Keep death off the roads...

As the old joke goes, "keep death off the roads, drive on the pavement". While out on my walk the other day I noticed this little caper in a pub car park, a quick double take and a photo, very nice, I like it a lot, no doubt this causes some sphincter tightening on country lanes late at night!

Friday Smirk

J&M on the money as usual. It never ceases to amaze me how impotent most deities are, they seem to always need Human minders to implement their wishes and always need money.

Splash of colour

Came across this little beauty on my walk today, unusual to see one growing through stone blocks like this, made it stand out all the more, a splash of colour against the grey.

Old roses

There's a particular street in our town that's lined with very old houses dating back to the 14th century (the time of the Black Death, Edward III and the Canterbury Tales) it's probably one of the earliest planned streets in the town and is kind of cigar shaped, i.e. narrow at both ends and, like many old English towns, probably contained a market back in the day. Anyway it always looks fabulous this time of year as almost every house features a rose bush outside, a positive outburst of pinks, whites, yellows and reds, a delight to traverse on the way to the station. The name of this street, why Rose street of course..

Nights

Nights'll be drawing in, in a couple of hours..

Midweek Mirth

Topical from Matt

French on Sunday

Went to a rather unusual restaurant on Sunday (Fathers day) it was housed in a disused pavilion in the corner of a park off Tanner Street in Bermondsey (London). Called Pique-Nique (menu above) it was very French in character and most of the food/wine hailed from there (at least stylistically) All the mains, and there were only five of them, were sharing plates, i.e. designed to be shared between 2/3 people and the most expensive thing was a Chateaubriand (including veg) at £88 although between 3 people that's not too bad for London. We opted for roast chicken and a Coulibiac (Salmon en-croute) with a nice bottle of red, and there was a ton of food between the four of us. The food was delicious, the herb jus that came with the chicken was a particular stand out, my Son and I fought over it probably dunking a whole French stick in the process. Anyway, a really nice meal with the family, lots of chat/catching up, and a great way to spend a rather rainy Sunday afternoon!

Liars

I don't understand how any political party or public institution could survive such heinous lies.

 

Monday Mirth

Yesterday morning I walked past the shop in Tottenham Court Road that this bunch of hucksters has had there for years, made me think of this, and smirk..

Thames treats

The Christchurch bridge over the Thames looking fine in the sunshine on Friday. I needed to pick up some stuff in town and decided to treat myself to a pint at the Fox & Hounds over in Caversham before heading home on the train, it was lush!

 

London Stories

This is quite possibly one of the hardest pubs in London to find. It's the "Ye Old Mitre" on Ely Court off Hatton Garden, but the entrance to the alley is tiny and hard to spot unless you know where it is. The pub here is very old indeed, originally built in 1546 for the servants of the Bishop of Ely who owned the whole area it was later leased to Sir Christopher Hatton who famously danced with Queen Elizabeth (and some say did a lot more with her!) around a cherry tree in the forecourt of the pub. 

The photo on the left is an old one and clearly shows the Bishop's Mitre augmenting the front of the pub, it's a reference to the original owner and is still there. I took the picture on the right back in 2019 and the Mitre is the blue object just to the right of the hanging lamp, it's obscured by foliage but can just be made out. I've visited this pub a couple of times now, it's a great place to take foreign visitors and it's about as classic old-world pub as you can get, wooden panels everywhere, tiny crooked corridors and winding stairs, it's worth visiting the bar upstairs as it's not obvious and often empty, a London classic.

Ashes kick-off

Very keen on cricket in our house and so we're excited to mark the start of the Ashes series today. To mark the kick-off here's a little guide to the sometimes confusing terminology that describes the various field positions for the ultimate in sporting rivalry, go England!

 

Berks - Wilts

There's an interesting iron sign on one of the streets in our home town, it shows how the county boundaries have shifted over the years. Currently our town (Wokingham) is well and truly in the county of Berkshire with some distance to both the East and the West before you get to a border, it wasn't always like that however. On the Eastern edge of the town there's a road called "Wiltshire Road" and I'd always assumed that it was named as such because it led (eventually) West to the border with Wiltshire, but no, it was named this way because until 1845 it was actually IN Wiltshire and marked the border with Berkshire. The sign acknowledges this, one side says "Wokingham Berks" and the other "Wokingham Wilts", the Wilts side of the road was, however, only a little enclave, owned by a Wiltshire estate (the Bishop of Salisbury), how confusing! I bet this caused chaos when it came to county fayres and elections, not to mention Cricket teams.

 

Friday Smirk

Biblical contradictions, of which there are many, cause apologists to contort and twist logic and history to such an embarrassing extent that you have to admire their persistence, it's still fun to point them out though.

Bending space-time

Some entities massively distort space-time, others just massively bend the rules and the truth.

