Make my day...

Possibly my favourite video clip of all time, the expression on his face at 00:15!! It's obvs this made his day and it's lovely!

Best View

Best pub view in Newcastle? (Free Trade Inn - great beer too!)

 

March of time

 

I remember when I was a teenager (17) living through the first flushes of independence, I went on a lad's holiday to Cornwall. There were a few of us and we drove our own cars (bangers) down to the coast from the South East of England and stayed in fields and campsites in tents. It was brilliant, we were all just discovering pubs, beer, girls and that wonderful feeling that we could wake up in the morning and just go wherever the hell we wanted! Part of the landscape of that trip was listening to BBC radio one in the morning (not that we saw too much of the mornings!) and more specifically listening to Steve Wright (in the morning) we loved it, the mix of current music, quizzes, stupid sound effects and silly character sketches it seemed like it was tailored perfectly to our infantile sense of humour, and it probably was! Anyway I hear (with sadness) that today was the last ever Steve Wright show on BBC radio two (I guess it comes to us all eventually!), I must listen to it, although I feel like it's going to make me feel very, very old.

Rich and moreish

Tried this beer last weekend, it's a collaboration between Siren and Brew York. The colour is misleading,  you'd think it was a porter or a stout (i.e. being black) but it's not, it's an IPA! Anyway if you make a beer with the right combination of roasted malts and punchy American hops you get something that's fruity and hoppy on the nose and yet rich and moreish on the palette, a really nice style.

 

Friday Smirk

J&M illustrating the problem with proselytising religions like Islam and Christianity, the combination of confidence and ignorance is lethal.

 

Uplifting

Typically good xkcd cartoon explaining how the Bernoulli principal works, all solid science of course.. 

 

Midweek Mirth

Saw this Larson cartoon today, it just reminded me of the current Tory Government, and pretty much everything they do and say..

 

Dino revenge

The moment a NASA spacecraft was deliberately slammed into asteroid "Dimorphos" in order to see if such an impact could slightly alter the trajectory of the rock. This experiment was done to better understand what we might need to do if one of these space rocks was headed toward Earth and calculated to hit us in what might be a city or civilization ending event! The mission was a great success yielding much important data on the collision and it's effects. An asteroid (bigger than this one) was what did the dinosaurs in so you could say that this kinda makes us even?

Planning for the worst

This is a picture taken by a Danish F16 flying over the Baltic sea, it shows what a hole in an undersea gas pipe looks like at the surface. The pipeline in question is the much publicised Nord Stream 1 which apparently has two leaks at the moment, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (which isn't operational) also has a leak. This number of leaks in close proximity to two separate pipelines is too much for coincidence, the Russians have almost certainly sabotaged it (link in Swedish). I don't think we should be surprised at this, the most likely thing that Putin will do next is to turn off all gas supplies to the West, I expect he's just waiting for the first cold front to sweep in from the Arctic to do it. The only thing we can do is to prepare for this worst case scenario, ensure that emergency supplies and suitable support is in place for vulnerable people over the Winter, we don't want to have pensioners surviving Covid just to die of hypothermia in their own houses, unable to heat or feed themselves during a cold snap! We're in a sorry state of affairs at the moment and, based on their past record, I have zero confidence in this Government to have the competence to get us through it all unscathed. You have to ask how on earth we got to this point with hardly a vote cast!

 

Monday Mirth

Amusing metric at the "Disgusting Food Museum" (in Malmo)..

 

Prophetic?

This is what Rishi Sunak predicted would happen if the neo-Thatcherite Liz Truss plan (a completely batty increase in borrowing/spending paired with a decrease in taxes) was implemented, so far it would appear that he's not far wrong. Sunak wasn't a great choice for PM, but, he would have been far better than Truss in my opinion. This is what happens when leaders are selected by a tiny minority of people who spend most of their time closeted away at the 19th hole of their leafy golf clubs confirming each other's biases.

