Wine o'clock

My Wife and I were watching Brideshead Revisited on the telly last night and we both noticed the copious consumption of wine by the main character of that story (Sebastian) and we both had the same thought at the same instant, that we should open a nice bottle of wine! So I picked out a 2001 Clos du Marquis which is a wine from Bordeaux and my favourite region within that lofty terroir called Saint Julien. This particular bottle was from the 2001 vintage coincidentally the year my Son was born. It wasn't a stellar year but the producer of this wine declassified many of the grapes from their more expensive "grand vin" into this one, meaning that this wine was much better than normal. It really shone, delicious flavours of blackcurrant and red fruits, a slight whiff of ink on the nose and a finish that lasted longer than most Olympic events. I bought a case of it many years ago and I seem to remember that it cost around £16 per bottle, I reckon you'd easily pay over a hundred quid for one of these in a posh restaurant these days, so it's a good job I have a few left! 

 

Teenagers

Here's a question close to my heart at the moment.. how do people deal with "mature" teenagers in their lives, without murdering each other?

Take my 19 year old Son for example, he's been away at Uni for most of last year and is now back home for the Summer. He seems to have discovered the joys of "going out" more than would seem feasible to even the most hardened of party animals, and is quite the social butterfly at the moment. I think we've seen him about three times so far in the last three months and each time his "pit stop" at home consists of a dropping off of washing and a loading up on beer, money and fry-ups then buggering off for weeks again! Of course constant reminders about getting a job to fund these activities or hints about prepping for next term seem to serve no purpose but to irritate both parties! Seems like only last month he'd be perfectly happy to hang around with us pensioners and take in a weekend trip away or an evening watching a film or a visit to the pub for conversation and a game of cards, how quickly things change! 

Still, I suppose I mustn't grumble, despite his lack of awareness of the art of self-sufficiency, he's generally a good lad, doesn't get into trouble and seems to succeed at his studies (so far!) It feels like things don't change for years then all of a sudden you're dealing with a different person (almost) and a new relationship has to be carved out, new understandings and new compromises etc. it takes some getting used to I must say.

Friday Smirk

 

Another day here on plague island, but never mind, there's always the excellent J&M strip showing how it's one rule for them but another for us, a fairly consistent historical constant when it comes to hierarchical, man-made organizations like religions.

Escalator to Heaven

A distant cloud looking like it might form into a Cumulonimbus, or "thunderhead". Often in Summer these clouds form from water vapor carried upwards by powerful convection currents. In the days when I used to go Paragliding these were weather features to be avoided! They are escalators to heaven quite literally, in that the air is rising so fast that once trapped in one you are elevated rapidly to many thousands of meters and subsequently run out of Oxygen and/or freeze to death (that's if the lightening and hail doesn't get you first).

 

Commuting

 

So I've spent the last two days travelling up and down to London in (almost) a pre-Covid (normal) working day way. I can report that the trains (didn't sample the tube) are much quieter than usual, on both days I easily got a double seat to myself and on most trains I had plenty of space between me and the next person. London itself though looks pretty normal to me, most people aren't wearing masks outdoors although the streets were pretty packed, making social distancing fairly impossible, I get the sense that fear is waning and behaviors are adjusting. I reckon it's only a matter of time before train density returns unless predictions about infection rates hold true (i.e. they go up), on that topic I'm less sure since the recent drop is counter intuitive, but logic says that a rise is inevitable, perhaps it will be gradual and lumpy?

Monday Mirth

Sometimes historical apologists get so close to the actual truth..

 

Pious-Pic of the Week

Here's some rich medieval bloke looking out of his window at some poor buggers who seem to be in distress and suffering from some form of plague. Any parallels with our situation today are purely coincidental..

 

Friday Beer

Nice beer last night while making dinner for everyone. From the Wild Beer Co. (visited last week in Somerset) this one was called "Everstone" and is a hazy IPA made with a variety of hops from New Zealand (Nectaron, Rakau and Wai-iti) that give it a very pronounced citrus and lime vibe alongside a sweet peachy spiciness, it was really good with the food we had (BBQ ribs and salad).