Progress

The original computer "mouse", loving the fact that it was carved from a piece of wood, things have certainly moved on significantly since the 60s when this would have been seen as  "cutting edge"

Midweek Mirth

Can't accuse me of being out of touch with the latest cultural memes, I made an LGBT sandwich!

London Stories

 

This unimposing building is in the heart of LSE (London School of Economics) land around Lincoln 's Inn Fields it's at the corner of Portugal St. and Carey St. (with the pissoir) It used to be (1920-1976) the head office of WH Smith and Son the well known retailer and if you zoom into the upper sign you see that it's a WWII relic (see below)

The scars (as explained on the lower sign) are shrapnel damage from a German bomb that exploded nearby on October 10th 1940, a neat reminder of the rich tapestry that is London history.

Easy mistake to make

Easy mistake to make these days, got to have your wits about you etc..

Something odd going on?

Here's a rather alarming chart, it shows the average surface temperature for the North Atlantic over many years (all the blue lines), the red line is this year, 2023. Clearly there's something odd going on, and although the absolute temperature rise isn't huge (i.e. less than 1 degree) in the aggregate that's huge, the surface of the ocean (i.e. the first meter or two) contains more energy that the entire atmosphere. If this is correct then it could lead to many more violent storm events and extremes of temperature, much like we saw last year when we topped 40 degrees in the UK for the first time in (metrological) recorded history.

Some flavour of phobia

OMG, working with Millennials is so like this all the time, I'm thinking of buying a few of these mugs and awarding them to people who organise pointless (virtue signalling) meetings, a badge of shame kind of vibe. On second thoughts though, I expect that would be seen as some flavour of phobia..

London Stories

If you wander out from Westminster tube station and start to walk across Westminster bridge on the left hand side you'll see a statue of the fearsome Boudica or Boadicea (in Latin) on her war chariot replete with spikes on the wheels (awkwardly a Roman design) Anyway, this splendid warrior was a member of the Iceni tribe of ancient Britons who lead an uprising against our Roman overlords at the time. (AD 60-61) The uprising failed but the legend remains and Boudica has become a symbol to many of the fight against oppression in these lands, an archetypal narrative to call on in times of danger. 

Of course real history is slightly less glamorous, the original fight was a squabble about taxes (aren't they always) and many of the details of the story are taken from an 11th century monk who is renowned for stretching the truth somewhat. Like many empiric myths, Boudica as a female warrior figure only really started to be venerated during the Victoria era when this statue was commissioned, even the name may have been honorific and we may never know who that noble Iceni leader really was, no contemporary description of her exists, but hey, why let boring old facts get in the way of a cracking story!

Globe IPA

Siren made a special beer for the Globe theatre, here it is in situ on a beautifully sunny day, with a nice malt backbone with a subtle citrus backdrop it's a tempest of flavour, definitely much ado about something.

Social Contagion

This is a picture of Megan Fox, American actress and star of the transformer movies (ironically) Anyway she was snapped by a pap while out with her three Sons, yep, you read that right, Sons. Now I'm not one to judge (yes I am) but I wanted to approach this in a scientific manner, I worked out that the odds of bearing three children all with gender dysphoria is about 1 in 8 trillion (10X more than the population of the entire planet), I guess someone has to win the lottery though, right? 

The poor chap on the right doesn't look too happy with things, never mind mate, just tell your buddies that you're the Joker from Batman! Looks like social contagion is alive and well in California!

Offensive

 

With all of this cultural division going on at the moment and everyone getting offended at the slightest hint of disagreement, I thought it would be useful to outline the officially sanctioned responses (which can be combined) for English people when confronted with a frothing troll on Twitter who has just viciously maligned you and your entire genetic line going back to amoeba.

“Bit harsh”
“There’s no need for that”
“Mate…”
“Steady on”
“Have you quite finished?”
“That’s uncalled for”
“Bit rude”
“I’ll put the kettle on”
“Anything else?”
“Right-o”
“Thanks for your honesty”
“Blimey”
“Charming”
“I see” 
“I’m sorry you feel that way”
“Sorry”

Please ensure that you hold your end up and maintain a stiff upper lip at all times when dealing with obnoxious social media blighters.

London Stories

Here's a thing, it's a "pissoir" as the French would say, or public urinal as we call them over here, but it's in London! If you take a slight detour off Carey St. (behind the Royal Courts of Justice) into Star Yard you'll come across this nineteenth century ornate iron box and unless you were in the know, it may be tricky to figure out exactly what it is. It's not in use anymore and belongs to the property opposite who use it for storage these days, shame really, anyway we should just add it to the list of those little London quirks that provide endless interest.

Friday Smirk

 

Nature doesn't care how you feel or what you believe..

Nothing works

You're not wrong Noel..

Worms turning?

