Not so much a train of thought, more a replacement bus service of godless waffle, jokes and memes with a snifter of wine and craft-beer related stuff on the side..
Friday, March 14, 2025
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Memory Lane
Siren seem to be taking a trip down memory lane at the moment and re-brewing several of their old favourites. Here's another one, "Origin Story" an inky black Imperial Stout made with a crazy number of different malts and as smooth as a proverbial baby's bottom! Fortunately doesn't taste or smell like one though, expect roasted malts, coffee, chocolate, brown sugar and a silky smooth mouthfeel. First tried back in 2022 in mid-Summer, delicious stuff!
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Rivington
I had one of these the other weekend, it's a collaboration between local brewery Siran and Rivington who are based up in Lancashire. It's a hazy IPA/DIPA brewed with American & NZ hops, its lush, approaching Verdant levels of murk, a distinct taste profile from the Nelson, fruit forward and very easy to drink. I must seek out some more Rivington beers, if this one is representative then they're most definitely worth a look.
Monday, March 10, 2025
Ooo-er Missus
In the roof gutter of one of the old buildings in my town I noticed a rather unusual object, perhaps a plumber left his pink plunger up there, who knows, I was going to point this out to the people in the building but didn't want to be a dick about it..
Saturday, March 08, 2025
Shiver me timbers
Friday, March 07, 2025
Thursday, March 06, 2025
EMM revisited
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Midweek Mirth
I do worry sometimes that "mental health" issues are becoming like modern day "fashion statements"..
Tuesday, March 04, 2025
SRM
Monday, March 03, 2025
Henley Sunday
Lovely Sunday afternoon for a walk in the Spring sunshine yesterday. We ended up taking a stroll around Henley On-Thames, the river was running high and fast but the blue skys and sun were very welcome after a prolonged period of rain and drab greyness here in the UK. I think everyone had the same idea as us as the town was really busy, still, nice to see people out and about for a change.
Sunday, March 02, 2025
New York Stories
A colourised picture from the 1950's showing how important passenger liners were back in the day for long haul travel, before the days of airlines the only way to get across the pond was on one of these beauties, an amazing snapshot in time.
Friday, February 28, 2025
State of the nation..
Anyone who watched the shit show of a press conference in the Whitehouse this evening between Trump, Vance and Zelensky simply has to agree that the US leadership is a fecking disgrace. Did I need to say that out loud or is everyone else in the world (appart from Russian crime gang members, lead by the butcher Putin) thinking the same thing?
I wonder what Putin has on Trump? Is it a video with hookers, is it money laundering, drug money, Epstein or some other criminal activity? It would appear that the ally many of us thought we had is looking more and more like an enemy and friend of the Russian crime syndicate. On a side note, if our current King hosts another state visit with that twat, then he can sod right off too.
At this point I think the only winner is China, they should step in at this point and do a mineral deal with Ukraine in exchange for military guarentees, that would put the cat among the pigeons..
It'll be interesting to see what the markets do on Monday, I wouldn't want to be holding Tesla stock right now.
Friday Smirk
Jesus and Mo pointing out the best way to make Atheists, just get people to (properly and critically) read their holy books!
Wykehamists
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Box-set Wine
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Midweek Mirth
Seen on a bus stop in the UK, hillarious but won't be understood in the USA (they know sweet FA about history!)
Signs of Spring?
These early blooms have been here for a couple of weeks now, they're usually the first ones I notice on my daily walk, a sign of Spring? (let's hope so, I've had enough of "grey" now..)
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Dog do's, and don'ts
Monday, February 24, 2025
DIPA
Sunday, February 23, 2025
London Stories
Causes of death in London in 1632, I'm particularly drawn to "Worms" and "Rising of the Lights", the mind boggles! Amazing that 470 people died from their "teeth", next time some old mutton faced Brexiteer tells you things were much better in the "old days" remind them of this fact..
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Tragically ugly
I notice that there are whispers in the ether at the moment about sales of Tesla cars, particularly in Europe. Some sources claim that they are down or at least have hit a wall, with reported volumes in Spain and France down by around 70%. I wonder if this is true? I do hope so. I despise what Musk has turned into, a lickspittle sidekick of one of the most corrupt politicians in history, someone who has (cynically or otherwise) acquired a firehose of shit that he sprays out over the world in an attempt to skew the views of the feable minded, proping up a sesspit of self interest with "on-narrative" garbage.
I try not to listen to Trump, I remember when he was president before I congratulated myself on having never heard an entire mangled sentence, managing to reach the remote control fast enough to switch channels for a period of four long, tedious years. Unfortunately the shear quantity of crap coming out of the usual channels at the moment means that it's almost impossible to avoid, particularly on social media which I suppose is all part of their strategy!
