Friday Smirk

Another classic from Jesus and Mo, or so they say..

New Digs

I was up in London on Monday delivering my Daughter to her new flat share in Bermondsey. She's in her final year at UCL and her flatmate from last year has moved back to the USA, hence the need to find new digs. This time she has a room in a three bedroom flat that backs onto Burgess Park (see picture above) and although it's a bit of a trek to the nearest tube station it seems like a decent spot. Hopefully I won't need to drive there too often over the course of the year, it's a real pain to get to from the West (M4 corridor) as you have to plough all the way across town and out the other side down the Old Kent Road, even on a Bank Holiday it took two hours.

Midweek Mirth

Apparently "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here" was a real bitch back in the middle ages..

Friday Crawl

Spent a pleasant afternoon in London Bridge yesterday (Friday) a little business and then met with a mate for a few pints and a catch up before walking across to Waterloo and the train home. We started our little session/crawl in the Rake in Borough Market, a reliable craft beer establishment, scruffy and small but the beer is always well kept and on point. I went for a pint of Verdant best bitter on cask, unusual for me as I usually prefer pale ales and IPA's on keg but I was feeling a little adventurous, it was delicious. After the Rake we wandered down Union Street stopping off at the Rose and Crown (for food) and then onto The Ring on Blackfriars Road who have a nice range of SALT beers (they don't put salt in the beer, the brewery is based in Saltaire near Shipley). After that we headed up to The Waterloo Tap under the arches on Sutton Walk and then a final scoop in the Brewdog under Waterloo station.

I snapped the above picture of the beer board in the Rake, a couple of bankers on there! I particularly liked the way they served their London Black (i.e. properly in two goes, like Guinness) and it was chilled perfectly, my mate had never tried it before so I got him a pint, it was a hit. In case you're wondering, the writing on the wall is a Rake tradition, if you're a professional brewer you are allowed to write a message on the wall! Coincidentally you can see the Saltaire Brewery scribblings in the picture, bottom centre..

Resolution

I saw this photo on the interwebs the other day, it took me while to figure out what it was but eventually I got there. It's the top of one of the great pyramids in Egypt but looking down on it from above (probably a drone shot). Anyway as you can see the much vaunted "precision" with which these structures are endowed is somewhat of an illusion. I was fortunate to visit them back in the 80s, it was a big surprise to me, after seeing the classic (smooth looking) photo's, that the individual blocks that make up the structure were so huge and so random, the whole thing is more or less a pile of ill fitting blocks. It's unsurprising this is the case, bearing in mind the technologies the ancients had available to them, and in no way diminishes the achievement, but care is needed when making assumptions about things when observing from a distance, it's all about resolution.

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo, pointing out the beautiful circularity of religious reasoning..

Old and New

Spent a pleasant half hour in the new Siren bar in Reading (RG1) last Saturday while waiting for a train and tried one of their new brews. It's a reworking of an old beer first brewed somewhere around 2014/5, and this time around is called "Eleven Finger Discount" (I believe it was originally called Ten Finger Discount) It's a pokey IPA hopped exclusively with NZ varietals and spun with Cedar wood in a Spinbot  machine (unavailable back in the day). It's an amazingly punchy hit of tropical fruits, spicy wood and bitterness, a great example of a modern IPA and at 7.4% perfect in half pint measures (as per the picture)

Full Complement

Walking past my favourite little pond the other lunchtime and noticed a full complement of aquatic birds! All of the hatchlings of the last nine months were present and correct, three young Mallards and three  Moorhens. I was surprised, you'd normally expect one of two of them not to make it but apparently this tiny patch of water next to a busy road junction makes a pretty decent place to raise young.

Conspiracy Theories

 

I've been watching the emerging story about the super yacht "Bayesian" which sunk off the Sicilian coast over the weekend. I suppose my draw to this tragedy is sparked by the fact that one of the passengers was a chap called Mike Lynch who was a big name in UK IT circles and whom I met (briefly) once at a software conference in London, he seemed like a decent bloke. Lynch founded a company called Autonomy back in 1996 and built it up to be a multi-billion dollar enterprise eventually selling out to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11Bn. The sale was successful from a financial point of view for Lynch who is rumoured to have trousered over half a billion, but was a disaster for HP who later went on to sue Lynch and his management team for allegedly over inflating the value of the firm. After a 10 year legal battle, and after being deported to the USA, Lynch was acquitted of all charges this year.

Interestingly, the name of the 55m boat, which was registered to Lynch's wife Angela, refers to one of the main statistical techniques used by Autonomy in their early products. Named after Thomas Bayes, who first published a paper on probability theory in 1763, Bayesian statistics were developed further in the 18th and 19th centuries and now form the basis of a lot of the software products that aim to find patterns and classify the vast volumes of data in modern transactional and unstructured content (i.e. documents, video and audio) based systems. Many new AI tools like ChatGPT have Bayesian algorithms buried deep inside them, it's quite amazing how these seemingly brand new things have their roots tracing as far back in history as the 1700s!

