Poinsettia

We were gifted a Poinsettia plant the other Christmas and couldn't bring ourselves to throw it out after all it's gloriously red leaves has turned green. To our great surprise we discovered that the plant has new red leaves? I'm not sure if they spontaneously do this or if we've done something special to invoke this kind of reaction, anyway the red leaves are spreading and looking amazing, go Poinsettia!

 

Alarming!

 

Apparently the rationale for the (slightly bizarre) audible alarms that got sent to our mobile devices by the Government on Sunday.

"An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with nuclear warheads launched from either Moscow or central Asia would take an estimated 20 minutes to strike London. This is where alerts would be useful, allowing people time to get to safety."

My first question would be, where might that be then, Scotland?

Tuesday Titter

Apparently Lady Gaga says she’s planning to launch her own radio station later this year but can’t think of a name..
 

Philosophy Corner..

"When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then you're more wrong than both of them put together” Isaac Asimov

London Stories

Here's a map showing the route of the "District Railway" through Westminster. Built in 1868 as a steam operated railway it originally used the "cut & cover" approach to construction, i.e. a trench was "cut" into the ground and then, once the railway had been built, covered over again. This method wasn't great as it didn't result in deep tunnels and often undermined surrounding building's foundations, later technology allowed tunnel boring to occur leading to much deeper (and safer) tunnels.

If you walk to one end of the now "District and Circle" platform at Westminster station you can still see some of the original Victorian brickwork and interestingly there's a black band at the bottom of the wall indicating that the platform depth was lowered below that of the original. Some of these original bricks can be seen stacked up in this old photograph of the cut and cover works..

Progress

Here's a photo of Reading station in the 1880's, it was already quite a busy hub, the main station and the Great Western line is on the right hand side adjacent to the large Victorian looking terminal building in the middle of the picture. I'm guessing that the platforms on the left hand side of the picture are the terminus of the Reading-Waterloo line, a line I use regularly today. The general area looks pretty rural, not many buildings around and I suspect there were fields down to the Thames, this contrasts starkly with the current development going on around the station. Below is a photo of the current station area, it's completely developed or being developed and the station itself has been enlarged significantly to incorporate new lines, like cross-rail or the Elizabeth line.

There's a massive new development going on next to the station, you can see it on the left of the platform coverings, where a multi-story car park used to be, it's an office and retail installation and is particularly exciting for me as there's a huge new Siren tap-room going in on the ground floor! It'll be a great place to stop over for a beer on my way back from London, hopefully opening next year!

The power of prayer

• I pray to a large rock in my garden, and it works!
• When I get what I ask for, I thank the rock.
• When I don't get what I ask for, I trust that the rock knows best.
• When I do something wrong, I ask the rock to forgive me, and I feel cleansed.
• I share my gratitude for all the good things that happen to me with the rock.
• And sometimes it's not about expressing gratitude or asking for anything from the rock. It's simply that talking to the rock makes me feel better.

London Stories

I came across this image on the interwebs the other day, apparently the photographer was "mud larking" along the Thames foreshore and along with medieval clay pipes, Roman coins and shopping trollies this particular time traveller uncovered a Human arm bone! (which was reported to the Police, although it looks pretty old to me!)

It's often overlooked how many people were "dumped" into the Thames over the two thousand plus years that civilisations have been calling this particular location on that great river home. Not just drunken sailors (it used to be considered bad luck for sailors to learn how to swim) tripping on ropes or slipping off rain soaked jetties but all kinds of discrete disposals, plague victims, poor people disposing of dead relatives to spare them the embarrassment of a paupers funeral, enemies, criminals, victims, the list goes on and on. 

It's interesting to think about how this (often) stinky body of water that flows through the capital was perhaps the most useful conspirators to those intent on the obfuscation of illicit deaths as well as a convenient drainage ditch for inconvenient or embarrassing flotsam and jetsam.

Top Flavours

I wonder what these taste like, Carling with a background of self loathing?

 

Friday Smirk

J&M pointing out how difficult the path to (real) truth is, whereas the path to comfortable delusional "truth", i.e. the "it's true for me" variety, takes no effort at all..

London Stories

London was heavily bombed by the Germans in WWII and many residential streets were hit and homes destroyed. Most of this rubble has long been swept up and rebuilt on but if you walk around town a lot (as I do these days) every now and again you come across traces of those lost lives. 

In Vincent St., behind Millbank at the Vincent Square end of the street is a wall next to a drive way, it's an ordinary looking wall but if you look closely there's an old fireplace in it. Clearly it used to be the inside wall of someone's house and a WWII bomb site, makes me wonder what the original house looked like and what happened to the people that used to live there? I also wonder how long it will be before another layer of history is placed on top of this reminant and how many hidden layers there are under it..