It feels like we're all in a lift descending into a dark pit with an unknown depth, and no matter how much we mash on the "up-button" to return to the light, nothing happens. Listening to some of the utter shit that is currently being spewed from the mouths of bloated, entitled Americans these days it's ever more difficult to remain calm and balanced. Still, I suppose there is always one lever that we can pull on (for now at least) and that is we can boycott their products, dent the thing that means the most to them, their wallets. I recently purchased an electric car, I chose a solidly European model! I must admit, this was no great sacrifice of conscience as I think Tesla's look like "Lego cars", tragically ugly and deserving of 100% import tariffs just because of that, still, it's always nice to do one's bit..
I'm put in mind of a joke I heard recently, it goes something like this, "People say that Musk is a Nazi, this is clearly false hysteria and should not be taken seriously, everyone knows that the Nazi's made pretty decent cars"..
Friday, February 21, 2025
Friday Smirk
J&M proving that the cartoon strip is obviously satire, religious prophets never have a sense of humour..
Thursday, February 20, 2025
London Stories
One of my all time favourite paintings of London, the scene is looking down on Ludgate Circus up to St. Pauls, the railway bridge isn't there any more although there is an underground railway along the same route. It looks fabulously smoky, busy, noisy and totally chaotic, as any great city should!
(by William Logsdail, oil on canvas c. 1887)
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Hello London!
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Walking crash scenes..
Monday, February 17, 2025
Coconuts
Tried one of these last weekend, a delicious stout in the latest variation, it tasted of roasted malts and dark chocolate with added coconut (flavour) a classic combination and all done in a tidy 400ml package from Elusive, well played sir!
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Bordeaux Horizontal
I took delivery of some 2009 wines the other day (see picture above) I bought cases of these wines "en-primeur" back in 2010 which means before they were put into bottles (it's often cheaper that way but the risk is that they turn out to be naff!) anyway, they've been resting in storage ever since and are ready to drink now.
I'm very much looking forward to trying them all, might even get a couple of wine buddies over to do a "horizontal tasting" (i.e. different producers, same vintage) which will make it even more fascinating, 2009 was a cracking vintage for Bordeaux (where these are all from)..
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Livin the dream
A "premium" Spanish lager, brewed in Spain and exclusively sold by a German supermarket in the UK as a proxy for a fake Spanish lager, brewed in the UK by an American corporation, what a time to be alive! They both taste like sh1t BTW, but I'm not judging, the folk that like this kind of stuff don't seem to focus much on how it tastes from what I can tell, different strokes etc.
Friday, February 14, 2025
Friday Smirk
Jesus and Mo pointing out the rather obvious contradiction, i.e. that an organisation that proports to hold moral authority over society should itself have morals (same for the Catholics BTW) It's almost like all of these organisations were simply invented by evolved apes desparately clawing their way to the top of their respective regional heaps. For "morality and ethics" substitute, "worldly power and influence" and you've more or less exposed the true purpose of religion.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Foodie Breakfasts
We had the good fortune to spend an hour or so in Mayfair on Saturday morning and managed to snag a table at the wonderful "Fallow" in nearby St James's (Haymarket). The place is well known for it's "nose to tail" cooking and we both had the "steak and eggs" for breakfast (pictured above), a real treat, fairly plain but perfect with a couple of swanky hash browns and "brown sauce", not quite a "full English", more an American staple but delicious and a great antidote to our slightly fuzzy heads from the night before out with the youngsters!
London Stories
Having posted a photo of the modern day view of the gatehouse to St Bartholomew's church in Smithfield the other day I came across a photograph of how it looked pre-ww1 before the Zeppelin bomb exposed what lay beneath the 19th century shop facade (see above) It's interesting that the buildings to either side of the gatehouse appear very little changed!
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Breaking fasts
The interior (upstairs) of The Woolpack in Bermondsey, a glorious London pub that serves DEYA beers (awsome!) and the perfect place to break the fast of "dry January", a pint of the wonderful "Steady Rolling Man" slipped down a treat while we waited for our kids to meet us for dinner, which was also pretty good, at Murano Cafe down the end of Bermondsey Street.
Monday, February 10, 2025
London Stories
Just around the corner from the Bunhill Fields burial ground, where both John Bunyan and William Blake (not to mention Thomas Bayes) are buried is the street in the photo above. It's an ordinary East London view but is also one of the few remaining London streets where you can still see wooden cobble stones, the street is called "Chequer St".
They used to make these cobbles from wood rather than stone as the noise from horses and carriages was much less that way, even in the 19th century people used to complain about noise pollution!