So why did I title this post "Conspiracy Theories", well, in a slightly unbelievable turn of events Lynch's co-defendant in his trial this year, Stephen Chamberlain, was out running in Cambridgeshire on the same weekend as the Bayesian sank when he was struck by a car and died! No doubt these two events are not linked in any way but you can certainly see how conspiracy theories start!

Unfortunately I fear that the six people missing after the sinking of the Bayesian are probably drowned, although people have survived in air pockets in boats before it seems like this incident was particularly violent and sudden, I suspect the passengers, who were sleeping when the storm hit, had little time to react and I know that Lynch himself had some kind of lung condition, not ideal if you have to spend any time underwater! We will, no doubt, find out more as the situation unfolds but you can't help but feel sadness for all involved, it seems like a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Juicy

I got my hands on some of the Alien Romulus beer brewed by Siren for the release of the new film over the last weekend. It's a thick gloopy fruit filled saison style beer that is initially puckering in the mouth but after a few swigs the fruit shines through, cherries, raspberries and various red fruits, sour but not overly so and the slightest hint of a hop underpinning in the mix too. Good effort, can't wait to see the film!

Monday Mirth

Apparently rabbits were a big problem in the Middle Ages...

Sunday Smile

There's a growing sense that Trump's crowds are getting smaller, is it because they're afraid of getting shot or because he's a dribbling imbecile, I couldn't possibly comment..

Odious Grifter

I see that Liz Truss walked off a lecture stage this week when the group "Led by Donkeys" unfurled a banner with a lettuce on it (see above). Truss said "that's not funny" and flounced out. This led to many on Twitter commenting on how funny the incursion actually was and that crashing the economy and putting everyone's mortgages up wasn't particularly funny either. Personally I think this is a point that should be made to this odious grifter at every opportunity, shame people are still daft enough to pay money to her (including the tax payer!)

Friday Smirk

J and M on point as usual, we seem to be entering an age of "blasphemy" or should I say reverting to a society divided by medieval cults, where people guide their vindictive actions and protect their deep-seated insecurities through unfalsifiable myths, invisible devils and bronze age fairy tales, it's a real shame, things were going so well..

Alien: Romulus

I'm delighted to see that my local craft brewer, Siren, is branching out in terms of marketing by sponsoring the UK release of the new Aliens film, which sounds amazing. Being an early investor in Siren I have been invited to a private viewing of the film in Reading next week where we also get to try a new Siren beer called "Something in the water", a fruited sour which was made specifically for the film release. I also noticed that the London premier of the film in Leicester Sq. this week was attended by the management team of Siren and their logo was plastered all over the place (see picture below), nice to see! 

Hopefully they managed to shift a few cans of their new beer as well as promoting their brand, perhaps even turned a few heads of people who have never really tried edgy craft beer before, who knows, they may even start a new trend for matching beers with films, although thinking about it this may not be a new thing as I noted earlier in the year while visiting Hanoi, Vietnam!

Full English

I see that 10p Lee has got himself into trouble again, apparently he tweeted that he'd just had a "Full English" breakfast and pondered if soon people would be called "racist" for using that label. Pictured above is a Full-English-Lite that I had back in June in a Premier Inn in Penrith on the way to picking up my Son and all his gear from Scotland, it was unhealthy, fat laden and of dubious nutritional value, but bloody tasty, I think "English" might be the most suitable adjective..

Muscle Memory

Back in the dark ages (when I was in my early 20s) I used to play darts for a local pub team, we used to travel around various venues and pubs in Surrey playing other teams in a county league. Then, once a year we used to attend a league final where the top players from all the teams would battle it out for supremacy. I used to be a reasonable player and one year I made it into the final, the week before the final I lost my darts (first time ever) and the day of the final I went to the shop and bought a new set, I unwrapped them two minutes before my first match. 

Now, a set of darts is quite a personal thing, a particular shape, weight and balance that you practice endlessly with and have muscle memory for, changing any of these elements means re-learning is required! I assumed I would be useless, I'd all but written off my challenge before I started and so the whole team was totally gob-smacked when my first throw in my first match I scored 180 (the maximum) To this day I can't explain it, perhaps my extra concentration because of the new darts helped or perhaps the new darts were so similar to the old ones that adjustments weren't needed, anyway suffice to say that the high scoring didn't continue and I settled into a more regular game after that. I didn't do too badly though, I came second in the overall competition, only just losing the final in a very close match (my finishing let me down)

