Kernel TTO

The Fox & Hounds in Caversham had a Kernel tap takeover yesterday (Friday) these are as rare as rocking horse sh1t so I just had to pop in on the way back from town and try a couple of beers that I'd never had before. I can confirm that they were all up to the usual Kernel standards, i.e. completely banging! I only had an hour or so to kill but had four halves in all, of the following ales,

Pils Rakau - classic pilsner but with NZ hops, crisp and floral

Citra, Galaxy, Ella, Vic Secret Pale Ale - Dry with citrus and melon, quite bitter, addictive

Galaxy Mosaic Pale Ale - Wonderfully balanced, stone fruits, orange, superb

Table Beer - Sampled on cask rather than the usual keg, soft, fruity, clean, excellent.

Some great beers on offer, shame I could only stop for a couple but I had to get the train home!

Still on the tread-mill

So, I made it! Since my last post on this subject I've passed the 2000 successive days of completing the full set of exercise goals in my Apple fitness app. That's roughly five and a half years of dedication to achieving a minimum level of steps, calories and minutes of exercise every day. 

I must say, as might be expected, doing this has become somewhat of a "habit" these days and the daily programme has evolved to becoming 30 minutes of weights, 20 minutes of yoga followed by a brisk 8k walk (sub 10 minute km's, usually around midday) I think the hardest thing about this schedule is simply getting a coat on and going out for a walk when it's hissing down with rain and blowing a hooligan, which let's face it, has been an alarmingly high number of days so far this year.

Friday Smirk

This week's J&M cartoon, up to the usual high standard, pointing out what should be obvious to most thinking people, i.e. that not all religions are the same and the beliefs and practices of followers is quite often in conflict with modern post-Enlightenment values like equality, democracy, liberalism, tolerance and progress.

Life returns

I've blogged a couple of times now about a little pond that I walk past almost every day. I'm not sure it's a natural pond as it first appeared as a sales gimmick for a housing development (outside the sales office), then a couple of years later (once all the houses were sold) it was completely dug up and the plastic liner removed. Six months after that the water had returned and ever since then (about a 18 months ago) it's been regenerating itself with plants, reeds and depth. 

I noticed today that the little pond had some higher order life going on too, a family of ducklings (four of them) have moved in and judging by the size of them they must have hatched in the pond somewhere (although it's hard to see where, it's so small!), anyway ducks means that there's enough plant and aquatic life to sustain larger animals and that probably also means fish eggs being transported from other ponds via birds feet, I can't wait to see more critters on my daily walks as things develop. 

Strange Times

There's a sad trend going on in our town at the moment, and I suspect many other towns across this country? Shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants in the town centre are closing their doors at an ever increasing rate and being replaced by things like private GP surgeries, clinics (of various kinds) and barbers (??), I think our little town has at least 10 places where a bloke can get a quick hair cut! 

I guess people are suffering from ever increasing rates and rents and struggling to make a living on low margin businesses like retail and hospitality. The other dynamic that's happening is the seemingly total disintegration of the NHS, we've gone from (in 2018) being able to get a GP appointment the same morning as you call, to not being able to get anyone to answer the phone in a whole morning!

I guess that people are feeling the pinch and going out for food and drink a lot less than pre-covid and those businesses are getting squeezed. Private health establishments (pay by appointment) seem to be popping up everywhere, I suppose they're servicing a desire for decent response times (or even just some response) for our community health issues.

Our communities seem to be changing and I couldn't honestly say it's for the better. Will we all end up huddled around our TV's waiting for food deliveries, house by house not ever venturing out unless it's to visit a private dental clinic which we've been saving up for the last 6 months, strange times.

Earth Day

What with Earth day being yesterday and all, here's a nice photo of Mount Fuji with a shooting star, the patience required to get shots like this is slightly mind boggling..

Going to 11

One of the beers that my local craft brewery (Siren) created to celebrate their 11th birthday back in March was a Helles (lager) called "Times Eleven", I tried one at the weekend and it was delicious! It follows on the heels of a similar beer they made for their 10th birthday called (unsurprisingly) "Times Ten", a crisp, bready floral beer in the traditional German style, but this one goes to eleven...

Threatening Intellect

Thinking about Hitch being posthumously 75 last week I came across this on the interwebs the other day, decent likeness I thought. It also captures something of his somewhat threatening (to many of our religious brothers and sisters) intellect, good effort!

Monday Mirth

When it's cold enough to see your own tweets..

Re-balance needed?

You would have thought that with all the problems this country has at the moment, political division, corrupt ministers, decline of the NHS, cost of living crisis, housing crisis, bankrupt councils, climate change etc. etc. that we should be prioritising the issues we tackle somehow, rather than getting collective knickers in a twist over more mundane and subjective matters that, frankly, no one gives a tinker's cuss about. Apparently not. 

The Portman Group, an organisation set up to "encourage responsible drinking habits" has this week upheld a "complaint" against the Beak Brewery (Lewes, Sussex) from a single member of the public, that the "bright, cartoon branding" on their cans may have particular appeal to under-18s. It's amazing that anyone would reach this conclusion, and even if they did, so what, I'm sure lots of things appeal to under 18s that they can't have (legally) How about if your product artwork appeals to "everyone" - surely that just means it's good? I'm deeply suspicious of this organisation, as a famous person once said, if you want to know what really motivates an organisation then just follow the money! The Portman Group is funded by a cabal of huge beverage companies, including Diageo, Asahi, Heineken and others, all of whom have many reasons to cause problems for small independent firms that threaten their dominance and produce "disruptive" products that large numbers of people prefer, it's an age old tale.

Beak is a small independent firm that's been in business just over 10 years and this artwork has been their trademark in all of that time, all of their cans feature similar styles of art which is produced by a local artist. This is the first "complaint" about it ever (this says a lot IMO) and now they're going to have to bear the expense and inconvenience of changing all of their can art, probably scrapping a load of existing labels and reacclimatising their growing customer base. One of the criticisms levelled by the Portman Group was that the font used was "similar" to that used on the Mr Men cartoon series, FFS, it's a font, no one cares about a font!

Small businesses in this country have a hard enough time surviving as it is, particularly in the hospitality sector, they certainly don't need this kind of distraction and expense on the basis of a single anonymous complaint by a random member of the public (once in ten years of trading). In contrast this same organisation dismissed a "complaint" by someone that a pump clip from Twickenham Brewery showing a naked woman for a beer called "Naked Ladies" (ah those rugger buggers) was perfectly fine, while I have no problem with the image (it's a cartoon!) the dissonance (or discrimination?) on display is palpable.

This kind of pedantry and woke BS is indicative of how large corporations these days seem to "woke-wash" many things that they do while all the time acting in their own fiscal interests. This obviously has an unrepresentative and often corrosive influence in the town square and many people believe a re-balance is needed. Fortunately we're starting to see things change, with the recent rulings on medical interventions to do with gender dysphoria and things like the recent win by Katharine Birbalsingh over religious interference in schools, different areas of discourse but similar problems of the unscientific  (i.e. based on feelings rather than facts) activism (or corporate interest) of the few affecting the many. I hope this bounce back continues, we need strong laws on important matters in our society but these laws should sit on a solid foundation of facts, evidence and experience not the balance-sheets of huge conglomerates, personal fetish or individual feelings.