Sunday, February 09, 2025
Superheros
There's a new superhero in town folks, don't push him or he may "go off", I wonder what his special powers are?
Saturday, February 08, 2025
London Stories
Friday, February 07, 2025
Friday Smirk
Jesus and Mo delivering up another truism about religion. The instinct and desire for conformity among our religious brothers and sisters is very strong, I guess it makes many of them feel more validated and more secure, I couldn't possibly comment..
Thursday, February 06, 2025
King of Hearts
One of the many benefits of wearing a smart-watch all the time (as I do) is that it can measure things over long periods of time and tell you about trends (good or bad!), something that the occassional spot measurement can't easily do.
I was pottering around the other day when my watch decided to alert me to the fact that my average resting heart rate had dropped from 59 (beats per minute) as measured over the last 21 weeks, to 52 as measured in the last 5 weeks. This was really interesting (for me at least) as over the last 5 weeks my Wife and I have been doing "dry January", i.e. not imbibing any alcohol at all and also we upped our exercise in order to shed a few pounds after Christmas. The overall effect of these changes is probably correlated to this measurement. I decided to take a look at what resting heart rate I "should" have at my age (62) and found the table (above) it suggests that on average I should have a RHR of 72-75 BPM, my actual RHR is 52 (according to my watch) and so that puts me into the "Athlete" category, I was pleased to read that, even with a decent error margin that's still pretty good I reckon. Anyway, I'll definitely keep up the exercise this year but I must admit I'm looking forward to my first pint for 5 weeks on Friday, none of us are perfect!
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
The future, yesterday..
Tuesday, February 04, 2025
Monday, February 03, 2025
London Stories
Saturday, February 01, 2025
Runaway Runway
Friday, January 31, 2025
Friday Smirk
London Stories
Thursday, January 30, 2025
48 years of Animals
Released on 21st January 1977 (48 years ago!!!) this was one of my favourite albums of all time, I remember listening to it with my late Father, we sat there in silence and played it all the way through (both sides) before declaring it a classic. Favourite track? Well, has to be "Dogs" I reckon, the way the voice merges into a synth sound was ground breaking at the time and still sounds great to this day!
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Value not found?
We've been riding the wave of a US stock market boom in recent years, particularly tech-stocks, and the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, Tesla, Facebook, Nvidia and Microsoft (the "Magnificent Seven") are all at all time highs currently. Of course, whenever things go to their "all time high" we can expect a "correction" of some kind at some point, and there's no doubt that we are in a classic hype-cycle when it comes to AI and the valuation frenzy around companies that are involved in it.
I've been through several of these hype cycles now, they all look pretty similar, innovation occurs, inflated expectations are generated, the innovation flattens and we decend into a "trough of disillusionment" as it's known. I believe current AI tools will turn out just like this, sure, it's clever and useful but converting that innovation into hard revenue will, I think, prove a little harder than people think and will take time.
In recent weeks a new entrant to the generative AI scene has emerged, DeepSeek (which has an open source LLM), a Chinese firm has launched a chat platform that seems (superficially) to be as good as ChatGPT, but, the founders claim that it has been done at far less cost and with far fewer resources than it's US competitors (interesting only if true). News of this has sent the stock markets around these tech firms into freefall, Nvidia (which makes the chips used to build AI centric data-centres) lost 17% in one day and considering the market-cap ($3+ trillion) of that company, a record fall on the NASDAQ exchange.
So, will we see a "correction" now, will the magnificent seven turn into the sweaty six or even the flacid five? I somehow think that the bull market around tech is coming to an end, or at least flattening out for a while and the current volatility may provide some opportunistic upside for those with cash to spend. For those of us in pension land I suspect the prudent thing to do will be to switch sectors or to buy bonds for a while until things settle down a bit, then again, for those clever enough to spot the "bottom" a killing may well be made as these big tech firms aren't going anywhere anytime soon so a rebound (albeit perhaps over a couple of years) is pretty likely.
(PS. the stock photo above shows a trader with the number "404" which is ironic as that's the HTML error code for "Page not found", a case of "value not found" today perhaps?
Monday, January 27, 2025
London Stories
Often forgotten in the mayhem of WW2 but another London first, perhaps one that we'd rather forget...
Sunday, January 26, 2025
Picasso of Pettiness
- Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
- You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Storm Eowyn
Friday, January 24, 2025
Friday Smirk
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
London Stories
The "Cornhill Pump" established in 1799 just outside the shoping arcade that once was the Royal Exchange, financed by no less than the East India Company and the Bank of England, recently renovated it's worth a look as you make your way down to Bank station or up to Aldgate (where there's another famous water pump!).