 

Shroom

Puffball mushrooms seem to be favouring our garden this year?

 

Empty-nesters

We dropped my daughter off at her new home (for the next 3 years) on Saturday, she's going to UCL in London and yesterday was the main day of "dropping off" new students. Since parking is a nightmare in that part of town we were allocated a specific time slot outside the halls of residence where she's based and we had to stick rigidly to it! A miserly 30 minutes is all you get in which to transport all "stuff" from car to room and say your goodbyes etc. However, we made the most of it, arriving a few minutes early and by moving our car to an NCP car park nearby after the allotted time! Anyway we had plenty of time to help her sort all her things out and after that we all went for some well deserved lunch! Anyway, it wasn't long before we had to scoot, so we wished her well and off we went! 

Officially "empty-nesters" now (yippee!)

 

Friday Smirk

A new J&M cartoon, pointing out that our prejudices and biases are often invisible to us. 

 

Midweek Mirth

Excellent stuff from Private Eye..

 

Steady Growth

 

I remember, not too long ago, that there were probably only a dozen places in London where you could get a pint of decent craft beer and even then only a sniff of the then hyped up new releases of styles and hops emerging from the USA. I first started to take notice of this emerging scene around 2012 but it had been "brewing" (excuse the pun) for a few years before that. Some would claim that Meantime (in Greenwich) was the first real "craft" brewery in the UK, they started in 1999 but were quite mainstream in their outlook and the styles they made, other contenders would include Brewdog (2006) and Thornbridge (2005) although there's clearly a debate to be had around definitions here. Anyway, regardless of who was first, London was the place most of these beers showed up for the first time and were available to actually buy and try. 

I remember trying my first "Punk IPA" from Brewdog back in 2012 it was a revelation, the hop forward style and aggressive bitterness was new, fresh and intriguing, so much so that I even blogged about it (rare at the time)! Getting hold of these beers however was a different story, it was difficult, I recall taking a trip up to London just to go to the Brewdog bar in Campden about a year or so after it opened and that was the closest place to where I live (40 miles away!) that I knew of at the time where you could try craft beers. Fast forward 10 years and there are five (good) craft breweries within a ten mile radius of my house, I can buy great craft in the supermarket and there are over 300 locations in London alone that sell and/or serve this kind of beer. 

The big question now is "what happens next"? There's no doubt that the early founders of this scene have generally done well, Brewdog is a billion dollar business at this point (lucky I invested early!) and I've even seen beer from my local craft brewery (Siren) based in Berkshire available in places as far afield as California! But, can this growth be sustained? Covid certainly slowed things down somewhat, several newly formed breweries and bars closed and there's been a slight contraction of the industry in the last couple of years. I suspect the impending energy cost crunch will further weed out the "unfit" producers and outlets I fear the craft beer industry is , for the most part, still in its Darwinian phase. On the positive side though, when you look at overall consumption, then this segment of the market has only just scratched the surface and there are still plenty of new outlets opening up every month. The scene is spreading out over the country like the root system of a young tree, there are still places in the UK where you struggle to find craft (like here for example) but hopefully, eventually, it will permeate every nook and cranny of the land and you'll be able to find a decent pint wherever you find yourself.

Victimless crime..

Women in Iran are currently reeling from the death of one of their own. Mahsa Amini, 22 died on Friday after spending 3 days in a coma after being arrested by the so called "morality police" for "breaking hijab laws" (it's a shame protecting Iranian Women's lives isn't considered as "moral" by the "morality police" as childishly guarding the perceived "property" of men, a truly Abrahamic  religious perspective if ever there was one). Spontaneous protests of hijab burning and cutting of hair have broken out across the country and protestors have been seen sporting signs saying "death to the dictator" referring to the "spiritual leader" (whatever that means) of that country Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

It's sad to see unnecessary death anywhere, especially when the person is so young and the crime is victimless! Those liberals here in the UK who defend the compulsory wearing of these kinds of garments under the supposed shield of "culture" or "freedom of choice" really have no clue. The lived reality of millions bears out the truth of these archaic laws, that they are hated and the symbols of them, like the hijab, are the modern equivalent of medieval chastity belts, i.e. nothing at all to do with the freedom, modesty or wellbeing of the women that are forced to endure them and everything to do with the desired control that powerful men and the religious institutions that prop them up wish to exert over them.

