a pebble in their path. I wanted to know how parachutes kept a fully-grown human from plummeting to the ground. I wanted to know why whale baby boo-boos never got infected if their mothers didn't have Bactine or Band-Aids. I wanted to know how many gallons of ketchup the American movie industry went through in a year. I wanted to know why my brother rode the sled down the tree-covered hill headfirst even after he'd seen me stop at the treeline with his own two eyes, for Pete's sake. I wanted to know how I could possibly have broken the window if I didn't really hit the ball that hard, Mom.

As a man, this natural curiosity bred in me a desire to travel the world and experience its hidden delights. Food, libations, dances, traditions...all the idiosyncrasies of culture lay within my sights. My epistemological quest has led me down some peculiar paths, many of which were hitherto unsuspected.

What do you think of when you think of pudding?

If you're like me, your mind—upon hearing the word "pudding"—immediately conjures up the sight, smell and taste of a viscous, creamy, yellowish liquid shot through with tiny translucent orange spheres, which your mother told you were fish eggs just to screw with your head. Tapioca pudding, in other words. (Jeez, it's obvious how many obscure culinary references you read in a year.)

It's a safe bet that not many of you (you North Americans who are reading this, anyway)—upon hearing the word "pudding"—immediately think of fried pig's blood and oatmeal. Or a harmonious blend of fat and batter, baked to perfection and slathered in gravy. Black pudding and Yorkshire pudding, in other words. Here, try it:

PUDDING!

Now answer honestly: when I yelled the word "pudding"...did you think of this?
Of course you didn't.

So there I was, the American and woefully pudding-ignorant saphead, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on the morning of my second full day in England. (It was Sunday, June 13, I believe; I'd arrived on the eleventh, and spent the day wandering around Newcastle and watching the World Cup on the twelfth...if I failed to illustrate that properly, I apologize.)

We had a nice long sleep-in, for starters. There'd been quite a bit of beer and cider consumed the previous evening, what with the World Cup and the Pink Triangle and whatnot. But we rolled out of bed eventually, ate some breakfast, shook the fuzz out of our skulls and got ready to go. Adam decided to take us into South Gosforth for hair of the dog, and to meet Elaine when she got off work. Gosforth is a suburb that lies on the other side of Newcastle from Tynemouth, further inland. Rather than take a taxi, we opted to invite along another of Adam's friends to the pub with us...one who owned a car. Jay pulled up at one o'clock and bent his lanky frame out of his blue Renault to shake hands with Jeff and me. He was a tall, hoodie-clad, convivial sort of chap with a shock of curly dirty-blonde hair. His accent was somewhat strange, even for a Geordie. I later discovered that, though he'd been born in Newcastle, he'd attended university in London and had traveled extensively in Australia and the United States, so his accent had undergone some mutations. Jay's accent didn't concern me right at the moment, though. The problem was trying to fit into his damn car. That Renault was miniscule, and annoyingly ovoid to boot, like an Easter egg on wheels. Even though it was unanimously voted that I should ride shotgun, it was tough for me to fold my 73 inches into the seat. I managed it by cramming my knees under the dashboard and leaning forward slightly so as not to scrape my head on the ceiling.

Now, you know what I'm going to say next, don't you? That I was sitting on the wrong side of the car? That the steering wheel was over with Jay in the passenger seat, and for some reason the left seat had no pedals, no controls, nothing whatsoever? And that Jay drove the whole 20 minutes to South Gosforth on the wrong side of the road? It was an odd sensation, jammed into the passenger seat of a French car, whizzing down the left side of the narrow English roads, whirling through roundabouts and passing buses and lorries on the right. In fact, it was downright wacky. The conversation was mint, however. Jay proved to be as convivial as he looked, and the five of us—Adam, Jeff, Jay, Andrea and I—passed the time in engaging, informative and witty conversation. Whatever sympathy I'd felt for Jay (having to stuff himself into that tiny Renault on a daily basis) evaporated as soon as we reached the pub. Apparently it's legal to park on the sidewalk in England. Curse them.

The Brandling Villa was the name of the pub, and it was quite spacious compared to the pubs we'd been in so far. There was still a comforting abundance of brass and wood, however.
Now, here's the cool thing about the Brandling Villa, and a great many other pubs that I visited in the U.K. and Ireland. They serve food. Forget the hot wings you've had with your expensive piece-of-crap lager down at the sports bar. Forsake the greasy onion rings, the pallid chicken fingers, the lackluster jalapeño poppers. I mean real food. We noticed that the topside of beef looked particularly good, sitting pertly on the menu like that, so we ordered up a round. Within minutes this steaming pile of goodness was delivered to our table to accompany our pints of Mordue.
(Incidentally, the Mordue Brewery, located in Wallsend in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has been churning out quality brews for decades. Don't let Newcastle Brown Ale be your only alcoholic insight into the Toon...Mordue is where it's at. All their beers have provocative and tongue-in-cheek names like "Radgie Gadgie," "Summer Tyne," "Five Bridges," and "Howay in a Manger." To clarify, "radgie" is the Geordie term for gangbangers or punks; the River Tyne is the river upon which Newcastle sits; the five bridges which cross the Tyne are well-known local landmarks; and "howay" is a popular Geordie exclamation, roughly having the same meaning as "Come on.")

