Before we begin, I warn you that this is going to be a long entry. But I say that to all the boys. The recipe for our best ever chicken stir-fry and noodles is right at the bottom but, you know, do have a read, it’s worth it.

Firstly: a huge, colossal, massive thank you to everyone who has sent us cards, gifts, notes (we do read each one, Norah!), kind words, homemade cards, pure filth and even cat treats and butter. We expected a few cards and were grateful to receive them – but we’ve come back from a week away to over 150 new cards, each one with a thank you and a charming story about how we’ve made you laugh or helped you with your weight loss. Neither of us anticipated such a response and I genuinely can’t thank you all enough – you truly have made us happy. It seems insufficient and galling not to thank you personally and it is only the volume that is stopping us doing that, but please, if you have sent us a card, know that we have read it, loved it, laughed at it and are immensely pleased by it. Even our cats got several mentions and treats – they’d thank you but you know how cats are, they’d still hate you even if you put them out whilst they were on fire.

Yikes, that all got a bit saccharine didn’t it? I expect I’ll get told by some frothing-at-the-mouth shirtfiller that I need to syn my own opening paragraph now. But yes: thank you! If you want to send us a card and haven’t managed to get around to it yet, don’t be alarmed, there’s still time (and we have just a tiny space left on our living room wall) – send a card to twochubbycubs, PO Box 217, Bedlington, NE63 3FA. Come on, how often is it you get to satisfy two men at once? EH?

Let’s crack on before my teeth turn black and Jeremy Kyle calls me up for a DNA test.

Oh my. We told you a lie. Well, not really a lie, more an omission – see, we’ve been away on holiday, but we didn’t want to announce it on here before we go because I’ve read enough tragic stories in Take a Break in which Wotsit-coloured thugs come back from glassing people in Benidorm only to find their house broken into. How did the burglars know they were away? Because the vacationers been posting ‘~*~*~ OMGUD 1799 DAIS UNTIL HOLIBOBS U FUKIN JELUS COW ~*~*~’ on Faceache since the moment their gunt crossed the threshold at Thomas Cook. I didn’t fancy returning home to an upturned Christmas tree (I’d just jab myself in the cock putting it right) and a freshly cleaved dump on my living room rug (we have enough of those concertinaing from our angry cat’s bumhole, thank you), so we didn’t mention it.

So where have we been? Switzerland! I had a nice fancy banner all designed ready to go but then I forgot to save it amidst all the excitement of packing, so you’ll need to make do with this shit joke instead:

What’s an advantage to living in Switzerland?

The flag’s a big plus!

Boom! Do let me know if you need me and my first aid box of out-of-date plasters to stitch up those split sides, you filthy bitches.

EDIT EDIT EDIT! I do have a banner after all! Here we go.

Why Switzerland though? If I’m honest, I have no idea. A few weeks ago Paul and I decided to have a cheap holiday away at Christmas after Iceland and Germany previously. We did a cursory glance on skyscanner and found that easyJet not only fly there but do so from our local airport AND relatively inexpensively. We booked there and then thinking it would be a cheap holiday only to realise that it’s actually the most expensive place to visit in not just Europe but the whole fucking world. That’s not typical Geordie hyperbole (pronounced: HY-PURR-BURR-LEE in my native tongue) but an actual fact: see? Worth noting that the second most expensive country in the world to visit is the United Kingdom, but see that’s because it costs £87,455 to park the car at Lands End for two hours. Near the top of that list is Iceland (been), Denmark (booked) and Norway (also booked).

I’m going to have to put Paul on the game at this rate. If any of you ladies fancies paying him £10 to get him to ring the Devil’s Doorbell for five minutes or so, let me know. He’ll be brilliant at it, he’s got a slight tremor now from eating too much Swiss chocolate.

