London Stories

One of my favourite spots South of the river, Borough High St., London Bridge and Southwark. This picture was taken in the 1920s and a lot has changed since then! I'm amazed at how prominent the Hop Exchange building was (it's roughly in the middle of the picture below the imposing Southwark cathedral, it's a long thin white building with lot's of tall windows) 

The building is still there minus the top 2 floors (see above) and now contains a conference venue, offices and some restaurants. As suggested by the name this grade II building used to be the place where hops from Kent, bought to London by rail or river were traded on a large open outcry exchange floor, there were many such exchanges in the city for different commodities most of which were destroyed in WWII, but this one survives, an amazing space.

Short back & sides

I've been noticing that a lot of the green areas around the place are being left to grow "wild" these days. It's a decent idea, i.e. that more wild flowers equals more insects, more insects equals more birds and more birds means healthier eco-systems and happier people. In any case looking at all the buttercups and daisies is definitely more pleasing on the eye than a sea of uniform green (or brown as global warming kicks in!) I did notice one little oddity the other day, the council were cutting the grass but only about a foot in from the pavement, the rest was left to it's own devices, I guess it make spotting any lurking poisonous snakes easier when you're out for a walk, who knows?

 

Monday Mirth

Ha ha, olden but golden..

 

Birthday Bash

It was the 7th birthday of one of our local craft breweries yesterday and the good folks at Elusive brewing threw a little party at their tap room in Finchampstead. A couple of mates and I decided to drop in for a quick pint to show support for local business and (if I'm honest) to try their latest collaboration brew with Siren (also in Finchampstead) Called "Nine Mile Ride", after a well known road (created for Queen Anne/George III to participate in hunting foxes) next to the breweries it's a West Coast IPA in the traditional style, packed full of grapefruit and citrus, dank as you like and with a moreish bitter finish that is totally addictive. They also had some cans of it on sale so I picked up a couple to have with my curry in the evening, delish!

 

In other news

I see that British Cycling has decided to ban men from competing in the Women's category - could there be any more of a non-story? 

Of course it's more complex than that, but really not that much! In reality no one is being banned at all, trans-women (i.e. biological Men who wish to identify as Women) are now invited to compete in an open category (with other men) - this seems eminently fair to me? Women who train and strain their whole junior lives to reach the elite level in their sport shouldn't have that achievement snatched away from them by average Men who decided to "transition" post-puberty and who still retain all the biological advantages that Men have over Women (i.e. brute strength, VO2max, muscle density etc.) , that would make no sense at all!

In Humans, biological sex is binary and immutable, anyone that can prove it's not should be ready to step forth with their peer-reviewed evidence and book their plane ticket to Stockholm, otherwise Women should have their spaces and sports protected ...

 

London Stories

On the left hand side we have a row of houses that are about 50 meters from Bethnal Green tube station (today) They kind of stand out these days as the oldest (grandest) residential buildings in the area, the name of the little street they sit in is called "Paradise Row" and is famous for a song about a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania called Nellie Moss, who lived on Paradise Row at the turn of last century. Nellie Moss established a money lending business to help other immigrants, helping to create the rich and varied links of today. 

"On Mother Kelly's doorstep, Down Paradise Row."

Interestingly (for me) there's a number of bars and restaurants under the railway arches right next to this row of houses, the main craft beer bar and bottle shop there (which is excellent BTW) is called "Mother Kelly's". Funny how these stories linger in the culture and the people.

Friday Smirk

As your man George Bernard Shaw once said,  “All great truths begin as blasphemies.”, seems about right to me..

Rolling on the river

Sad to hear of the death of Tina Turner yesterday. I greatly admired her work back in the day and had quite a few of her albums. I was even lucky enough to see her live at the O2 back in 2009 from the luxury of a corporate box no less; it was a great night and a stunning performance, up there among the top rock/pop performances I've ever seen, "simply the best", you could say..

Speed aware

I see Braverman is back from her speed awareness course...

 

White wine and condoms

Tesco were early pioneers of capturing consumer data (via their Clubcard campaign, started in 1995) in order to better target offers and marketing promotions. Interestingly I read the other day that the data captured recently illuminated a particular buying habit of young(ish) men. Apparently, a lot of such men came into the store on Friday and purchased white wine and condoms. I suppose this makes sense if you think about it, and I doubt the wine was for their own consumption! Anyway the funny bit is what do you think those pithy marketing types labelled this particular demographic? 