This was the famous English Sunday roast: roast beef, green beans, mashed sweet potatoes and chopped potatoes, all swimming in brown gravy. The doughnut-esque thing on top is Yorkshire pudding, made from batter and baked to perfection. And oh, it was divine. I don't know how I ever finished off that heap. We'd already been treated to sausage sandwiches at Adam's mum's house for breakfast. Jeff is a bottomless pit, so he was excused, but Andrea and I were still bewildered. This was a proper English Sunday roast, right here. We were taken aback by its authenticity and sheer volume. Nonetheless we plugged away diligently, enjoying the living daylights out of every bite, and cleaned our plates with gusto.

Elaine showed up at seven, flush from the satisfaction of working with poor disabled folks, and had herself a Foster's. Jay, Jeff, Adam, Andrea and I were deep in the midst of a Monopoly game. We'd attempted Scrabble, but the game rapidly deteriorated over slang terms and abbreviations. I was a stickler; I said we should stick strictly to the English language. (That was a bold statement, considering where I was.) So we turned to Monopoly instead. It was a rousing game. I somehow wangled my way into red and yellow monopolies, buying up Kentucky Avenue and Marvin Gardens, grinning at Jeff and Adam's consternation as Germany whipped Australia on the television. We waddled out of that place.

And as if that were not good enough, we had an English breakfast the next morning. With a cool sea breeze massaging our cheeks we sauntered down the byways and side streets to the seaside in Tynemouth. We went into the tiny Priory Café and got ourselves a piece of this:
Look at that, will you. Gaze upon its wonders. Devour it with your eyes. Clockwise from top left: bacon (yes, proper English bacon...streaks of fat not included), black pudding, sausage, baked beans, toast, and eggs. Let's settle the bet right now: black pudding is indeed fried pig's blood (occasionally cow's, or even horse's), bound together with oatmeal until it's congealed enough to stand on its own. It's usually shaped into patties or sausages and served with breakfast. As you might expect, it tastes rather metallic, but not in a bad way. It has a sort of toasty flavor perfectly complemented by bacon grease and baked beans. All of the ingredients of the English breakfast, when sliced up, mixed together and either spooned into one's mouth or mopped up with a bit of toast, combine to form a synergistic taste sensation which nearly overwhelms the male cerebral cortex. It's a dream: beans and sausage and bacon and meat and eggs and fried effin' pig's blood all together in one place, on one plate, in massive proportions. It really makes you want to slap on some armor, pick up a sword and go beat hell out of some Vikings, let me tell you.

Fortunately for you, dear reader, what we did afterward was even crazier. Tomorrow sometime I shall tell you about it.

And now for some recent news: First of all, we've hired some new pilots, as I may have mentioned. One of them is JM2, a former officer in the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. He was head of the underwater forensics division, the special diving and underwater retrieval team. He's done more dangerous dives to recover weirder objects (including corpses) than I've had hot dinners. He's got every diving qualification you can think of. He owns a lovely house on the lake (go figure), has a gorgeous daughter (whom I went to school with, actually), and is a calm, collected and friendly personage. He gave me a personal recommendation to the bar at the Spring Valley Lake Country Club (he knows the owner). The other pilot is JM1, a congenial and very experienced flight instructor. He's flown everything from Piper Cubs to Cessna Citations. He worked for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for quite a long time, and got shot four times in the process. He's a real nice guy, and a blast to work with. He's generously offered to give me flight lessons at no charge; all I'd have to cover would be the cost of renting an airplane. At this rate I should be done with my license in no time! And I'll be cured of all the bad habits, lack of confidence, and poor piloting skills I've picked up! JM1's had some revolutionary ideas about how to run this UAV-chase program we're doing, and under his direction we've split the workload in the cockpit more evenly. I'm now doing all the radio calls. All of them, even the most mundane traffic announcements ("Apple Valley Traffic, Mooney Two-One-Four-Sierra-Hotel is clear of the runway, taxiing to midfield"). This is a little nerve-wracking, but nothing I haven't done before; I got used to doing the radio calls when I flew with the other guys. I just didn't do it on a regular basis like this. It's exciting. I know what to say, I just get a bit excited and mess up sometimes. But I'm getting better...plus I finally feel like I'm contributing something to the company rather than an extra set of eyes (attached to a fifteen-stone body).

Second, I've completed one the four short stories I was working on and am trying to edit for publication. It's thirteen thousand words, which puts it out of short-story territory and into novelette status. Fortunately, there's magazines out there that still do publish novelettes, and even novellas. The likeliest market I've looked at so far is Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine. They requested, on their site, that writers order a sample copy and peruse it before submitting any work. I complied, and got my copy in the mail today. It looks incredible. There's some high-caliber work in there, no doubt; I'm going to have to polish my story until it's dang near perfect. But I'll do it. I'd like to join the noble ranks of my fellow sci-fi writers, and not even the super-dreadnoughts of Lord Xizor's star-fleet will stop me.