Our research into Switzerland, once Paul had brought me round with a sniff of poppers and a jumpstart of my heart, was scant indeed. We decided to take a full week, taking a couple of days in Geneva then taking a scenic train over to Bern. Our hotels were markedly different in what they offered but I’ll get to that. Even after a bit of reading, we knew very little about Switzerland save for two interesting, related facts. In the event of war being declared all the residents of Switzerland can easily fit into the various fallout shelters dotted around the country – in their mountains, under their barns. I could almost hear the sound of twenty thousand metre-thick steel doors being slammed shut forever as Paul and I lumbered our fat arses up the steps of our Geneva-bound easyJet plane. Even their underground car-parks, so clean and pristine and icily efficient, can be sealed off at a moment’s notice to provide shelter for the quivering populace.

Second – perhaps a shade more sinister – if that aforementioned war was ever declared then the bridges, tunnels, railway lines and main motorways into the country can be destroyed by way of explosives that are already wired into the infrastructure, sealing the country off from possible invaders (or at least making it far more difficult). I find that terrifying – I can barely be relied upon to operate a hole-punch without a trip to A&E and a full page in the accident book – imagine having the button to blow up a motorway bridge just sitting on your desk. It would be less than two weeks before I’d knocked over my cup of tea with a stray moob and short-circuited the detonation board for the eastern railways. Brr.

The day before we were due to fly I suddenly remembered that we needed to sort out health insurance. You can imagine how complex that is given my health anxiety – I have to declare everything I’ve ever fretted about with the doctor. There’s a team of crack actuaries working at American Express insurance working full-time on calculating my risk. I let Paul take care of that – and remember that for later. I also, with the hilarious optimism of the unprepared, exchanged £200 into Swiss francs at our local Bureau de Change, served cheerily as I was by a handsome grandad who all but reached over the counter and gave me a reacharound whilst he deposited Switzerland’s exceptionally colourful money into my hands. I have this animal magnetism – it scares me sometimes. We dug out our passports (still in our suitcases from last time, what-are-we-like) and set about packing our new tiny cabin-friendly luggage.

Here’s what normally happens on our holiday: we pack six pairs of jeans and wear one. Eight shirts and only two get worn (though we wash them). We take enough underwear to cover ourselves four times over and more shoes than is entirely decent. No more! In our drive to save money we weren’t going to take luggage that needed to be put in the hold and therefore it was tiny suitcases from Amazon for us. Well, readers, we managed it – I’m not sure if it has been our many, many years of being committed gayboys but we’ve got skills when it comes to cramming lots into a very small space. You get to a point where you think you can’t get any more in, but then if you get a stocky bloke to come and sit on it, you can always get a bit more in. Try it, you might like it.

Normally at this point in our holiday stories we’d have a couple of paragraphs about the two of us driving up to Edinburgh or taking the train to Heathrow and staying in some awful airport hotel but no! This time I can say this: we popped out of bed at 4.45am, had a shower, a dump and a shave, then made our way smartly to Paul’s demi-car for a quick drive to the airport. This is true, save for the fact that I made him turn the car around so we could unplug the Christmas tree lights (on a timer) and then again because I’d forgotten to set the alarm the second time around. Oops. Listen, I know my Christmas tree is just waiting to burst into flames, I don’t want to give it any encouragement.

We paid for a week’s worth of parking at Newcastle Airport and the cost of putting Paul’s car on a scabby bit of tarmac to be scratched, shat on and probably driven around by someone more acne than man was actually more than the cost of safely flying one of us 1,800 miles to Geneva and back in a metal cylinder full of fuel. There’s something wrong with that, isn’t there, especially as you could actually park Paul’s car in the glove box of a normal car. Surely we ought to get half-rates at least. Nevermind.

We didn’t need to check in as being the techno-savvy couple that we are we’d already done so and had mobile boarding passes, meaning our phones were a lurid easyJet orange for a good couple of hours. With no bags to drop off we minced over and through security into the departures lounge. It’s worth noting that the lass who was watching the x-rays of our bags had the haunted look of someone who had absolutely given up on her job. I got the impression I could have smuggled seventy thousand Regal King Size (known in our family as ‘Mother’s December’) and a pair of nail clippers through and she wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Paul did get stopped, actually – I only noticed when I turned around to ask him if he’d ever seen so many bottles of Cheryl Cole’s perfume in one place only to find he wasn’t there and was in fact getting patted down. Apparently his bag sets off the ‘explosive’ check. Knowing Paul he’s probably stitched a load of those bang-strips from cheap Christmas crackers into his rucksack just in the hope of getting roughly touched up by someone with a beard and a hangover. The slut.