 

Tropical and Dank

Big shout-out for this brew. It's a collaboration between Verdant and Beak and for those people who read this blog you'll know that they're two of my most favoured breweries in the country at the moment. The prospect of the best bits of these two master's of haze was too tantalizing to pass up so I purchased a couple of cans of "It Is Forbidden" as soon as I heard it was available. 

I'm glad to say it doesn't disappoint,  haze for days, thick, creamy and multi-layered, flavour-wise. This particular beer features a hop from the USA that's so new it doesn't even have a name yet and is currently simply called "HBC586" tropical and dank is how I would describe it and the flavours are so forward (read in-your-face) that they almost hide completely the 8% ABV that this double IPA features, a real treat, great stuff!

A trip down memory drain..

I cracked open one of these this evening as lubrication while I'm making dinner for the family. It's a beer made by one of my favourite (and frequently cited on this blog) breweries, Verdant in Cornwall. Called "300 Laps of your garden" it's a hazy pale ale made with Azacca, Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin hops (probably all in my top 5 hop varieties) and is completely lush. The name stems from when this brew was conceived, i.e. during the first lock-down and the whole "Captain Tom" thing, so heart warming at the time but the ending was so sadly depressing, anyway, it's a great brew, if you ever see it in your local bottle shop buy it immediately!

 

WWII Aircraft

I've noticed something odd over the last couple of days. Pretty much at the same time of day a couple of Spitfires (or perhaps a Hurricane and a Spitfire judging by the hazy outline of the wingtips) fly over our town. I would bet that some part of the Queens funeral proceedings involves a fly past and these guys are practicing something, anyway, it's a wonderful sight (and noise) as they fly over. Yesterday I managed to grab a quick picture (above) it's a bit grainy as I only had my phone and about 10 seconds to react, anyway, watch out for WWII aircraft in our near futures!

 

Critters unite..

There's an estate of new houses a couple of clicks from where I live, part of the 8 million new houses that are apparently earmarked for development in the green fields around here by recent Tory governments 🙃  Anyway, I often route my daily walk past it and at the entrance there's a small ornamental pond (created by the developers to look pretty in front of their sales office) and over the last couple of years I've observed the development of this body of water as I paced past it. It's been full, dried up, iced over and snow covered it's also been populated by little baby fish and been home to a couple of unfeasibly large fish, also home to Herons, ducks and on the odd occasion a Grey Wagtail! Over the Summer the developers of the site obviously decided that the pond was now surplus to requirements since the development is complete and they ripped up the plastic base of the pond and turned over the earth with a digger, the fate of the fish is unknown. 

Rather amusingly after a couple of weeks of rainy weather, the pond is back! It would seem that the pond rather likes being here and judging by the growth of reeds and aquatic looking grass at the top of the depression the developers may well have unwittingly created a permanent feature. I rather like this pond, it's not a looker but it does provide a little something interesting to observe rather than the rows of boring shoddily built houses and flats, let's hope the pond prevails and some new critters can take up residence for me to look at as I stroll by!

Normal country?

A view of our rather esoteric behaviour recently from abroad, tee he, you couldn't make it up!

 

Royal Pen-test..

 

Amusing...

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo showing the often contradictory stances that our Religious brothers and sisters take when discussing the thorny subject of "evidence". They're often very keen and supportive that the secular/scientific world view be held accountable to evidence, however, their own position .. not so much, or at least the definition of "evidence" often subtly changes to include "stories"..

