Cat Gods

Tee hee, although it makes more sense than many other narratives knocking around.

 

Student Escapades

We have my Son and his (new) girlfriend staying with us at the moment, they both travelled down from Scotland on the train during the latter half of the week. So, on Friday we decided to stroll into town and visit our favourite watering hole for a drink before dinner. It did rain a little on the way in but fortunately spirits weren't dampened! We had a really nice time chatting and catching up on University life along with some colorful descriptions of their recent "student escapades", it was most enjoyable. The beer was pretty good too, here's a pint of "Suspended in Talus" from our local brewery Siren. Talus is a fairly new kind of hop from the USA that imparts a lovely pink grapefruit and citrus vibe to the beer, very tasty stuff!

 

Friday Smirk

In "unprecedented" scenes in the House of Commons as Hancock's pants catch fire..

 

Breath deep..

Charlie Hebdo pointing out the bleeding obvious, again. Translated this reads, "33 million gods in India, and not one of them can produce any Oxygen" - but no doubt our religious brothers and sisters will be claiming the vaccine as some kind of "miracle" from their particular deity, and of course the hands and minds of those scientists who developed them were guided by that same invisible entity too, yeah sure, makes perfect sense...

 

Midweek Mirth

Saw an amusing conundrum on the interwebs the other day, it went something like this..

If  you went on a first date with someone and during the course of the meal/drink etc. they let it slip the name of their favorite book. You immediately make your excuses and leave..

What was the book?

I thought about this and my first instinct was either the Bible/Koran/Torah but then on reflection it became obvious that many religious people might say this instinctively and most religious people aren't of the looney literalist kind. The next port of call for me was politics, Das Capital perhaps or the Conservative/Labour party manifesto or even something by the odious Diane Abbot, all questionable, but none of which would really be grounds for swift exit. I was left with the obvious one, Hitler's Mein Kampf, an anti-classic if ever such a thing existed you'd have to really look sideways at someone who's favourite book was that one.

 

Definition of madness

I find it perplexing and frustrating that many people in the UK seem intent on travelling abroad to amber/red list countries this year, and like some invading army, don't seem to really care about the obvious perils involved to themselves and everyone else they come into close contact with. Not only are these people potentially spreading a highly contagious variant (Lineage B.1.617) from the UK to wherever they travel to, but also potentially bringing other variants back to areas of our own country that don't currently have them. We're not at herd immunity yet for even the current crop of virus, and judging by the shear amount of infected people out there hosting replicating particles right now, it's likely that at some point a new variant will escape the current vaccines (just like flu does) and then we'll be back to square one (oh deep joy!). 

Our Government isn't helping much either in my estimation, I was listening to a minister talking about this on Times Radio this morning and it was as confusing as hell, the message seemed to flip-flop between, you can travel but don't travel, mix indoors but not in certain places (although people from those places seem oblivious?), be cautious but spend, spend, spend etc. Why on earth can't the state institutions simply mandate caution for now while this new variant is causing cases to spike? Be explicit and clear by implementing unambiguous (lockdown) rules along with timetables so that people can plan their lives, it seems we're destined to make the same mistakes over and over again, such a shame.

 

Pious-Pic of the Week

More just a weird medieval painting than a particularly religious one, perhaps this where the term "getting hammered" came from? Apparently this was the cure for headaches back in the day, no wonder they all died before they reached middle-age! I guess it kind of makes sense to relieve pressure by punching a hole in the offending organ but you would have thought that even the dumbest of our ancestors would have realised that driving rusty nails into anywhere on your body would be excruciating if not fatal! I don't buy it, although, perhaps this was just a myth that was spread around by medieval men to deny wives and girlfriends that age old excuse for not submitting to their carnal desires, sounds more plausible to me.

 

Grey days..

Out for a walk at lunchtime and grey cloud after grey cloud swept over me dumping cold driving rain at each opportunity. I seem to remember back at the start of May last year I was whining about a seemingly endless series of rainy days but this year seems to be really going for it! I think that's at least 16 days out of 20 days on the trot that I've needed my golf umbrella, relentless and miserable. Roll on sunshine!

 

Kerb life..

