Lime pickle and music collections

My dad ate a lot of strange things. When he was still living in the family home I'd sometimes find him having a midnight snack of cheese and half a raw onion. When he spread butter on bread it was about half an inch thick and marmalade was the only thing to have on toast. He also really liked pink wafer biscuits, which is what he wanted served at his memorial.

One of the things he really liked was Lime Pickle, I can remember eating it in Wales quite a lot while we sat awkwardly around a table. The house in Wales was freezing most of the time so we would be hunched over in coats with hot cups of tea eating a selection of cured meats off wooden boards. It wasn't exactly a happy time but now I'm content to have a dash of Lime Pickle on something and be reminded of him, and his silly braces. The cancer and treatment had ravaged and warped his body and so he was a weird shape, it was almost impossible for him to get trousers that fitted properly so had to buy strangely large jeans and wear them with braces. It (combined with his white beard) made him look like Father Christmas during the off season. That's what I think of when I eat Lime Pickle.

When I was working on my car test I spent quite a bit of time carefully selecting the music I was going to play in the car on my first solo drive. The car was an ancient Mark 2 Escort from '78. It was a bit of a muscle car as it had been modifed, this combined with rear wheel drive and fairly shabby looks made it a lovely car to drive around. It was sickeningly fast but looked a bit rubbish (okay, really rubbish but I can only remember it fondly) so you could burn up surprised people in BMWs and Mercs.

After hours of selection this was the opening tune to my first ever ride in a car on my own. It was a lovely summers day and I can still remember every moment of it. The feeling of the warm breeze coming in through the window as I drove, the strange sensation of being alone in a car and the total sense of freedom.

I've got my first proper ride on a bike coming up now, well once I decide which one to get and so I'm starting to think about soundtracks for that too. The opening track can't be too aggressive the road near the flat is swathed in speed cameras but once I get on to the engaging roads outside of London it would be nice to have something you can really lean over to.