"Chablis Shaggers" of course!

Fairly predictably Durex funded Clubcard offers directly to them! I guess a joke about wine faults that make it taste "rubbery" would be puerile at this point..

Midweek Mirth

There seems to be a trend among some of the youngsters in the office (i.e. anyone under 40) to bring their pet dogs into the office (for everyone to meet), I must say I'm not a fan. Seems like a total distraction to me, and worse still most of the female employees can't seem to help themselves but swoon over the poor creatures for hours on end. I guess I'm of an age where other people's dogs and kids in the office are a bit like farts, i.e. you don't mind smelling your own, but other people's are a bit too much.

Welsh tails

Spent the day in Cardiff today. I had a business meeting and decided to hop on the train rather than drive, a very good decision as everything was working well (including the weather!) and managed to make it door-to-door in around 90 minutes, which would have been impossible by road. I hadn't been to the Welsh capital for many years and like many UK cities (Bristol, Edinburgh, Reading etc.) was amazed at how developed the station area has become, lot's of shiny new glass and steel office buildings, pubs, bars and coffee shops, must make a note to visit on my own dime sometime, I hear the craft beer scene is pretty good too.

Sourdough in the Wick

Visited Hackney Wick last week, haven't been there for around 2 years (last trip documented here) but boy has it changed! So many new apartment buildings, new streets, pubs and restaurants and a completely revamped Overground station with new access from Wallis Rd. It's a cool spot IMO, "up and coming" it would probably say in the brochure, some great watering holes too, we had pizza and pale ales from Crate, who make sublime sourdough pizzas and their own beer in a (post-industrial) disused factory by the canal, what's not to like?

 

Revisiting

Siren are knocking it out of the park at the moment, they've gotten the (proper) Summer off to a cracking start with a rerun of a classic. Nacken, which is a collaboration between Siren and Swedish wizards Omnipollo features a fully loaded American hop payload but with the twist of a Hefeweizen yeast strain which works some kind of magic on the beer delivering it somewhere in in-between IPA and German wheat beer. I first tried this back in 2021 and spoke about it then, it even made my top 20 beer list for that year, spoiler alert, this version is possibly even better. I like this can design so much that I actually bought a tee shirt with it on, will model at some point, not quite warm enough yet for just a tee..

Richmond

Since it was such a lovely day yesterday we decided to (randomly) hop on the train and have a stroll around Richmond on Thames. I'm not sure why we chose Richmond, perhaps it was subliminal as we're watching "Ted Lasso" on the TV at the moment (which is excellent BTW) and that show is set in the town, anyway it was a glorious day out. There was even a cricket match on the green, a very "English" scene with crowds of people sitting outside the encircling pubs and restaurants, supping warm beer and munching on "pub grub". We also had a walk along the river but not for long as it was a bit overcrowded, I guess everyone saw that the Sun was out and had the same idea! By about 4 o'clock we were getting hungry so we made our way back to the station and arrived home roughly 45 minutes later in good time for some supper. Later we watched a handful of Ted Lasso episodes (on series 3 now), it was fun spotting all the places we'd seen in the flesh earlier in the day.

 

Unusually Light

Two of my favourite craft breweries, Siren and Verdant, have got together and collaborated to produce this new beer. Called "Ring The Alarm" it's a West Coast IPA (lite!) made with the holy trinity of Citra, Mosaic and Simcoe with a very light colour and unusual clarity (for Verdant). Looking more like lager it has nice fruity/bubble gum notes and slight bitterness although nothing on the scale of a proper Westy (IMO) - good effort!

Reminiscing

 

Walking past a power sub-station by the railway this week and saw this, felt a little nostalgic! If only coughing and sneezing people on the train would stick to it now, ah memories, so short lived..

Friday Smirk

J&M pointing out the Human tendency for confirmation bias.. All those other religions are daft, ridiculous, implausible, but not yours, yours is true.

 

Stratford plethora...

Stratford is such a groovy transport hub these days, much more so than when I was a student (near) here in the 80's! Then all you had was the central line and main-line British Rail services, these days it's Central, Elizabeth, Overground, DLR, International rail, Domestic Rail and Jubilee a positive plethora of choices, you can pretty much get anywhere from here... 