I was out walking the other day and saw these rather strange kerb stones. It's not unusual to see kerb stones chipped and broken due to being hit by lorry or van wheels as they cut corners or misjudge turnings etc. This example was odd because the kerb stones are made of plastic, I'd never seen this before but in some ways it's obvious i.e. granite or concrete is probably more expensive than plastic, it's certainly heavier and harder to fit, but, it also seems slightly daft in the sense that plastic isn't going to stand up to the normal levels of punishment dished out by wayward traffic. I wonder how long the plastic "stones" at this busy corner will last before the council have to replace them.

 

Peachy

We took a little trip over to the Siren tap room on Saturday afternoon (in between rain showers) and sat outside in their covered seating area and had a cheeky half of this delicious peach IPA. It's a classic hop forward pale ale called "Peaches Everyday" and is made with a mix of American hops with a post boil addition of peach puree which gives it a wonderful stone fruit flavour but the beer still finishes dry. We also had some street food from a van that was feeding everyone, nice dumplings and some crispy salt and pepper squid. It was nice to get out for an hour or so.

 

BBQ Withdrawal

Walked into town today to get my second AZ jab (hurrah!) unfortunately it was pissing down with rain and blowing a force 10 gale, had to hold the umbrella with both hands. Anyway, the jab went fine, hardly a scratch and feeling positive about getting back to some semblance of normality at last! Lets hope the weather starts playing ball for a change, getting garden BBQ withdrawal symptoms!

 

Friday Smirk

Excellent J&M strip this week. Pointing out the problems you can cause by simply stating the bleeding obvious to some of our Brothers and Sisters of faith. I find this especially true of the "sophisticated" ones, who get all flustered (and often butthurt) when the nasty bits of their holy books are concerned (i.e. pointed out).

 

Mid-Week Titter

It's always amusing to me that many people still believe the religions and traditions they were indoctrinated into through a chance event i.e. being born in either Texas or Pakistan, are literally true/moral and that all others (arrived at through the exact same mechanism) are "obviously" false. Unfortunately, Humans, are more often than not world class practitioners of confirmation bias.
 

Heads will roll

We had some good news in our little family this morning, my Daughter texted and told us that she's been made head girl of her school! It was totally out of the blue and not something we were expecting at all so we're really chuffed for her. Actually when I think about it I shouldn't be surprised, she's a model student and works really hard and is thoroughly deserving, but still, it's a great achievement. It does mean a lot of speeches and "distinguished visitor" hosting next year though, hopefully she's up for that! Saturday morning lie-ins might become a distant memory, but a nice little addition to the old CV to make up for it!

 

White Tips

Had a can of this Siren seasonal beer (i.e. one they make every year in May) yesterday while making dinner for everyone. It's called White Tips and is essentially an IPA made with a nice spicy Belgian yeast, totally delicious. It's a special beer for me, it was the very last beer I drank with my Father, in May 2018 after which (literally a few weeks later) he was diagnosed with cancer and died the following year. It's quite a nice thing to see that this beer has been released every year, it makes me think of my dad and recall better times.

 

Ego Distancing

Quick trip (between rain storms) to the Finchampstead brewery cluster, ended up having a cheeky pint in the Elusive taproom (aka car park!), inadvertently snapped the owner Andy (the nicest man in brewing)  seen on the right hand side of the photo with the blue mask, while taking a shot of my rather delicious rye infused IPA, a welcome break to the tedium of lock-down! Although, we were sitting next to a group of middle aged (posh) men who were obviously completely shit faced and talking far too loudly, mostly about themselves with the obvious aim of boosting their ego's. It did cross my mind that perhaps social distancing is something that might be a good idea for reasons other than deadly viruses.  

 

Anti-vax satire

Useful satire for those people living in Indian variant hotspots at the moment who aren't having their jabs.