ESG

Some organisations these days believe that the "optics" of "ESG" (environmental, social, and governance risk) are more important than basic ethical behaviour. However, in many situations the spell is being broken, the chickens are coming home to roost at the Tavistock Clinic for example and this is but one example of the kind of extremism under the microscope at the moment, among many others around the world. When the dust settles on this period of chaos around pronouns, gender re-assignment and overzealous wokeness (to use a very overloaded label) I have a horrible feeling that our descendants we'll look back and wonder what on earth were we all thinking, either that or our civilisation will collapse into a cesspit of virtue signalling incompetence and division, either way it'll probably all end in (someone's) tears.

 

What goes around..

Saw this on the interwebs today, it made me smile..

 

Pointless TV?

A lot of news reports seem to be just like this at the moment, much weirdness abounds, marmalade and flowers strewn over our parklands and people queuing overnight in the rain in order to look at a box draped in a flag, obviously I'm being facetious but surely the media must be running out of things to say by now (and there's nearly a week more of this to come!) come on guys, pace yourselves! I've concluded that it's pretty pointless watching TV or listening to radio right now if you're not a royalist, thank goodness for Spotify, YouTube and Netflix, that's all I can say!

Midweek Mirth

Haha, never a truer word said etc.. (bloody Australians and their Liberalism ;)

Sunny uplands

Interesting diagram showing the surface area of solar energy generation required to power the world and various subdivisions of it. It's incredible that our Sun produces so much energy but also how uneven power consumption is around the different continents. I doubt we'd be able to process enough Silicon to build something this huge, i.e. a solar farm (predictably) the size of Wales, but for the Engineers among us the possibility is tantalising never the less.

 

Tyranny of the majority

Here's a question that's been on my mind lately, is one allowed to ask who is paying for all this, or will one be arrested?

PS. Standing silent and holding a sign is not a breach of the peace nor hate speech nor any kind of violent threat, however knocking the person holding the sign to the ground or threatening them with violence most certainly are! I have to ask the obvious question, are monarchists such snowflakes that they can't possibly hear or read views that counter their own without losing their shit? 

I've listened to arguments from the other side of this debate about there being a "special" case for funerals, i.e. that because a funeral engenders such strong feelings in the participants that tolerance for dissent needs to be much less because of the public order considerations. I have some sympathy with that view however I would counter with a couple of points that I think are important. Firstly, the events so far have not been a funeral and secondly the main event that protesters were carted off from was actually the proclamation of the king, i.e. a secular ritual akin to the opening of Parliament or visit of a Prime Minister, whose main purpose seemed to be to ensure allegiance from the masses, i.e. precisely the time to present a counter point of view.

Suspended in ..

Tried a new beer at the weekend, from my local brewer Siren it's in their "Suspended In" series which I've blogged about before here. Another banger this one featuring a new hop for the series, Strata! Deliciously fruity, crisp and clean with lingering passion fruit vibes and a nice dank finish, and at a highly sessionable 4% ABV you can have a couple, which is always a bonus!

 

Plurality of views

Slightly saddened that a Woman was arrested in Edinburgh apparently for simply holding up an anti-monarchy sign at the accession proclamation of Charles III. Being able to do things like this at a time like this is what democracy and freedom of speech should be about, the sign wasn't about the Queen it was about the institution, and that should be able to be freely criticised! I heard of a couple of other examples of this kind of thing over the weekend, some bloke in Oxford was also arrested after protesting the lack of democracy surrounding Head of State Charles, something that's simply a fact and something that many others often point out, including our current Prime Minister, Liz Truss! (I wonder if the rozzers will be making a beeline for Liz?)

There are many views on Monarchy in this country, we're not a bunch of zombie sheep when it comes to opinions about how we should best organize our society, there's a plurality of views, and that's fine! I hope the police apologize to this Woman (& others) and let her go as soon as possible.