I see that Oxfam has gotten itself into yet another embarrassing situation by publishing a video apparently showing a cartoon of JK Rowling as a demonic "TERF" abusing "trans" people. 

It wasn't that long ago that this organisation had it's UK funding withdrawn over cases of sexual abuse in the DRC where it was providing aid workers. Apparently they had prostitutes supplied and paid for their amusement, Women who's lives were probably quite hard enough already, to be exploited by the very people sent to help them would, in light of this cartoon, seem to be the summit of hypocrisy. Oxfam also had a sex scandal surrounding it back in 2018 in Haiti when a devastating earthquake killed hundreds of thousands.

While it's perfectly OK to express a view, i.e. to disagree with the position that someone like JKR might hold, it's not OK to vilify an individual and portray them as demonic in public, thus inciting a reaction (potentially violent) from other activists, without context or evidence, in fact, contrary to the evidence! I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't sue, or threaten to in this case, it seems like a perfect opportunity to assist the worm in turning against the extremes of TRA (trans-rights activism) If this is the straw that takes Oxfam down then other organisations will hopefully think twice before jumping on these bandwagons of virtue signalling (or "woke washing" as it's known), and perhaps people will regroup in the centre ground, where the (rational) majority sits and this debate should be happening.

Hollywood Walks

Went for a walk around our office estate at lunchtime and was rather surprised to see a fleet of New York cop cars parked up in the side streets. I guess the film studio there (previously mentioned here) must be shooting some kind of cop drama or at least something set in NYC, how exciting! I did have a good look around but didn't spot any stars although there was a car park nearby full of large luxurious trailers and some food stalls so all the actors must have been taking some lunch! There's already been one film made here called "Boys in the boat" directed by George Clooney who lives 5 minutes away in Sonning, I guess he didn't fancy a long commute?

 

Midweek Mirth

After highly suspicious air traffic activity a fighter jet was sent to intercept this plane, in the end it turned out to be an EasyJet flight that was actually on-time.

 

Vinous vices

Inflation, an incompetent Government and Brexit are hammering wine prices at the moment. Here's a breakdown of where the money goes on an £8 bottle of wine and as you can see a significant proportion (50%) goes to the Inland Revenue! Of course £8 might be a typical spend in a supermarket or wine shop (i.e. retail), but in a restaurant (an industry that's being similarly squeezed at the moment) you would probably be paying 3 or 4 times that amount for the same product; there are very few products out there where you'd put up with being gouged like this, buying wine in restaurants isn't pleasurable for me any more (it used to be!) it looks more and more like a scam.

Tuesday Titter

Now that "Brexit's done" I'm sure the Government has a solid plan to plug the gaping holes in our economy..

 

London Stories

Snapped this as I was walking past on Thursday, it's the Millennium bridge that spans the Thames between the Tate Modern (in picture, the old Bankside power station) and St. Pauls. It's famous because it used to "wobble" and is known affectionately by Londoners as "the wobbly bridge". The regular plodding of feet crossing the bridge caused a natural resonance to occur and it swayed quite disturbingly. This phenomena is why soldiers always break step when crossing bridges like this. Engineers fixed the problem in 2002 by bracing the structure using the cables you can see protruding from the sides of the walkway. 

Jones music

There was a free music concert in the main park in town yesterday (Saturday) and so we wandered in (fold up chairs in hand) and met some friends for some classic cover-band fayre. It was fun for a couple of hours in the Sunshine eventually though, hunger got the better of us, and we headed home via Waitrose for some supper. On the way home I noticed that our shadows looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, on account of my Panama hat! (PS. we weren't trying to look cool just that I learnt my sunburnt face lesson from last year!)

Sweet and dry..

 

Been having a bit of a clear out of some older white wine that I have in stock. Here's one we had over the bank holiday weekend, it was sublime! From the famous house of Gaston Huet in the Loire Valley of France it's made with Chenin Blanc grapes (probably more widely known these days as a South African varietal) This grape has it's "spiritual home" in the Loire and originated there, i.e. they know what they're doing with it and this bottle was exceptional. The Wine smacks you around the chops with apple and pear flavours and tastes almost sweet on the tongue initially, however, after a second or so it does a weird schizophrenic trick and dries out as it disappears down the throat leaving a lovely finish of honey flavours. A totally compelling wine and even better for the 20 years of age it has, brilliant. 

Bermondsey beer

My Wife and Daughter went to see Beyoncé  in concert up at White Hart Lane stadium on Thursday evening and it went on until late so I booked a hotel room in town for the night. I didn't go to the concert (not my cup of tea) but I did take the opportunity of a bed in central London for the night to have a wander up the Bermondsey beer mile and tick off a couple of taprooms that I'd never been to before (and some that I had!)