 

Cold IPA

I found myself in Exmouth Market (London) on Monday night, I had a business meeting early the next morning and decided to stay up in town. Anyway, I had a couple of hours to kill so decided to take a stroll around Clerkenwell and surrounds, it was a pleasant evening and there were a lot of people out and about. At the end of my walk I popped into the Mikkeller bar and had a half of this fine looking ale by Czech brewers Rodinný pivovar Zichovec. 

It's a "Cold IPA" which is a new style doing the rounds at the moment, essentially an IPA (cold-side hopped etc.) but is made with Lager yeast and the addition of rice into the grist, this means that it's highly fermented, i.e. most of the sugar is consumed and the finished beer is bone dry and feels "light", however the hop profile and bitterness is much more like an American pale or IPA. Not sure I could drink more than one or two of these, bit "grassy", maybe one for the warmer weather!

 

Blue sky Wren

St. Pauls looking fabulous in the morning sunshine yesterday! I had the occasion to stroll past at about 8am along with a lone runner coincidentally captured at the same moment, and all was right with the world, well, this little part of it anyway..

Tardy Spring

Here's a photo of  my regular "barometer of Spring" tree, taken on Monday (17th April) I would say that it's a little behind where it was on the 13th April last year, is this some kind of omen of a horrid Summer to come? I doubt  it..

 

Tuesday Titter

Scott Adams in the 1990's summing up the apparent trajectory of the NHS at the moment.

 

Top TV

Not a new show (2014-2017) but only recently discovered in our house! BAFTA winning "The Detectorists" starring Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones is top TV, so English, very funny and delightfully warm and fuzzy, I even love the folksy theme tune.

 

E By Gum

 

Came across this on the interwebs the other day, it bought a smile to my face, or is this cultural appropriation?

Not my favourite

Out with mates last night, went to a new Mediterranean/Turkish restaurant. Not an entirely successful outing as some of the dishes took ages to arrive and the main courses were very poor, however, the starters (essentially a mezze of the usual kebab, haloumi, chickpea, tahini based stuff) were quite good. Being a new outfit they seemed to have a lot of bugs still to work out, most of our main courses were stone cold and the waiting staff were young and inexperienced. We did notice a Turkish beer on the menu and couldn't resist trying one, unfortunately it turned out to be a typical mass-produced lager, i.e. bland, the only positive was that the flavour profile was quite malt-forward which is unusual, anyway on reflection not my favourite brew.

 

Sunday Caption Competition..

How about, "Some day, all of Siberia will be ours.."

 

Chicken IPA

Tried this last night while making dinner. It's an IPA made by Siren for their 10th birthday celebrations earlier in the year and was produced in collaboration with a bunch of other brewers who all contributed something but didn't know what anyone else contributed; a right old mix up you might say. Anyway, luckily the beer turned out OK, a fairly typical 6% American hoppy pale ale that I think may have had a little lactose added for sweetness, anyway the result of this beverage experiment went down very well with a tomato chicken casserole, nice job Siren.

 

Remoaning.

It made me laugh the other day when a bunch of lemming like gammons complained that the recent visit to Ireland by President Biden showed how he hates the UK, apparently he had the audacity to point out that Brexit has made this country poorer and less influential on the world stage, he's absolutely right of course, it's as obvious as the noses on our faces! 

It's a constant source of amazement to me that pro-Brexit sheep still harp on about the benefits of Brexit and yet cannot name a single one, while the pro-Europe side can real off a dozen disadvantages and outright lies told by the other side with no difficulty whatsoever. When your ideology is discovered to be rooted in a lie, or worse, many lies then it's time to leave that movement, time to start the campaign to re-join!

 

Locked

Removing any of these locks will unlock the whole thing, interesting idea..

 

London Stories

 

One of the earliest pictures of London taken in the 1850's it shows Charles the first on horseback looking  down Whitehall (he's still there today!). It's interesting because this very street was the scene of his execution in 1649, his head was removed on a platform in front of the Banqueting House, part of the old Whitehall palace. A slight whiff of schadenfreude involved in placing it at this spot perhaps?

Art for Art's sake?

I can't believe how elaborate beer can art-work is getting these days, here's a brew from local producer "Elusive" contained in a can that appears to be a collage of 1990's video game stills; wonderfully detailed and certainly draws the eye on the bottle-shop shelf! 

I must also say at this point that the beer was pretty good too! A lovely West Coast IPA, sweet and dank on the nose with a cheek puckering bitterness in the mouth and a lovely lingering citrus finish, excellent combination of Citra and Chinook hops on the hot-side and Simcoe, Columbus and Citra on the cold-side. Well done Andy and the team over at Elusive in Finchampstead, I'll be back for more like this!

 

Reality bytes

OMG, I've lost count of the number of marketing and sales people I've met over the years who actually think this is the way the real world of product development works, depressing and demotivating, but unfortunately true..

