Family in town

It was my Wife's birthday last week so we celebrated by treating the kids to Sunday lunch in London. We returned to an old favourite, Pique Nique in Bermondsey. The food was more than up to scratch and we ordered 3 dishes to share between 6 people, one of them you can see in the picture above, it's a whole sea bass stuffed with crayfish mousse and spinach then wrapped in pastry, a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach! The other mains were a whole roast chicken, chips and salad and roasted duck with orange sauce, a lovely meal and great to catch up with the family in town!

Sunday bloody Sunday

Interesting new Verdant beer this weekend, obviously made for Halloween this "Blood Orange" West Coast IPA is quite the mash up. Dark in colour but not malt forward, bitter and hoppy with a predictably noticeable undercurrent of marmalade. A nice beer, but at 6.66% ABV not entirely sessionable, better keep my crucifix close by (to pick the orange pith out of my teeth obviously)..

Saturday Smiles

I'm sure we've had faux deliveries like this

Friday Smirk

The lads interact with one of the latest AI gizmos, apparently this is a real thing, for $1.99 per minute you can in fact interact with "AI Jesus"! I can see the attraction for the gullible, at least this Jesus is real and actually answers your questions. 

Make it so..

Sad news this evening, Patrick Stewart died yesterday at his home in LA. Actor Stewart was well known for many things, classic theatre roles, Marvel movies and, probably his most pivotal role, Captain Picard in Star Trek (the next generation) both TV series and movies. Star Trek may be seen by many as pop corn TV but millions loved it and enjoyed the whole intellectual space and ideas contained within the many incarnations of it, it was more than just another TV series. Stewart was 86 (I hadn't realised he was that old) so I guess he had a "good innings" but a world without Captain Picard? The end of an era for sure, hopefully the media powers that be will consider re-running some of his work, particularly STNG, make it so!

Maple Memories

Back in 2011 we took our kids to Canada's wonderful West coast, flying into Vancouver we toured around venturing as far as Seattle in the USA, Vancouver Island and up to Whistler in the Rockies. It was a great trip with lots of wildlife viewing and adventure activities. On one of our nature expeditions we spotted a Black Bear, quite common in those parts but very exciting for city and town dwellers like us! I snapped the picture above from a rib in one of the inlets around Quadra Island, as the bear was foraging the shoreline for scraps (dead salmon probably) A majestic place to visit, we must get back there sometime!

Midweek Mirth

 

One of my favourites.

Margate Memories

 

Back in 2022 we took a trip down to the Kent coast to visit with some friends who live in Deal, we decided to make a weekend of it and stayed down there. On one of the days we took the train up to Margate for the day and visited the Turner Contemporary art museum there and had fish and chips on the sea front! It was November but the weather was glorious, and the light was somehow different, I snapped the picture above to show the strangeness of it. I can see why it was one of J.M.W. Turner's favourite places to paint, well, that and he had a mistress there apparently, I guess we're all human.