Saturday smile

tee he..

 

Pretty food

When in Denmark a couple of weeks ago we visited a restaurant called Barr, it's quite well known and is at the expensive end of the restaurant spectrum although not Michelin starred. The food is very stylish, very modern (and delicious) it's also very pretty. My Son had oysters for a starter, not a particularly "pretty" dish, even slightly grim looking, but when you add dill oil into the mix then you get this rather striking feast of seafood and luminous green colour juxtaposed against the mother of pearl shine of the inside of the shells, wonderful.

For our main course we both had a rather simple dish, essentially a pork chop in breadcrumbs but when combined with yellow chanterelle mushrooms and deep red lingonberries it becomes a feast for the mouth and the eyes, great stuff!

 

Anniversary Magnum

We were celebrating my Son's 21st birthday this weekend so I cracked open a magnum of old Rioja (2009) that I've been wanting to try for years. This particular wine was a gift from the family of a Spanish friend of my Son, we got it when we visited them in Madrid back in 2012 so I thought it appropriate that we celebrate his coming of age with it. It was delicious, red fruits, plum, liquorice, tobacco with a lingering sweet finish a lovely wine at the perfect drinking age and a big bottle to boot! Luckily there were four of us to polish it off, which we dutifully did! Happy birthday Son!

 

QE II

Full disclosure, I'm not a Royalist, I dislike the idea that one particular family should "rule" simply by virtue of birth rather than via merit or consent, however, I also believe it's bad manners of the worst kind to disrespect the grief of family and friends of the Queen at such a sad time for them. We all know what it's like to lose a close family member or parent, no matter who you are it's tough. 

I have been particularly impressed by a couple of speeches on the Queen over the last day or so, first I thought that Kier Starmer played a blinder in the House of Commons, you can see that one here. Second, I though that President Macron also made a really thoughtful and powerful speech one which, while obviously possessing a political element, seemed to be truly heart felt, you can see it here.

I hope that King Charles will have thought about how his institution may be modernised further, separation from the Church for example or perhaps more work on helping the disadvantaged in our society using the huge resources and profile of the position to rally charity organisations and Government. There are 280 thousand people sleeping rough in the UK tonight, let that sink in for a moment, and then think about the cost of living crisis that we're about to enter this Winter! Clearly there's a lot more work to do, and once the grieving is done hopefully there's some renewed leadership to be shown.

 

Friday Smirk

Excellent J&M this week, you might almost say "a classic"! The utter stupidity and obvious cronyism of the "sainthood" concept is simply an embarrassment to our species, imagine what a hugely superior alien species would think if they landed on planet and had this explained to them, at best they'd take pity on such primitive beings and illustrate to our believing brothers and sisters why they're wrong (as if that would work!) at worst they'd have their own imaginary god and squash us like bugs for believing in the wrong Deity.

 

Pious-Pic of the Week

Thinking of bringing back this series, "Air Fryer" anyone?

 

Summer is officially over..

 

Picked the wrong 90 minutes to go for a walk today, it was grim out there! Even with a big golf umbrella I got soaked (mainly from cars driving by and spraying me, i.e. not giving a sh1t!) Miserable day and probably miserable news coming soon, such is life I suppose, as Charlie Chaplain once said "life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but comedy in long-shot"..

Useful guide

 

Here's a useful guide to help avoid being scammed, although, a lot of these things would equally apply to Politics, Religion and the Technology industry, think critically people!

Mortality

A depressingly sad story floating around the Twittersphere today about a wave of Avian flu that's affecting sea birds in our Western coastal regions at the moment. On the left is a dead Gannet in Pembrokeshire and on the right a similarly deceased bird in Cornwall. It's fascinating that both birds had adopted the exact same position in order to die, it's so wonderfully beautiful and yet desperately sad at the same time. I suppose we should all realise that disease pandemics are a fact of biology and therefore life, we've had our own version of this recently to remind us that we're all just mortal animals on this planet and the same Biological rules apply to Humans as well as Gannets, but still, so sad to see this. The feeling of powerlessness in the face of nature can be quite challenging sometimes and the only antidote that makes any real difference is understanding. The more we learn about these natural phenomenon, what causes them and how they spread, the better equipped we are to perhaps do something about it.