Fast forward to the present and the other week a good mate of mine (who also used to be in the same team back then) and I went for a couple of "Friday evening pints" in the Nags Head in Reading. When we sat down he pointed out that the dart board was empty (see picture above) and did I remember when we used to play, I certainly did and we decided to have a little re-match. We were both hopeless, almost like beginners again, scores all over the place and dozens of darts to finish on a double! We were about to give up and sit down when we were noticed by a couple of other people in the bar who challenged us to a game, we accepted and ended up playing a dozen games with them, it was great fun and we got better and better as time went on, I guess muscle memory is never erased completely! (we still lost overall but the games towards the end were respectable)

Money and religion

I see the Church is paying suspected paedophiles to leave now.. (what the holy feck!) Apparently the £240,000 payment to Canon Andrew Hindley was the "only option" left for the Church... Well, apart from dobbing him into the police and kicking him out for being a nonce, obviously..

Stompin Grounds

Tried another of the Barista series at the weekend, this is "Stompin' Grounds" a red ale infused with coffee on the cold side. Probably my favourite of the series so far (one more to go) , this style of beer suits coffee very well and the red fruit flavours really shone through, nice mouthfeel too, very smooth.

Long Walk

We visited the "Long Walk" in Windsor today, it was splendid strolling through the tree avenue, much welcome shade! After our 4km jaunt into town from our parking spot in the great park we treated ourselves to a couple of cold beers in the Two Flints taproom under the railway arches while working up the energy to walk back to the car!

Old Age

It's funny how as I age I don't often think about it and I find that the old adage is true, i.e. that inside old people's heads they're still 16! But, age does have a habit of catching up with you every now and again, I've had a bad back this week (classic LBP caused by compressed/worn out discs) and although it's not really stopped me doing anything whenever I move I'm reminded that bodies and more particularly spines, don't last forever! Shame we can't all be tortoises really...

Saturday Smile

I never read this one?

Identity

Women's Olympic boxing be like..

Friday Smirk

Good point J&M, I guess the best Christians can say is that God gave up his only Son for a weekend, not much of a sacrifice when you put it like that..

Good Karma

I was out walking yesterday, my daily constitutional, and on turning a corner around a row of houses I heard a feint male voice saying "help, help". At first I couldn't see where it was coming from but as I scanned around I noticed an old grey haired chap on his knees in the middle of a rose bush/plant in his front garden, I went over to him and he looked up and said "please help me I've fallen and I can't get up". As I surveyed the scene there was a large ceramic pot on it's side next to him and alarmingly quite a bit of blood on his face and arm, the rose was a large spikey thing climbing up the front wall of his house. 

Anyway, I managed to get him up with a classic Heimlich-like manoeuvre (under-arm lift) and had a proper look at his wounds, they looked worse than they were, he'd obviously fallen forwards while on his knees and face planted into the rose plant, he'd also scraped his arm on the bricks of the wall, probably trying to break his fall! I stayed with him until he'd calmed down a bit, he was quite an old chap, and once he was settled and cleaned up a tad I left him to it. While we were chatting he told me that he was due to go on holiday the next day and that his daughter would "kill him", we had a chuckle. When I got home I told my daughter the tale and she said that I'd probably get some good karma now, it did make me think, does someone always have to have bad karma for another person to get the good stuff? 

Favourite Beer

 

I saw an interesting piece from a beer critic the other day, who wrote that people often ask him what his favourite beer was, this was his (summarised) response..

5. The first beer after dry January

4. The best beer in a day's judging the World Beer Awards

3. The first beer after flying to a hot country on holiday

2. The first beer with a good mate you haven't seen for six months

1. The beer you earn through physical labour

Pretty decent list I reckon!

X marks the spot

 

I see that Elon Musk is getting into an online spat with our Prime Minister over some comments he made on Twitter (I still call it that!) He said that "civil war in the UK is inevitable", then when Starmer said that "We will not tolerate attacks on mosques or on Muslim communities" Musk replied with "Shouldn't you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities". Since then the Government seems to be mobilising all kinds of people to attack the "social media platforms" and to suggest that they are culpable because they spread "hateful misinformation and incitement". I'm pretty sure that Elon Musk knows very little about UK culture or politics and his views should probably be seen in that context (i.e. ignored) but now I see that there are some calling for his company to be fined, he clearly has certain people rattled.

Now, obviously things are somewhat heated currently and call me paranoid but whenever Governments (of any stripe) endeavour to shut down channels of communication (of any flavour) my spider senses start tingling! It seems obvious to me that the Government is thrashing around somewhat, not really understanding or getting to grips with what's going on. They seem to be intent on using the stick rather than the carrot and in a rather unbalanced way, and I'm sensing way too much cognitive dissonance for comfort.