 

Head Bangers

Tried this new Siren beer last weekend, it's a collaboration between Siren (Finchamstead) and Green Cheek (USA) and is labelled as a "Triple IPA", meaning, it's got three times as much stuff in it as a normal IPA (roughly) Not only does this mean a mountain of flavorsome hops but also a very large malt bill and therefore a very high alcohol hit. It weighs in at 11.2%, putting it firmly in wine territory. Normally beer at that lofty altitude would taste horrible, cloying and boozy (i.e. special-brew) but because of the sheer quantity of hops used the result was amazingly well balanced, if you gave me this blind I'd have said that it was maybe 6 or 7% only and pretty tasty! Of course the effect on the brain (and speech cohesion) of drinking a 440ml can of this beer is roughly the same as drinking half a bottle of red, although the beer seemed to have more impact than drinking half a bottle of wine (probably food consumption might have something to do with that), suffice to say I only had the one can! Interesting as a taste experiment but, nice as it was, probably not something I'd drink regularly, more something for the hardcore head-bangers out there.

Friday Smirk

What with pubs and restaurants re-opening next week I can see this scenario playing out in many establishments that now require pre-ordering and/or fancy-pants web-based menu selection. May even spawn a whole new industry, rent-a-(computer literate)-kid.com :)

 

"us and them"

Nice little J&M cartoon this week. After all, one of the main purposes of religion since the beginning of time has been to create or cement "us and them" scenarios that promote/justify the supremacy of one group over another, we're all just monkeys in shoes after all! One needs only look at Israel and Gaza right now to see where the entrenchment of moral certitude layered on top of land and resource disputes invariably leads. Of course religion is rarely the sole source of division, but you can't look at Palestine right now and claim that religious differences and their associated literalist dogmas are "helping" the situation. Imagine how difficult it would be to justify (and sell) the current actions on either side without the crutches of religion, culture or race (all arbitrary and subjective), the underlying base "Human" motivations (i.e. avarice, envy and ambition) would be much more evident.

 

Motivation

Sometimes "team-building" exercises that use role-playing aren't the best way to motivate teams...

 

Thames Path

Been exploring new walks around Henley recently. My teenage daughter has a new boyfriend who lives there so when she needs picking up or dropping off we sometimes combine the trip over the border into Oxfordshire with a walk in the countryside around the town. One of the simpler walks is to park up in the town (by the station is convenient) and to walk along the Thames towards Shiplake/Sonning across the weir (see picture above) and then loop back into the town along the Reading road. It's a nice little loop and at around 4 kilometers fits in perfectly with an early Sunday evening stroll before taking the girl home.

 

Tuesday Titter

Apparently this bruise looks a bit like that guy who died for our shins, makes sense..

 

Windy Days

Out for a walk today and spotted an obvious flaw in our council's new scheme to provide green plastic rubbish sacks instead of sturdy black plastic boxes (which is what we used to have) for recyclable rubbish (i.e. mostly paper and cardboard), windy days..

 

Coffee Strata

Here's an interesting thing. Coffee from a Nespresso machine (unstirred) tends to settle out into different strata, evidence picture above, drinking it is like espresso to latte in one cup, how strange!

 

Fab Friday Facts (FFF)

Australian, James Harrison (aged 84) is also known as the man with the "Golden Arm", after having a life-saving transfusion at the age of 14 he was determined to donate some of his own blood in return. Turns out he has a rare antibody that prevents hemolytic disease in newborn babies. Harrison has donated his blood over 1,000 times (every week of his life!) and it's estimated that in his lifetime he has saved over 2.4 million babies! Good on ya mate!

Friday Smirk

I often wonder what possesses people to have tattoos on their bodies. Perhaps a small one, out of the way that only you and your intimates are aware of, but the full body jobs that you see many people with these days look awful to me. I do appreciate good art and some tattoos certainly require skill to produce but the vast majority aren't in that category in my view, especially those ones that are so dense it just looks like someone has painted their arms and neck dark blue (??). Having late teenage kids I'm fearful that they're entering the danger zone when it comes to getting drunk and getting stupid body modifications, piercings and tat's are definitely in vogue currently and I'm fully aware that teenagers love nothing more than to rebel against prevailing parental opinions! Hopefully their fear of needles will outweigh the peer pressure, time will tell.

 

Pious-Pic of the Week

So here we have a brave and righteous knight engaging in mortal combat with the, err, giant snail? I wonder if he's called Brian, in any case any normal knight would have just "run away, run away"...