GVFM

Couldn't resist this one, it's concept that winds up both left and right leaning people in our ever so bifurcated society, therefore extremely GVFM as far as humour goes!..

Friday Smirk

The excellent J&M cartoon, needs no explanation..

 

It's Cricket Jim, but not as we know it..

I watched the new "100" cricket format last night on TV, I found it captivating, not least because I knew it was going to be over in 90 minutes! 

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Cricket and a good five day test match or Ashes series are quite compelling to me (even a good 20-20 game), but, to be perfectly honest the number of times in my life when I've had five clear and consecutive days to get absorbed into a cricket game can be counted on the fingers of one hand, in fact the answer is once! Back in 2005 I was laid up in bed with a bad back whilst the Ashes was on and watched every minute of every day, it was thrilling (I picked a good series to have a bad back!) Since then I've enjoyed matches but, as most working people do, only catching the odd hour or half-day here and there (thank Thor for TV highlights!)

The new format is most definitely "showbiz forward" and aimed at a younger less geeky crowd, but to be honest, who cares! If we get more kids into the game and make it more accessible to more people then that's all that matters, the more cerebral formats can be maintained (and afforded) for old codgers like me to enjoy when we're retired!

PS on further inspection, this photo is slightly alarming! The chap on the right hand side of the stage looks like he's going up in flames! (what's actually happening is that the "showbiz" elements mainly consisted of music, flares and fireworks) Much like the new format, whether you enjoyed it or not is probably mostly about perspective!

 

Midweek Moan

 

Saw this picture on the interwebs the other day, I loved the image, so I thought I'd save it and find a suitable caption sometime. 

So this is for anyone in the following groups of people,

- antivaxxers

- Covid deniers

- think that it's "just flu"

- delusional "positive attitude" types

- WIFI conspiracy theorists

- macho, "you're all just wimps" types

- mask refusers

- lockdowns don't work believers

- psychotic capitalists

- Peter Hitchens

- Katie Hopkins

This is the clown that you are, in the trance that you're in, watching the daily death statistics rising on the news, every night...

Uncertainty

I'm supposed to be having some yearly planning meetings over two days in the heart of London next week, I must say I'm really not looking forward to spending a couple of hours on the train/tube at rush hour! With all of the uncertainty around at the moment, maybe it's just time for another holiday?

 

That's news to me..

 

So, "freedom day" has come and gone and apart from a few rave-goers, or as I like to call them, feckless lemmings, has anyone really noticed any difference to their lives? I suppose it's now much easier to pick out people who are thoughtful/informed/considerate vs. those that simply aren't any of those things, i.e. the latter are the ones not wearing masks on the rush-hour trains. Anyway, with cases likely to reach 100,000+ per day I'm sure we will learn (or should I say re-learn) that respiratory viruses don't really care what we need, desire or believe, they just want access to our airways. 

It seems pretty obvious to me that we have reached a point in the UK where our corrupt, sociopathic leader believes that a body-count of a few hundred people a day plus a few hundred thousand acquiring a lengthy debilitating illness is an acceptable price to pay so that we can get served a warm pint of John Smiths at the bar in Spoons and he and his mates can make a fast-buck in the process. Even the normally gung-ho Americans are warning their citizens not to travel to the UK, that's when you know things have gotten really bad! Yesterday should really have been called "Virus freedom day"..

In other news I see that the race to become the richest twat in space is heating up! Mr. Amazon himself, Jeff Bezos is heading up today in his little knob shaped space rocket, I wish him all success. Although, I bet he's a bit miffed that Mr. Virgin, Richard Branson beat him to the mark last week. Bezos couldn't resist having a pop at his opposition, claiming that their maximum altitude of 85km wasn't officially space which he claims begins at 100km, I guess Jeff is concerned that size does matter? Only Mr. Tesla left to go now to complete the set, I wonder how high he'll get? As a kite probably..