Newcastle Airport is awful. There, I’ve said it. The staff are lovely – each and all – but the actual airport is a shitpit. You know how Heathrow has Gucci, Harrods and a champagne bar? Newcastle Airport has a branch of JD fucking Sports. Why? Who feels the need to dress like they’re stumbling out of a magistrates court just before they get on a flight? There’s also a Greggs in the departures lounge just in case you don’t feel like your holiday is complete without grease on your fingers and pastry crumbs billowing out from under your chins. It’s awful. You’re shepherded through the giant duty free shop with no chance of escape or quiet solitude and everywhere was full of tomato-faced bawling children getting ready to be flown to Lapland, sadly on return flights. Well, it is Christmas, I suppose.

We schlepped into the only bar that looked faintly promising and ordered a strong coffee. We were given a cup of what looked like watered down dishwater and pointed to a jug of milk that was gently heating on the end of the bar. For this we were charged almost £8. I checked fitfully out of the window to see whether we’d already landed in Switzerland at this point and thus the rip-off prices made sense but no, I could see the luminescent giant ‘M’ of Newcastle’s Metro station and realised that it was just another example of shitty-price Britain. No wonder we’re number two! Along those lines we had to pay £1 to get a sandwich bag to put our toiletries in prior to security. I know we fly enough to know better but a bloody quid! I buy a roll of the fuckers from Costco for £2. They must be bloody raking it in.

After enjoying our coffee (enjoying pouring it away, that is) and having a quick crap because well, you’ve got to do something to fill the time, we were called to our gate. It was full, of course, and when the young lass at the front announced boarding was starting, everyone rushed forward as if they thought the plane was going to fuck off without them. Why? Every single flight: why? The captain’s not going to have a fit of the vapours and decide to power up and away early just for shits and giggles. This isn’t a Black Friday sale, you’ve got a seat, calm the fuck down. We let everyone else puff and bluster their way to the front and then boarded behind them, casual in the knowledge that we had no-one sitting next to us and indeed, the plane was only half-full.

The captain came on after we’d all settled and informed us that, due to freezing fog in Geneva, we’d be delayed in taking off in Newcastle. I did think that was some fog indeed but I suppose we couldn’t circle Geneva indefinitely like we’re in The Langoliers. Paul immediately fell asleep leaving me to entertain myself by picking at his ears and looking mournfully out of the window like Sandra Bullock in Gravity. The captain then came back on the tannoy to let us know we would be free to move around and sit in the empty seats if we so desired but we weren’t to do it until we were in the air lest it upset the take-off balance. I noticed that the stewardess gave me a somewhat pointed look at this point, as if the sheer act of me leaning forward to open my bottle of water would send us helplessly into a nosedive. Mean. Paul snored on.

Eventually, after much polite tutting and shared looks of well-I-never we set off, thundering down the runway at a rate of knots. As you know, I’m fine with flying save for that thirty seconds or so when you lift off. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but I also like a margin of error, and if anything was to go wrong with the plane I’d like it to happen so the pilot has enough time to zip himself back up and wrest control back from the autopilot. I distracted myself by seeing if I could spot our house – probably ablaze like a bonfire thanks to the B&M Christmas lights, but couldn’t. We were soon into the clouds and Geneva-bound, and Paul slept on.

The flight itself was wonderfully uneventful. I watched a bit of Rick Stein, drank my water and looked out of the window. As you may expect at this point, Paul dozed all the way, only opening his eyes when he heard me trying desperately to eat a Crunchie without him waking up and thus having to share. They weren’t kidding about the fog mind – we went around and around in the holding pattern. I waited as long as I could but then I had to dash to the toilet for a quick wee – only no sooner as I had started my flow that I found myself canted at a severe angle, causing me to piddle on the floor and then have to scrabble around with the tissues trying to soak it all up. Where does all this piss on the toilet floor come from? Do the cleaners slosh some on the floor before take-off? Goodness me. I emerged from that toilet flustered and damp, so invariably everyone on the plane probably thought I was joining the Mile High Club: Solo Aviator Division. Brilliant.