 

West Coaster II

Back in March this year I tried a West Coast IPA from Cornish brewers Verdant; it was lush, so much so that I wrote about it at the time here. The beer was a collaboration of sorts between Verdant and a Sussex based brewer called "Burning Sky", two of my favourite producers. The way it worked was that both firms brewed the same beer independently, the only difference being the yeast that they used, they did this, well, for kicks really and to see how two different "terroirs" affected a brew using the same ingredients. I managed to source a can of the Burning Sky version of this beer the other day and gave it a try at the weekend, slightly lighter in hue than the Cornish version but equally fragrant it was also a delicious beer. Quite similar, as you'd expect, but never the less different, not quite so sweet and perhaps a little more "funky" but not in a bad way. An excellent combination of beers, both the same but unique as well (if that makes sense!) - I fully support and applaud this kind of experimentation!

PS. The more eagle eyed among you will notice a slight variation in the can design..

 

Midweek Mirth

Saw this little cartoon the other day, it made me smile..

 

After the pandemic

I must admit there are a few things I'm not looking forward to once this pandemic is over. Clearly all the social things like holidays, restaurants, pubs, long weekends in the country etc. are right up there in terms of things that are eagerly awaited but I have found that not commuting, wearing a mask in crowded spaces, more relaxed breakfasts, more quality family time and going for long walks in the relative peace and quiet have all been somewhat of an improvement. The mask thing as well as social distancing of course has meant zero colds or flu over the period, and I suspect simply wearing a mask when you are feeling under the weather would help enormously in preventing the spread of even the most pervasive of bugs under most normal circumstances. Hopefully some of these things will remain and many companies, including my own, are currently thinking about formulating guidelines for our employees for how and when our offices will be re-populated (or not!) interesting times..

 

Good PR

Watching a film last night about what our species is doing to our home planet, specifically the Amazon rain-forest, it's not the first programme we've seen on the topic by a long chalk, but it never ceases to shock me how reckless we are. Obviously I realise that first-world inhabitants are the main culprits when it comes to using scarce resources, carbon emissions and pollution etc. even though we can't see it directly most of the time. It's quite sobering to analyze your own wastage and carbon footprint, although I must say that over the last year or so my own family has had much less impact than normal, hardly any fuel, no foreign holidays, less meat, more walking and so on, but then I suspect many families are in the same boat because of Covid.

In an effort to be proactive rather than just be shocked by TV programmes, I decided that I'd look into what it would take to make my company carbon-neutral. On initial inspection of the options, for us, I suspect that it would mostly mean offsetting, i.e. paying to neutralize our carbon output (we use lot's of electricity for our computer kit) but even so it may be possible to explore some other avenues too. When it comes to non-industrial companies taking this kind of step, it's hard not to see it as merely a "virtue signaling" kind of thing (i.e. positive marketing or appealing to the "woke" brigade) and maybe that's part of it, but, there is a genuine desire to improve things among our core team.

 

Amphibian walking

I'm managing to keep up with my pacey "50k per week" of walking, it's about 5 weeks in a row that I've hit that target! It did feel like quite a distance (aching legs!) at  first but I must say that I'm getting used to it now. In terms of pace I'm hitting around 9 minutes per kilometer which is pretty decent, it certainly feels quite fast when I'm doing it and when I walk into town with any of my family they always complain about being "frog marched" which I suppose is a good sign. On a tangential note, what the hell does "frog marched" mean? 

For posterity, I videoed myself pounding the pavement today (see above) to see what my pace looked like from a different perspective; looks slower than it feels and weirdly it looks like I'm walking downhill, although it was a perfectly level road, quite big strides though, I guess that helps.

 

PDQ Grapefruit

Tried a new beer while making dinner for everyone last night, from a Suffolk Brewery I'd never sampled before called "Burnt Mill". A classic old-skool IPA called "Green Path" it featured a simple hop bill of Citra and Mosaic, it was delicious. Quite malt-forward, not too bitter, but with a delightful aroma and flavour of grapefruit, really distinctive, it went down a treat after a long week at work. I must try some more of their beers, their reputation is good but cans are quite thin on the ground around here, whenever they become available they tend to be snapped up PDQ!..