I'm beginning to regret taking a few days off in the rain last week as the weather this week is absolutely scorching and looks set to continue right up to the weekend! In a text-book example of what is known as "sod's law" as the Sun radiates down outside, I find myself stuck in my home office all day doing boring admin stuff in a room full of toasty computers all humming away belching out warm air! Still, mustn't grumble at least there isn't as much heat at home as has been generated by big Dom this week! I'm not sure there's much light to go with it though, but let's face it, in these temperatures the grapes are bound to sour.

Apparently we're starting to experience shortages of things in our supermarkets again, this time due to a lack of uninfected HGV drivers and blockages at ports over excessive new administrative requirements. Coincidently, I've recently noticed some severe price-hikes for certain computer equipment due to shortages of components, which is just what we need right now! Anyway, probably best I don't get started on the intersection of Global Pandemics and Brexit at this point, it's not good for my blood pressure and I'll need all my energy to fight off the Omega variant this Autumn...

All that's left to say is, good luck fellow "herd"!

Holiday round-up

Had a nice break in Somerset last week staying in the Cathedral city of Wells, the house we rented was right in the centre so it was dead easy to walk around the town and visit the many eateries and watering holes etc. The above picture shows the view from my Son's bedroom and you can just about make out the famous Glastonbury Tor in the gap between the chimney stacks, all very picture postcard. 

It was amusing when we first arrived and took the kids down into town, they were totally unimpressed by the huge Medieval Cathedral which dwarfs everything else, but as soon as we rounded the corner into the town square were overwhelmingly chuffed that they both instantly recognized the film set of  "Hot Fuzz" (filmed there in 2006) one of the "cornetto" series of movies starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost! We spent most of the rest of the week hearing amusing quips from that movie, "no luck catching them swans then" was a popular one.

In a quick round up of holiday highlights I compiled the following list of my "best's"..

Cheese - Monty's Cheddar

Pub (Wells area) - The Sheppey Inn

Beer (ale) - Wild IPA by the Wild Beer Co.

Beer (lager) - Cool Box by Yonder

Restaurant (in Wells) - Ensemble

Day out - Cheddar Gorge (walking)

Bar/Coffee Shop - The Bishops Eye

Breakfast/Brunch - Twenty-one (bubble and squeak cake topped with a fried egg)

Cake Shop - Parsons Bakery (Chelsea buns!)

Vibe - People-watching in the square when the Sun was shining (occasionally) 

Quaint - Watching the pensioners playing croquet in the Bishops Palace

With that little lot who needs foreign holidays! (although, the weather was a bit naff)..

America concerns..

Lot's of reasons for concern about America at the moment..

 

Taproom Troubles..

 

As per the last couple of posts, we've been spending some time in Somerset this week and having arrived on Saturday afternoon I dragged everyone 3 miles out of town to the Yonder brewery and taproom. Since we were only there for a week and Saturday was the only day the brewery opens I had no real choice of days to visit. I figured that we'd spend an hour or so before dinner trying a few (little) different beers before heading off back into town for some scran. 

Anyway, best laid plans etc., the weather was looking highly doubtful and after a long drive the family (including two stroppy teenagers) were less than enthralled by the idea of sitting in a field in the rain, good beer or not! The initial reaction was, suffice to say, pretty "anti"! But, after a couple of outstanding beers and a sniff of the excellent "Fatso Burger Co." van, who were serving people with their range of freshly made (locally sourced) food, the mood entirely switched, even the weather stayed dry (just) and we had a good old laugh about it all. We even said hello to the brewery goats, yes, goats! (see picture below) I'd never seen hair on a goat like this and they were very inquisitive fellows, perhaps they were looking to cadge a cheeky half or something?

Three in one..

Tried some nice new beers this week in Somerset, a county that's home to several great purveyors of craft ales two of which were local to where we were staying, namely, The Wild Beer Co. and Yonder. In the photo we have the exact same beer "Wild IPA" presented in three different formats, can, bottle and draft, it's a wonderful beer in any setting but I thought I'd try them all and do a little taste comparison. The beer is a take on a classic session IPA (India Pale Ale) made in a modern style with American hops but using a wild yeast to ferment rather than the usual mass produced "clean" yeasts that you get these days. The result is a stunning, flavorful mix of old world and new, all the up front aromas of American hops but with the subtle flavor layering of the yeast, which gave it an almost Belgian twist to it. Excellent, and my favourite format, surprisingly it was the bottle, even better than the draft version, an unexpected result!