 

TERF wars

Came across this on the interwebs the other day, it's quite a good analogy for the current TRA-TERF wars going on, (Biological) Women should have their own spaces where their dignity, security and privacy can be assured, trans Women should have every right to exist and express themselves however they want without being harassed or attacked, but are, in fact, biological Men (always will be) and (some) biological Men present an unarguable danger to Women, this is a circle that cannot be squared.

Friday Smirk

J&M pointing out that the modern idea of "identity" is more often than not just a very ancient tactic used by a minority to gain some political advantage. (all) Humans are evolved apes with big brains, we find all manner of insidious ways of circumventing cultural and economic boundaries for our own benefit, sometimes beneficial and sometimes not! Such tactics are especially effective when they prey on our core proclivities, i.e. sense of community, fear of the other, ethics, sense of fairness, empathy etc. You just need to look at religion and nationalism to see how this works, and has worked a treat for thousands of years.

 

Sound check...

 

Has anyone watched the Liz Truss speech? 

Just out of interest I managed to endure about a quarter of it before abandoning with acute embarrassment, wow, it was like listening to a singularly uninterested sixth-form teenager reading ingredients off a cereal packet as part of a conference sound check...

Theology Thursday

Totally makes sense..

 

Brutal truths

Ha ha, probably true these days..

 

London Stories

George Landmann, the architect of the longest run of railway arches in Britain and one of the oldest. Built between 1834 and 1840 and comprising 60 million bricks (laid by hand) it's an impressive Victorian edifice. There is however another debt of  gratitude that we owe to Col Landmann, the arches have, in the last ten years or so, hosted an ever growing number of small artisanal breweries, aka craft breweries, that have evolved to comprise the "Bermondsey beer mile" 20 or so establishments that make a fine Saturday afternoon promenade, probably the largest single contiguous collection in the country, cheers George
 

Last one..

Unluckily for Ed, there's always a last one, lucky for us it was him. Fortunately we've matured as a society to the point that we (mostly) realise that great truths in this world always start life as heresy, and that we can't really be 100% certain of anything! As Hulme said 100 years later, 'a wise man proportions his belief to his evidence'. This is particularly true of claims that are offered by authorities whose status, incomes and livelihoods depend on us believing them! It's quite incredible to look at the so called summary of "charges" against Ed, they read like a list of Harry Potter spells, not that Wightman was an unbeliever, he simply had a different set of delusions that didn't comply with the pervasive set at the time. Here's the list for reference,

1. That there is no Trinity;
2. That Jesus Christ is not God, perfect God and of the same substance, eternity and majesty with the Father in respect of his God-head;
3. That Jesus Christ is only man and a mere creature and not both God and man in one person ;
4. That Christ was never incarnate and did not fulfill the promise that the seed of the woman shall break the serpents head;
5. The person of the Holy Ghost is not God, co-equal, co-eternal and co-essential with the Father and the Son;
6. That the three creeds of the apostolic church are the heresies of the Nicolaitanes;
7. That he, Edward Wightman, is the prophet spoken of in Deuteronomy 18 in the words "I will raise them up a prophet" and in Isaiah "I alone have trodden the wine press" and in that place "Whose fan is in his hand";
8. That he was the Holy Spirit, the Comforter spoken of in John 16;
9. That the words of Jesus on the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit refer to him;
10. That the fourth of Malachi refers to his person (the prophecy of Elijah);
11. That the soul and body does sleep and this sleep is the first death, and that the soul and body of Jesus did also sleep in the sleep of death;
12. That the souls of the elect departed (that is dead) are not in heaven;
13. That the baptizing of infants is an abominable custom;
14. That the practice of the Church of England in reference to the Lords Supper and baptism are incorrect and baptism of water should be administered only to those with sufficient age and understanding;
15. That God has ordained and sent him, Edward Wightman, to do his part in the work of the Salvation of the world, (to admonish the heresy of the Nicolaitanes);in comparison to Christ who was sent to save the world and by his death to deliver it from sin and to reconcile it to God;
16. That Christianity is not wholly professed and preached in the Church of England, but only in part

Truisms

Much like a gas, "distraction" is a substance that expands to fill all available space.

 

Tuesday Titter

xkcd, on the money as usual, a bullet proof way to ensure that your code will still be running a decade from now is to throw it together as quickly as you can with scant regard for futureproofing! And another thing, if you don't know how to properly handle a condition, don't test for it!

 

A small DEYA

Capped off the bank holiday with a trip out West to Bristol to lunch with our Son and his girlfriend, horrible journey along the M4 seemingly endless breakdowns blocking lanes and causing tailbacks, ended up diverting onto the A4 and going old-school through Newbury and Marlborough. Anyway we eventually arrived and had a rather scrumptious burger in "3 Brothers" on the Welsh back followed by a couple of beers in the Small Bar on King Street, pictured above. It's a cracking DEYA (Cheltenham) beer on cask called "Two Factor Authentication", a hazy pale ale at a sessionable 3.8% and full of tropical fruit flavours, delicious!

