BBC Good Food Show, Birmingham

Today Douglas and I got up early, got sorted out and went down to the NEC near Birmingham by about 9.30am (it opened at 9) and went to the disabled car park, which was still about 20 mins walk away from the exhibition halls. Luckily nearly all of this walk was inside.

We got our tickets a while ago.. we decided to do the "disabled and helper" thing, and so i as the carer got in free!! We took Margarets wheelchair, and although most of the time D sat in it, and i pushed, as it was a very long way round, and we were there till about 3pm, I had a few goes too when i was flagging.

There were loads and loads of stalls selling everything from museli to chillis to washing up cloths.. chocolate and steam cleaners too! We had a taste of loads of things, and purchased a few, but only in moderation :-)

Our most expensive purchase was a very nice new potato and other things peeler, oh and we switched our energy tarrif (gas and elec) to National Trust, and decided not to get a new Steel (knife sharpner) at £90 for Douglas.

We were so glad of the wheelchair, because during the day we procured little bits of this and that, leaflets here there and everywhere, and would have ground our feet into the ground without something to hang it all on!!

At one point I saw a stall selling chilli dips. D loves chilli, so I put a tiny bit of bread into one called 100% pain (thinking the name just meant very hot) I gave it to him, and almost immediatley I could see he was in agony. The stuff was hot enough to blast a rocket into space. We purchased an emergency bottle of water from a nearby coffee stall, but he was still in so much pain that they gave him a cup of milk - very good for calming burning mouths down. After a cup and a half of milk, his poor mouth had calmed down somewhat, but the nasty bitter taste still remained.

I also had taken a dip of a less hot chilli sauce, which was burning my mouth up, and the water didnt quench my fire. In the end I had to take a mouth full of milk and just hold it there to soothe things - even though I really dont like milk and it tasted disgusting.

It was a great experience. D drove home, and we got back to a waiting set of moggies at about 6pm.

It was nice having a day off for the food show.. who knows what we will do with the rest of our mini holiday?!! Dear reader, you will just have to return to this blog after the weekend to find out what we did (if anything blog worthy occurs!)