Cheese for everyone

Michael Jackson remains dead. Reuters

Michael Jackson is still dead, iwantsomecheese can report. Keep checking back here for regular updates on the king of pop's developing condition.

You read it here first. Michael jackson is dead, and that's 100% true as of the present time. And that set me thinking, what sort of cheese would you have at your funeral? I personally would go for dairylea.

Don't forget to check out the new "Cheese towns" photo gallery, a chance to see what the towns that are named after some of your favourite cheeses look like. Highlights include Caerphilly, Cheddar and many, many more.

First things first. It's not good news from the hospital, I'm afraid. Following her accident with the Wensleydale, my wife's condition has worsened over the last couple of days. There has, says the doctor, been some inter-cranial bleeding and she has suffered several seizures due to swelling of the brain. She is now on a life support machine and the doctors are, to the say the least, not overly optimistic about her chances of survival.

Yes, it's been a depressing couple of days, and matters were not improved this morning by the news that the police are investigating the incident with a view to prosecuting me for attempted assault occasioning actual bodily harm. If she doesn't make it, I could be looking at a murder charge.

Anyway, enough about me. I thought it would be amusing to ask what was your most embarrassing cheese-related experience. Mine was when I was in a cheese shop and pointed at some camembert. "Please could I have quarter of a pound of that brie?" I asked. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me!!! Luckily, there was some brie right next to the camembert so the cheesemonger didn't realise my mistake.

I've spent the day at the hospital again, although this time, thankfully, it wasn't because I'd suffered an injury! In fact, today's visit was as a result my wife being concussed by an 8lb piece of Wensleydale which fell onto her head from a height. She suffered a hairline skull fracture, a detached retina and quite a large loss of blood, but the doctors are reasonably confident that she should pull through eventually.

I've got my fingers crossed now that there isn't another bit of misfortune tomorrow. They say that trouble comes in threes, let's hope it doesn't also come in cheese!

Meanwhile, on a more positive note, elsewhere on this site a visitor calling him or herself "Crackerbarrel" suggests a new thread about people's earliest memories of cheese. So what are YOUR earliest recollections of this miraculous yellow foodstuff? Speaking for myself, I have a very strong memory of being given some of it to eat when I was a child.

Today's blog update is a little late, I'm afraid, as this morning I suffered a tragic accident which led to me being hospitalised for several hours. Without wishing to go into too much detail, whilst my wife was out I decided to place a block of Wensleydale cheese onto a high shelf above the kitchen window to give her a nice surprise on her return from the shops. Unfortunately, whilst standing on the draining board I slipped on a pile of discarded Babybel skins and fell awkwardly. Unfortunately, I was wearing a loose-fitting dressing gown at the time and it flew open, causing part of my body to become entangled in a Venetian blind. As I attempted to extricate myself from the blind, I fell backwards, suffering a further mishap involving the crevice tool of the vacuum cleaner.

On a lighter note, does anyone have any favourite cheese jokes they'd like to share? Here's one I've written to get the ball rolling.

Q: Why can you fly a kite in a cheese shop?

A: Because of the bries which is (are) there.

Just a quick note to say that the makeover seems to be working. The new-look site has only been "online" for a couple of minutes and already the traffic stats have gone through the roof!

The old iwantsomecheese.webs.com site was beginning to look a little stale (like some old cheese!!!!), so I've decided to give it a bit of a makeover. The new look has cost over £50,000 so I hope you like it. It's a bit more modern and twentieth century than the old site. I must admit, however, that the baseball picture(above)  came as a bit of a surprise, as I thought I had uploaded a picture of a big block of cheese. However, after thinking about it for a few minutes I've decided just to leave it like that as it might attract a few more visits from American cheese enthusiasts. And if you squint a bit, you could imagine that the batsman is actually hitting a small ball of cheese with a baguette.

We all know what cheese is, but what isn't it? Put simply, what is the opposite of cheese? I'm going to make a suggestion to get the ball rolling - I think that soap is the opposite of cheese. I look forward to reading all your suggestions over a nice plate of cheese ... not soap!!!