Finally the plane descended through the clouds. The fog never seemed to stop and I kid you not, it was about two seconds from the moment we emerged from the fog to when we were on the ground. Flying never ceases to amaze me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m never going to be idiotic enough to clap hysterically when we land, but I always genuinely thank the pilot and humbly apologise to the stewardess for making such a frightful mess of my seat-pocket as I disembark.

That seems like a good place to leave it for now, given that, as per usual, I’ve managed to get to almost 3000 words and we’ve only just stepped off the plane. Sorry, folks.

I do just want to say one more thing, actually. As I’m typing this the news is coming in that there’s been another terrorist attack, this time in a Christmas market in Berlin. People are dead, it’s fucking terrible. But you mustn’t let fear stop you from holidaying and visiting these wonderful places. I’ve never felt at risk anywhere and the way I look at it, if someone wants to be a c*nt and stop my clock to prove a shitty, misguided and utterly wrong point, at least I’d be going out somewhere beautiful without any regrets. Berlin is a beautiful, electric city and so worth a visit. so is Paris. So is Nice. So is Zurich. So is Brussels. That last one isn’t strictly true, I almost actually died in Brussels from terminal boredom, but you get my drift. Don’t let terrorism win. Just tell it to fuck right off and live your life.

I’d love your feedback on tonight’s post, by the way!

Let’s get to the best chicken stir-fry and noodles that we’ve ever done, then, shall we? It’s sort of Rick Stein’s recipe only he uses pork belly. Naturally, we can’t do that without some SW official kicking down our door and torching our computer desk, so we’re using chicken. We got the idea from Hello Fresh and adapted it slightly for SW. Because why not? This makes enough for two.

to make the best chicken stir-fry we’ve ever done, you’re going to need:

• one big chicken breast (like the ones from our fabulous Musclefood deal which gives you lots of different syn-free meat in one handy box PLUS a frickin’ recipe book  for forty quid delivered – take a look!) – you can use two if you want more chicken
• one garlic clove, minced
• a bunch of coriander
• two large egg noodle nests (dried, mind, and make sure they’re syn free)
• 1.5tbsp of soy sauce
• 2 tbsp of hoisin sauce (2 syns)
• a decent knob of ginger
• 3 spring onions
• 1 large red onion
• 1 large red pepper
• 1 pinch of chinese five spice

As usual with our stuff, feel free to swap stuff out, mix up ingredients, add your own twist. We won’t tell. For your garlic and ginger, get them minced using one of these fancy things. You know we recommend them all the time but that’s because they bloody well work.

to make the best chicken stir-fry we’ve ever done, you should:

• get a pan of hot water bubbling away
• chop your chicken breast up into thumb sized chunks and put them into a bowl with the chinese five spice, rubbing it into the meat as best as you can, then put to one side
• slice your red pepper and red onion and then chop the spring onion nice and fine
• mince your garlic and ginger
• drop the egg noodles into the water and cook for as long as they recommend – once that’s done though, drain away the water and run them under cold water so they stop cooking
• whilst they’re cooking away you can get your wok or large frying pan ready with a few spritzes of decent olive oil or, god forbid, bleurgh, frylight – but why do that to yourself?
• cook off the chicken strips until nice and well, cooked, then remove them and throw the pepper and onion into the pan and let them cook for a few minutes until softened
• add the chicken back in, together with the ginger and garlic, and cook for a minute or two – then add the noodles, soy sauce and hoisin sauce and cook everything through until it’s lovely and hot
• serve on a plate with chopped coriander and spring onions on the top.

Done! I want this right now. Want more chicken recipes? But of course you do. Click the buttons below for even more inspiration.

Enjoy!

J

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