*Note had to pick up some merch while visiting the Wild Beer Co. note the "wild" glassware!

 

Out, out

 

As the punchline of comedian Mickey Flanagan goes, "are we going out, or are we going out, out?" I think after the emotional rollercoaster of an evening that was the final of the Euros we probably qualify for the latter. Anyway, stiff upper lip and a typically English response is required, so, oh dear and mustn't grumble, there's always next time. We're taking a family week off at the moment, three generations of us in an airbnb house in Wells, Somerset, it's most certainly nice to have a change of scene but the weather is behaving even worse than the football fans, still, we managed to get out and about a little bit yesterday (as per the photo above) and coincidentally had a nice lunch in an Italian restaurant! Must have jinxed it..

One more left...

It was a fairly sunny evening yesterday (Friday) so after supper we decamped to the garden and I had a Siren beer that I'd been looking forward to trying for ages. Called "Origin Story" it was an Imperial Stout, meaning a dark beer of deep flavour and high ABV. This one featured 20+ different malts and was incredibly dense in character with chocolate, maple, dark sugar and coffee flavours, like syrup! Delicious, but at 10% ABV not something you could realistically drink more than one can (440ml) of! Even so, that one can was a delight, luckily I have one more can left!

 

Correct glassware

It's a well known fact that beer tastes better from the correct glassware. Had this little beauty from Beak last night while making supper, a soft hazy, fruity and most excellent drop in a proper Beak Brewery glass (purchased when I visited last month)

 

Football mess..

I'm not a great follower (read fair-weather follower only!) of football but it's difficult to avoid it at the moment, the media is saturated with the stuff, I even heard someone on the radio this morning talking about whether or not the players should be knighted! I thought that was a bit presumptuous and perhaps even disrespectful toward the Italian team?  Anyway, I find it utterly nauseating that every politician and his uncle has jumped on the "football bandwagon".. I think if I hear the phrase "its coming home" in some naff political pun one more time I might have to stick knitting needles in my ears, every example I've heard so far has simply illuminated how far most politicians have drifted from real-life, no wonder we're in such a mess.

 

Friday Smirk

Politically motivated J&M this week. It's alluding to the recent attempt by Naz Shah to piggy-back anti-blasphemy baggage onto the proposed bill to protect emotional harm connected with the damaging of statues. Her argument is that the sense of connection and reverence that people feel for, say, a statue of Winston Churchill is the same as the feelings Muslims have for their deity, ergo, people shouldn't be allowed to insult or mock the religion or its key figures. There are several problems with this argument, firstly it's not illegal (nor should it be) to mock Winston Churchill, but more fundamentally a statue of Cecil Rhodes actually exists. It's a bogus bit of kvetching on the part of Shah, and should be ignored.

 

UFO?

For those of us missing a Summer this little cartoon bought a smile to my face on (another) cloudy day...

 

Water, water everywhere...

Had this little beauty the other weekend. It's a collaboration between my local brewery Siren and Polly's Brew Co. based in North Wales. It's a lazy, hazy hop bomb of a beer called "Life Aquatic" and features Talus, Sabro and Idaho-7 hops. It's also a beneficiary of Siren's new water-treatment machine (hence the name) with which they can dial-in the exact mineral and ionic composition of their brewing water. This fine grained control of the water profile enables them to pretty much determine the mouth-feel, i.e. soft or hard of the final product. This kind of thing used to be achieved by actually locating your brewery in a place with your preferred water profile (i.e. Burton on Trent) but these days it's all computerized and automated. It's a groovy bit of kit and a really nice beer, can't wait to try some more and different profiles.

 

Tuesday Titter

Mid Summer in the UK or approaching end-times... so hard to tell these days!

 

Freedom day..