Elizabeth line to Paddington (then fast to Reading & home) for me this evening, less than 20 minutes, so cool!

Explain this..

Ok Atheists, if Jesus isn't real then explain this!

Serial trains

One of the boards at Waterloo clearly in a reboot loop, interesting to note that they use serial communication protocols. The "DATA" channel is running at 57600 baud (what used to be labelled 56K) with 8 data bits and 1 stop bit with no parity bits, I remember having a dial-up modem with this kind of speed and configuration back in the early 90s, old technology I guess but it's probably more than sufficient for this simple use case and also uber-reliable (usually!)

Tuesday Titter

Need to get me one of these!

Monday Mirth

Never a truer word etc..

 

Sunday Stroll

Finally! The Sun made a much needed appearance yesterday and so we, somewhat delirious, made a b-line for Virginia Water at the Southern end of Windsor Great Park for a stroll and an ice cream. 

We hadn't intended on a long walk but it was so nice out that we ended up circling the entire lake (about 5-6 miles) and (along with thousands of others) enjoyed the warmth of some rays on our faces for a change. Here's a picture (above) of the man made waterfall just past "Leptis Magna", the Roman ruins that were nicked from the Libyan desert in the early 1800's (below)

Along with totem poles, fishing lodges, tree-lined avenues, exotic fauna, woods, boating lakes, sculptures, temples and manicured gardens, all this landscaping splendour was built for the prince regent (later George IV) back in the day. A kind of royal theme park for him and his mates to frolic around in when he got a bit bored of mooching around the castle at Windsor or the race track at Ascot, ah those Victorians..

Festival Season

Yay, it's officially festival season and that means a fine craft-beer stall, who needs sunshine!

Friday Smirk

J&M on the money as usual. The standard of evidence required for people to "believe" things is much lower if they've been emotionally hijacked into believing it (i.e. during childhood) before being asked to justify that belief as an adult. The black and white fallacy is strong in this crowd. 

 

Gold Top

 

Had one of these at the weekend, it's from Manchester brewers Track and is called "How We Move". It's a DIPA (Double IPA) built on a stack of hops including Citra, Nelson Sauvin & Galaxy giving it a mango, white wine, tropical vibe, it's also got some lactose in it. I don't normally like lactose in IPA's, I feel it tends to knock the balance out, but this is so loaded with fragrant hops that they cancel each other out, giving a slightly sweet finish but ample dankness. The can has a distinctive gold top, just like the old milk bottles we used to get in the 70s. The analogy works, this beer is a cut above your average DIPA, excellent stuff.

Midweek Mirth

 

The potholes round our way are getting ridiculous..

Spanish night

We watched the Coronation concert last Sunday, my wife is quite keen on some of the acts especially Lionel Richie (in shot), me less so. Anyway, it was fine, pretty harmless stuff. To keep me well behaved she opened a rather splendid Rioja Reserva called "Roda I" (picture above) Delicious red berry fruits, blackcurrant and nicely oaked with well integrated soft tannins deliciously addictive, we seriously enjoyed it and no work on Monday into the bargain! Shame every Sunday evening isn't like this..

End Times

Walking from the office to the railway station yesterday, on my way home, wondering if I'm going to make it to the train before the end-times descend. (update: I got very wet!)

 

London Stories

In the nineteenth century there were over 40 pubs located in and around the docks on the Isle of Dogs, most of them are gone now but a few survive (like The Gun and Lord Nelson). It's an area of London I've never really explored but, as can be seen from this old map, it must have been a busy place in it's heyday! Imagine trying to do a pub crawl around this lot, what would you call such a thing, "the dog's bollock" obvs.

 

Amusing Ceremonies

Kissing the Bishop's ring?

 

Political comment

I'm not inclined to bang on about the anti-monarchy position (which I hold) at a time like this, I feel that people should have the right to follow their conscience on the issue and enjoy themselves celebrating, unhindered, if that's what they want to do. What does disturb me however is the rather harsh treatment of protestors in London this weekend, there seems to be an attitude among those in authority to arrest and detain first and ask questions later, there are also many reports of protestors being denied access to locations deemed "too close" to the processional route. I believe that this is wrong and does not accord with traditional "British values", in my view, everyone should have the right to voice their opinion in a meaningful way and not be piled into police vans for peacefully demonstrating!

Saturday Smile

Always good to see a guard or two on the train..