There seems to be two conflicting things going on in these left leaning brains right now, firstly, whatever they do and say they make sure to virtue signal support for ethnic minorities, particularly Muslims, perhaps they're paranoid people might call them racists if they don't do that?  Secondly they won't readily admit that allowing (or failing to prevent) the illegal immigration of hundreds of thousands of (mostly brown skinned) people of unknown origin, then shelling out billions of pounds of taxpayers cash putting them up indefinitely in hotels is in anyway problematic, dysfunctional or disadvantageous to the people already living here, when clearly it is.

There was a similar landscape with the Rochdale rape gangs, the police didn't go after the perps properly because of the fear that they would be labelled racist, and yet at the same time young girls, some only 12-13 years old, were getting groomed and raped over many years! The report from the enquiry into Rochdale (among other places) concluded that these girls were seriously "let down" by both the council and the police, who seemed to let the abuse go on unchallenged even though many people blew the whistle on the criminals over many years.

Are we currently witnessing the same kind of dissonance? I fear that many people will be perceiving two tier media reporting and two tier police action in response to this issue. There are two sides to this, there always is, and in my humble opinion the legal line between protestor and thug should be blind to skin colour and/or religion. We should abhor thugs of any flavour, ignorant Neanderthals the lot of them, however, I believe the NON racist thing to do here is for journalists to report on, and police to arrest thugs of any race, religion or skin colour in the exact same way! I don't believe that's happening right now, which is fuelling even more rage in those that have a dog in this fight, emboldening one side and enraging the other, it's can't end well on this trajectory.

If Starmer were receiving advice that was a little more "street-wise" I think he would change his strategy to more obviously show true impartiality. He could do this by going after violent Muslim gangs and Antifa thugs as strongly as he seems to be gunning for the football hooligans, only then will both sides of this see that race isn't a factor and will therefore become less able to hide behind that label or use it as a selection mechanism for violence and thuggery. Let's hope he can get a grip of this soon.

London Stories

An evocative photo from the 1890's of Spitalfields, London. This would have been within touching distance of the Jack the Ripper days in the same area as he operated, how much the world will change in the next century and yet I suspect, like the rest of us, at the instant of the camera click, most of the people in this picture were probably just thinking about what they were going to have for supper..

Mucha Mora Mocha

I tried one of the Barista beers this weekend, the Imperial Stout called Mucha Mora Mocha. It was a rich and viscous with a delightful sweetness in the finish, my only question about this beer was the coffee, there wasn't much of it! I was expecting a huge coffee hit but only got a flat white, not that this is offensive in the slightest, perhaps my expectation was skewed. The beer is good, the concentration (apparently a very long boil) and flavour profile is very good indeed but the coffee part is somewhat subdued in my view, still, I probably drink too much coffee as it is!

Monday Mirth

Sad reflection of current day politics in the USA, or maybe it was always like this?

Pretty Town

Visited my mum today to celebrate her birthday, we took a walk through Farnham which is the nearest big town to her. Some of the little side streets off the main high street are really pretty (and old!), I snapped this example on our way through.

Evolution

An old map (1977) of all the active breweries in the UK, there were only a few dozen and by the eighties, even less, most of the smaller ones being absorbed into large corporates like Courage, Green King and Whitbread etc. The choice of beer styles was severely limited and the mass invasion of cheap fizzy lager from the continent well underway. Luckily things have changed massively now, since the mid twenty teens there has been an explosion of small artisanal breweries up and down the country, at time of writing there are over 4000 of them and the breadth and depth of styles and flavours has evolved beyond all recognition. There are many who find this rapid expansion of choice somewhat threatening, many older beer consumers still hanker after the days of "real-ale" and the CAMERA revolution that happened during the 80's and 90's I'm not one of those people! I look at the current landscape and think how much further (for the better) it can go, give me variety any day of the week, an unexamined life is a life not worth living in my book!

Unfair

Men don't belong in Women's sports, Italian boxer Angela Carini (above) didn't stand a chance against a biological male, people need to stand up to this nonsense before someone is seriously injured or worse!

Friday Smirk

Excellent J&M, pointing out that childhood indoctrination is still OK in this country in fact, rather cynically, that's where many Christians apply most of their effort, i.e. working with children in order to slip Jesus in at every opportunity, aka brain-washing disguised as virtue.

West is best

Tried a new beer at the weekend. Called "Newstalgic" it's a lager style beer from Bristol based firm, Lost and Grounded. I've blogged about this brewer before and they're probably one of the best UK based lager producers at the moment, at least top 5! (they do make other styles as well) This beer however is a Pilsner but with a big hit of American hops (Chinook and Citra) on the cold side, it's a style that's somewhere between Pilsner (Lager) and West Coast IPA which means it's crisp and crushable but with a grapefruit and citrus back note and an intense bitter finish, I like it!

London Stories

Interesting aerial photograph taken over what is now Canary Wharf, amazing to see how jam packed with ships the old docks used to be! These days it's very different, you'd be lucky to spot anything bigger than a jet ski in these waters.