 

So "Freedom day" is when we get to take off our masks and not give a shit about anyone but our smug vaccinated selves, if that's "freedom", you can keep it. With freedom comes responsibility and I don't believe this Government knows what that means. I'll be wearing a mask in public places (see above) until cases fall at least back to where they were in May, i.e. negligible rather than the 50-100 thousand per day that they will be in a couple of weeks time, even at 0.1% of cases involving the ICU that's still tens to hundreds of seriously ill people per day, it soon mounts up, delaying all other medical treatments, like cancer and a perfect petri dish upon which to formulate new variants. As many countries, like NZ and S. Korea have proved over the last year or so abandoning logic and giving up to this virus is largely avoidable with competent Government.

Good luck, fellow herd ...

Venturing out

We decided to be brave and venture slightly further afield yesterday so took the train up to London for the day. It was very enjoyable, if a little frantic, lots of people around and most places going about their business as (fairly) normal. For lunch we popped into Dishoom in Covent Garden, this Indian street food joint was great and just the job for a busy Saturday, lot's of small tapas style dishes all bursting with spices and flavour. We even managed to drop by one of my favourite craft beer bars in Holborn, I was surprised it was open as it's tiny inside but they had laid out some tables on the pavement outside and spaced the tables and chairs apart inside, it worked just fine. I tried a raspberry Gose from Somerset brewers Yonder, it was certainly different (see below) a bit like a margarita smoothie, incredible depth of fruit. (see below!)

All in all a successful day out, just in case, we both took a lateral flow test today to see if we'd picked up any unwanted guests but seemingly all clear, it's good to get out and about again.

California cruising

Siren are doing a series of West Coast IPA's at the moment and they're all named after Californian beaches. I suppose we can imagine the Sun and the sand sitting here in the drizzle! This one is called "Crystal Cove" and is typical of the style, slightly sweet with a grapefruit/citrus twang and a bitter finish. Not the best Westy I've had from Siren (that would be here) but nice enough for a Friday in front of the telly.

 

Art = Life?

What with all the horrible stories coming out from Canada at the moment, not to mention previous decades worth of revelations, I think this Banksy style art accurately mimics life! Unfortunately.

Film parodies..

Saw this, couldn't resist..

 

Friday Smirk

Another good J&M this week; sums up quite a lot of interactions atheists have with religious folks in that they often refuse to believe that you simply don't believe what they do, it's often necessary to be explicit, i.e. we don't believe it in the same way that you don't believe in fairies or unicorns etc. I guess it's hard for all of us to step outside of our mental "bubbles", in my experience though it's quite useful that we try from time to time, or at least be gracious enough to listen to the ideas of those not in our own.

 

Always double-check..

Hilarious! A BBC Wales reporter left a huge dildo on her bookshelf for a zoom call with the nation. Good for her, you go sister!

 

Speed of Sound

I read an interesting article on the interwebs the other day about a resurgence in interest in supersonic aircraft. I remember fondly when the Concord used to circle low over our house on the Western approach into Heathrow, on a clear day it was a magnificent sight. I also remember seeing her take off at Heathrow several times, usually as I was walking across the tarmac from a landed flight or walking to one about to take off (I used to do a lot of travelling back in the day) This was particularly memorable in the evening time when blue flames used to surge and pulse out of its four Rolls Royce engines and the roaring sound they made was unmistakable. Apparently United Airlines have placed an order for 50 supersonic jets for commercial use in 2029, it will be interesting to see how the project fairs, I can't imagine that there will be much appetite for increased international travel until we have our hands well and truly around the neck of this virus but hopefully by then it'll be sorted.

 

Pious-Pic of the Week

Not obviously funny this one but slightly out of whack in that it shows JC as a Northern European rather than a Mid-Eastern man, with rosy red cheeks (must have been a cold snap in Palestine), blond hair and full Viking style beard! The other odd thing here is that he's carrying what is most likely a Bible of some kind, but when you think about it, that book was starting to be authored many decades (if not longer) after his death and only finally assembled in it's medieval form in the 4th century, I sense a continuity error.