 

Order of the long sticks

Just been watching the coronation ceremony on TV, the weather is grim but there seems to be quite a few people turning out in The Mall which is nice to see (i.e. people enjoying themselves) I'm a fairly staunch republican but I do enjoy a bit of history and ceremony when it's on a scale like this, i.e. I can enjoy a good story without believing it's true. It was amusing in parts to see the various sects and interest groups on display in Westminster Abbey, at one point I saw a group of four people sitting together holding 4 long sticks (looked like snooker cues) I can only imagine what "special" significance a long stick has?? Anyway, once alerted to the importance of "sticks" I noticed a whole bunch of them being paraded at different points in the procession and in the service, I guess you're nobody unless you can wield a stick (see below)?

PS. The photo at the top of this page shows the crowds watching the ceremony in Princess Gardens in Edinburgh, they have a different perspective on these things up there, I think they're still pissed off that we nicked their "stone of destiny" for our little show.

Marvellous Marble

Seems unbelievable but this is a marble statue and the net is carved from a single piece of stone. Il Disinganno, also known as "The Release from Deception", was crafted by Genoese artist Francesco Queirolo in the 18th century. You have to wonder, could this be made today? Using 3d printing maybe ,but even that's doubtful.

 

Friday Smirk

Good ol Crispian, top of his game as always..

 

Midweek Mirth

A group of people going about their business and living in the moment, not a mobile phone in sight!

 

Dickensian pints..

One of my favourite London boozers, the Sutton Arms in Clerkenwell. I snapped this picture a couple of weeks ago while walking past in the hazy sunset. Apart from the modern road signs it looks like it could have been taken at any time in the last few centuries, even the geezers standing outside imbibing their pints and puffing on their vape machines look more than a little Dickensian!

 

Evolution

Yep tried all of these, fortunately evolution is a continuous process, bring it on!

 

Sun and blossom

Some blue sky and sunshine at last today, snapped these blossoms on my lunchtime walk..

 

Scottish Weekend - Part IV

 

There are some interesting little (non-golf) places in St. Andrews, here's a good example. It's a Meridian line, i.e. a line of Longitude established back in 1673 by scientific pioneer James Gregory who had a lab at the University, this was some 200 years before the Greenwich Meridian was established. It placed the line some three degrees West of the current Meridian, roughly 12 minutes behind GMT. It seems that Gregory was somewhat of a polymath, not only did he work out an accurate Meridian line he's also credited with being one of the three inventors of calculus as well as creator of the "Gregorian Telescope" and doing pioneering work on diffraction gratings, all before the age of 35!

In addition to ancient lines on the pavement there are also ancient towers in the sky. Below is a picture of the Romanesque looking St. Salvator's Chapel tower, built in 1450 as part of the Church but now part of the main University quad. 

The pink-red clock face contrasts beautifully with the local sandstone blockwork from which most of the ancient buildings in the town are constructed. 

Another quiet little corner is St Mary's Quad which, built in 1538, houses the Faculty of Divinity originally established to preserve Catholic teaching against the Protestant reformers (my dad's bigger than your dad etc..) It's a lovely garden with a huge tree at the centre (supposedly planted by Mary Queen of Scots) my Son says that it's the best place to study in the whole University and has it's own ancient library as well as well kept lawn that occasionally acts as a Sun trap (as far as that's possible in Scotland!) 

Here's the middle section of the quad (above) where there's a statue of Bishop Wardlaw who founded the University in 1413 as "an impregnable rampart of doctors and masters to resist heresy", I'm not sure the modern constituents quite align with this motto but then again "heresy" is an idea that's always in the eye of the beholder!

Monday (May 1st) was the traditional "May dip" ceremony where all the students jump into the sea off the East beach at sunset, rather them than me! (apparently there are some debauched drinking games involved), anyway, here's a photo (below) of the event from this year, looking at some of those skimpy swimsuits I'm sure Bishop Wardlaw will be spinning in his grave!.

(my Son and his mates are in here somewhere..)

Feeling Blue

I do love this time of year, the burgeoning new life, the change of tempo and excitement around the potential of some warmer and drier weather, although no sign currently! I snapped this picture on my walk yesterday, some bluebells springing up on a piece of wasteland by the side of a busy road, a great antidote to feeling blue about the constant rain we seem to be experiencing at the moment, roll on Summer!