Cheddar Gorge*

1050g of Mature Cheddar

Yep, this is what I'm up against. I'm on a diet, and he should be, and he should not eat cheese anyway on account of his heart and the diabetes! And this is what he does. There's still half the cheese in the first pack, i.e. 250g, and he buys 2 more large packs because they came as a 2 for the price of 1 offer. Of course, I also can't resist a special offer, that goes without saying, but a kilo of the stuff???
I have before frozen pieces of cheese, the more unusual ones especially. When served at book group or other gatherings, at least there are plenty of people helping you to demolish them. And there is always frozen Stilton in the freezer, slivers of which are immensely successful in the broccoli soup I make from the stems which would otherwise be discarded. (You can't escape German frugality...)
But our default cheese? Our staple? If it disappeared, he'd just go out and buy more, even when nobody eats it. The Boy, who insists he wants to be fully identified as Ben now, doesn't like his cheese extra mature, for instance. He always acts as if there is nothing to eat in the fridge, if there isn't any salami or other cold cut equivalent. He'll probably tolerate it in the form of cheese on toast, but that's it. And I'm not going to eat it now, and my BH shouldn't. So this time, I feel like taking it down to the Mission. Would he learn then? Would he heck! Is it possible to be addicted to cheese? Or come to think of it, to dairy products? Or fatty substances in general? The other day I nearly fainted when I saw him spread butter AND peanut butter on his toast. Who does THAT? The kids have been known to come back into the kitchen and scrape off excess amount of butter from their sandwiches if he had made them. Is it possible to be a fat junkie? Is it another variant of the slow suicide syndrome? (I just made that up - but I have seen arguments that smoking can be seen like this, an essentially suicidal tendency, a suicide in instalments, so-to-speak.)

Anyway, if you were looking for Britain's second largest natural wonder, see here:

According to Wikipedia, the gorge in the Mendips in Somerset attracts about 500,000 visitors per year. Most of them come for the geology, I should think, the caves with their gorgeous stalagtites and stalagmites, not necessarily for the cheese. Although, cave and cheese can be combined, for instance at the caves with the great name Wookey Hole:

Cheddar cheese maturing in the caves at Wookey Hole

It's a beautiful and interesting place, almost illustrious, I'd say, after just finding out that some scenes in the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the TV shows Robin of Sherwood and Dr. Who were filmed here. (Cf here.)
If you ever venture here, or get lost on your way to Glastonbury, there's a great little camp site in Wookey Hole. But only if you don't have small children (or any, I suppose) - apparently too dangerous because of the river that runs past (the Axe, I presume). This is why we ended up camping in a field, the only illuminations being provided by the car's headlights..., not the best pre-conditions in the rain, with a borrowed tent we hadn't bothered to try out before. Just one of those stories which are only funny in retrospect.
The camp site hadn't always banned children, after all, this was the site where we didn't get much sleep at all, because a certain very young baby couldn't cope with the walls apparently caving in, and we all ended up on a car park in Wells. Ah, happy days!
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*gorge, n, means, a.o.th.: a narrow passage through land
gorge, v, means: to consume greedily or to repletion, to stuff to capacity, to fill completely or to the point of distension
I could have called this entry Cheddar Man, too - this is what the pre-historic (appr. 7150 BC) male skeleton found in one of the caves is commonly referred to. Pre-historic, eh? It's all starting to make sense.