 

Windsor Walk

Spent a lovely day walking around Windsor yesterday, the Sun put in an appearance and my Wife and I decided to park up in the Great Park and walk the 3km into town. Lot's of people / tourists around in the centre, so many different overheard foreign languages! Anyway, we decided to get out of the crowd and dived over to the railway arches off Goswell road as I'd heard about a new craft brewery there called "Two Flints" and they've recently opened a brand spanking new tap room (see picture above), it was a great space! I had a half pint of their flagship West Coast IPA called "Sonic Muse", a classic piney dank westy featuring Simcoe and Centennial hops a nice drop, and certainly another local'ish brewery to look out for in future!

 

(Good) Friday Smirk

J&M outlining a version of the "Prophetic Fallacy", in any sufficiently large historic book you can and will find decontextualized phrases or lines that you can retro-fit into any modern phenomenon or event you squint hard enough, give it a go, it's fun, but proves absolutely nothing.

 

Reasonably literal

It's amazing how Biblical literalists dogmatically stick to these fantastical myths, but then I guess the old adage is true, you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into.

 

Midweek Philosophy

 

"Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride."

Anthony Bourdain 

I kinda get where he's going with this and can relate to it, particularly in the weird bifurcated and virtual world that we find ourselves in now..

London Stories

London bridge at the turn of century and a similar view of the new London bridge today. 

The viewpoint of the older photo is higher in elevation than the newer one but it's still interesting how much of the old skyline (i.e. Church spires) is now completely invisible due to the inexorable rise of skyscrapers, the top of Fishmongers hall (to the left of the far end of the bridge) is still visible in the modern view but clearly looks so much bigger in the old picture and the new bridge is quite a bit wider than the old one, which by the way is the bridge that was correctly dismantled and shipped to Arizona, USA (contrary to the urban myth) see photo of it's new home below..

Introvert File

 

The life of an introvert really just boils down to working up the energy to act like an extrovert, until you can go home and be comfortably introverted.

Tuesday Titter

Went online to book a cinema seat for that new movie about Tetris, I managed to book the last available seat but then the whole bloody row disappeared!

 

Gender anarchy

I see that the so called "Trans Rights Activists" have been causing mayhem over the last week or two, scenes have gotten ugly and violent at several events, particularly those set up to campaign for Women's rights and to disallow Biological men from entering Women's spaces, like changing rooms and toilets etc. It's somewhat alarming that adult males dressed as Women feel emboldened to repeatedly punch a 70 year old Woman in the face until her eye socket broke, as happened at a "Let Women Speak" rally in New Zealand last week, simply because she had a different point of view. A similar attack took place in Vancouver, Canada where a Conservative activist and father called "Billboard Chris", who campaigns for children's rights, was choked out by an adult male dressed as a Woman, again, simply because he disagrees with the pervasive gender ideology! Although, how anyone can think that it's OK for children below the age of consent to take puberty blockers and undergo medical procedures that leave them disfigured and sterile is a real eye opener!

I'm with Women on this, being the father of a teenage daughter I want her to have female only spaces where she can feel safe and, as far as possible, avoid male predators. Of course, not all trans people are sexual predators! But, here's the rub, how is she to tell the difference between a man (dressed as a Woman) with harmless intent, and a man (dressed as a Woman) with evil intent? Some Men harm Women, that's just a fact, it very rarely happens the other way around and that's why Women need certain protections against Biological men, it's sad but true, we're just Chimps in shoes at the end of the day.

 

Chicken Gravy

I picked up a can from one of my favourite brewers, Beak, yesterday. Called "Effigies" it was a hazy East Coast IPA, looking magnificent (like Chicken gravy) it was a heady dose of hoppy heaven, obscene quantities of Nelson and Motueka hops from NZ went into the beer and imparted flavours of lemon and lime with a background note of ripe peaches, it had classic Beak smoothness and a creamy rich mouthfeel that those guys have become well known for, great stuff!

Rain, rain go away..

Blimey, lot of rain yesterday!

 

White night..

For some reason we had a bit of a splurge on white wine last night and I opened a bottle of a 2002 Beaucastel Blanc. Now, this particular chateau is famous for it's red wines normally and those can fetch a pretty penny, especially the "Hommage a Jaques" versions, however they also do a couple of whites but you don't often see them for sale outside of France. This one was their premium white, made from Roussanne grapes (although some years other varieties are included in the blend) and from the Chateauneuf-de-Pape region down in the South of France,  it's a stunner, and has aged beautifully. Orange, melon and stone fruits dominate and the rich, creamy mouthfeel is as smooth as you like, a real treat for a rainy Friday night with our fish and chips!