 

Elusive colab.

Tried this little beauty a couple of weekends ago. It's a West Coast IPA called "Trust the diagram" brewed by Elusive (local to me in Finchampstead, Berkshire) in collaboration with one of my all time favourite breweries Verdant who are based down in Falmouth, Cornwall, it's a banger! Done in a classic West Coast style so fairly clear to look at and quite bitter up front with plenty of citrus and grapefruit flavours from the hops used (in great quantities) with a lovely, almost sweet, piney finish to it, delicious!

 

Power to the people

Found this useful guide on the interwebs the other day, really surprised that a laptop uses more power than an electric blanket, still, I guess it all depends on what you use your laptop for!

 

Thick Lizzy

Well done Therese Coffey, our new Health Secretary in the Liz Truss cabinet, what could possibly go wrong? Anyway, not to worry, imagine how you'd feel not being "talented" enough to make it into this Cabinet..
 

Tuesday Titter

The excellent XKCD strikes again!

 

Wonderful, wonderful..

My family and I took advantage of the Summer bank-holiday and spent the week in Copenhagen, flying out Monday and returning Friday (yesterday). It was a super sunny week (unusually for September in Northern Europe) quite literally five days of blue sky and 20-25 degree days, lovely. 

Three generations, my wife and I being the middle generation, came out for the little city break and we spent a busy few days (a ton of walking!) seeing the sights, culturally educating the kids, trying the local food and sampling the liquid delights of the Danish beer scene. The picture above is of the classic tourist trap of Nyhaven the Sun is still strong, it was past 6pm when I took this, compare this to our last trip here which was in November when it was grey and overcast and decidedly chilly (woolly hats required!)

This was one of our lunches in a swanky Danish restaurant, the very traditional "Smørrebrød" which is essentially something tasty on a piece of dark rye bread, here (bottom to top) we had pickled herring, chicken with crispy skin and new potatoes with lovage, very tasty indeed but we slightly over ordered and ended up with three pieces each (could have easily made do with one or two!) expensive too, this meal came out at around £40 per person for lunch with beers and coffees but it was delicious.

Last time we visited Copenhagen we didn't make it to the little mermaid statue, obviously this needed to be rectified so we took a canal trip which had it as one of the attractions visited. The only problem was that obviously seeing the statue from the water meant looking at the back of it (see picture above) oh well, at least we can say we saw it this time! We also revisited the wonderful "Taphouse" bar just off the main shopping drag, a legendary craft beer joint that has 61 taps of beer to choose from! As per last time the UK scene was represented very well and I was gobsmacked to see a beer called "Locals" from Sussex brewer "Beak" available, this beer was one of my "Top 20 craft beers" in 2021 (2nd) It's a beauty but really hard to get hold of in the UK hence my surprise to find it in Denmark, luckily we had some time to kill so I treated myself to two!

As per our last trip I found the Mikkeller bars around the city to be very good, excellent choice of brews and a friendly atmosphere, the picture above shows a half pint of one of their hazy pale ales against the backdrop of the "Warpigs" bar in the meat-packing district (Vesterbro) a really buzzy spot and excellent BBQ food, although I didn't have time to eat there this time around (it still looked great tho). There are a number of Mikkeller bars dotted around the places each has it's own character, this particular place is a collaboration with 3-Floyds brewery in the USA (hence the BBQ) and it's hugely popular, if you want a seat I suggest getting there nice and early!

All in all a great city break, good weather, food, drink and company, suffice to say that the "trip quality" bar has been set very high, I wonder where we'll end up next?