First up I went to The Kernel, somewhere that's been on my bucket list for years (and one of my top breweries of 2022) but never visited and truly hallowed ground! This brewery was one of the first UK based craft brewers and is debatably still one of the best. I wasn't disappointed, the list (above) was epic and varied and although I only tried two of the beers (Pale Ale - Superdelic and the Table Beer) I could tell that this is a place that takes it's ale very seriously indeed. As previously mentioned, there are a lot of new hops around just now and "Superdelic" is one of them, from New Zealand it's a fragrant fruit bomb of a hop, melons, berries and mangos would be how I'd characterise it, a delicious hop and made extremely well by these maestros of malt. In the picture below you can see the unassuming outside of The Kernel taproom, the delights that lurk inside are probably one of the best beer experiences in the country.

Next up, and only a few arches down from The Kernel was "Bianca Road Brew Co.". Not somewhere I'd ever been, in fact I'd never even tried one of their brews before, but it was a nice space and very decent beer!  I hadn't planned to visit but as I was walking past I noticed a couple of guys supping a splendid looking hazy boy and just had to find out what it was.

Above you can see their Amarillo IPA, freshly kegged just a few hours before it was as clean and crisp as you like, bursting with tangerine flavours and looking absolutely stunning. Definitely one to look out for and a nice surprise, I will be back to try more!

Last but by no means least we have Anspach and Hobday, a taproom I'd been to before but a solid favourite. Of course I had to have a pint of the now renowned "London Black" and boy was it looking and tasting good (see below) You have to admit the beer looks stunning, certainly giving the other "Irish" black beer a good run for it's money, a top brewer and a classic beer in the making.

Once back at London Bridge I walked across to the North side of the river and up through the City, Holborn and Bloomsbury to Fitzrovia where we were staying (quite a trek!), a great day out and a confirmed hypothesis, i.e. you can't beat London when the sun is shining!

Smelly walks

Came across these little chaps on my walk the other day, no idea what they are but this tree/bush is utterly weighed down with yellow and white blooms and they look great, I could smell them from 10 yards away too!

 

Bitty witty

 

Witty bit of graffiti spotted in London on TCR this morning.. 

Trendy hops

Ha, ha! There's been a lot of new hop announcements and experimental beers so far this Summer, and long may it continue, there doesn't seem to be any drop off in either the number of new varieties and blends or the popularity of them among craft beer fanboys. The only thing that's slightly concerning is the price, average prices seem also to have no bounds at the moment, every visit raises my eyebrows slightly higher (£8 pints of pale ale here we come!)

Friday Smirk

The usual high standard from J&M, I always find it surprising how many religious people don't cope very well with others simply not accepting their beliefs; as the Hitch used to say, "you'd think they'd be happy to have found eternal bliss, but apparently they aren't until everyone else believes it too?"

Hitch Quote of the Month

 

"One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority - it's an indispensable thing. People can call it blasphemy if they like, but if they call it that they have to assume there is something to be blasphemed. Well, I don't accept the premise."

London Stories

Living in the Twenty First century as we do, there's a fading memory of just how much damage the German air force did to the centre of London during WWII. Take a look at this picture, it looks like at least one in three buildings are rubble, many destroyed down to the cellar level! Just look how prominent the Monument is, it's like a tall beacon in a flat landscape; these days you struggle to see it at all as it's hemmed in on all sides by buildings far taller.

Vox Pop

I predict that this lady is going to be appearing on telly quite a bit in the near future. It's Professor Kathleen Stock who was hounded out of Sussex University in 2021 after a particularly vicious and unhinged student campaign against her. Her crime was simply stating a Biological fact, i.e. that trans-women aren't Women and a desire to openly debate the issues surrounding Biological men entering Women's spaces (like changing rooms, rape crisis centres, sports etc.) Her views are not at all controversial or bigoted (as her opposition loves to bellow through megaphones) but are entirely reasonable and well considered. Although her academic colleagues at Sussex clearly threw her under the bus (even though over 200 academics signed an open letter in her support), she's never uttered a "transphobic" word as far as I can see and is clearly passionate about Women's rights, a perfectly reasonable position to hold in my view.

On Tuesday CH4 aired the first of a programme on this subject, called "Gender Wars" it covers both sides of the debate (if you can call it a debate, the term "war" is probably more appropriate at the moment!) and was pretty well balanced and calm, although it's generating much traffic in social and news media right now. Much of the hysteria around this subject and the screaming and intimidation from the TRA side wasn't shown, hopefully this important aspect will be exposed in future episodes as I think it's important to understand the ferocity of words and actions (de-platforming, death threats, physical abuse, disruption etc.) being hurled at Women for simply speaking their minds. Clearly the violent faction is a minority but I do feel that at some point the, so far, silent middle in this debate will need to act to marginalise the extremists so that we can progress however I think that the pendulum is slowly swinging back away from the loonies and to the more reasonable voices (like those of Stock) on both sides, something to be welcomed