Sorted!

Well, that's the Donald Trump presidential library sorted!

Czech Escape - Part 3

On the second morning we walked up the hill to the Letenska park behind which is the "Technical Museum", it was another great little place, inside was a example of a Spitfire plane (see above) manufactured in England during the Second World War and flown by one of the Polish and Czech squadrons. They even had some of the personal effects of one of the pilots on loan from the family, it was interesting and moving. There were many other exhibits including printing, domestic appliances, astronomy and games and toys, I was a bit sad though as there wasn't an exhibit about computers (surely a shoe-in for a technical museum!)

We also saw some art while in Prague, in the picture above are a couple of crawling babies (left) and on the right the telecoms tower that dominates the skyline of the city. The two things are linked as if you loos closely on the tower you can see several of these babies crawling up the side, a little abstract for me but interesting never the less!

Of course no trip to Prague would be complete without a picture of the famous astrological clock that resides in the old town square. Here's a view looking up at the device (above) Many people hang around this spot as on each hour little model men (angels, devils and clergy) appear at the two windows on either side of the clock. We watched it once for a minute and both thought it was a little creepy, I guess those medieval folks didn't have Netflix to entertain themselves with! See part 4 for a round up of our best experiences and things to look out for in Prague.

Friday Smirkling

The HR department at my firm gave me some amazing advice for dealing with stress. It really works. To release anger, just write letters to the people you hate then burn them. 

Not sure what you do with the letters though.

Imaginary Friends

A new deep field image from the JWT, each one of these points of light (apart from the ones that look like six pointed stars) are galaxies, that is collections of billions of stars. Some of the galaxies in this image may have been formed little more than 300 million years from the big bang itself meaning that the light from them has taken nearly 14 billion years to reach the sensor on the JWT. 

With a reality as vast and as magnificent as this to study, who needs to waste time on imaginary friends.

Friday Smirk

 J and M pointing out the humorous phenomenon where one religious person points out the flaws in the dogmas of another religion, while completely oblivious to the same obvious and equally flawed claims in their own tradition.

University dilemmas

 

I see that our current (not long now) Prime Minister tweeted the following message yesterday..

It's a very strange message coming from someone who has fully exploited the educational system from private schools through to the best universities in the world. I do wonder what he means by "success" as I think you could safely say that he wouldn't be where he is now without the educational pedigree that he has. Let's hope he means it in the broadest sense, but (as I suspect) let's, for a moment, assume that Rishi means monetary/career success. If so, then the question is, if university doesn't count much toward career/money success why should someone even bother to spend the money and go at all?

Here are a few of the reasons why I think that someone might have for going into higher education.

- To study a subject that they are passionate about, regardless of financial opportunity

- To study a subject where there is a high demand for financially rewarding jobs

- To immerse themselves in an academic culture, exposure to new ideas, meet people, have fun

- To become an academic

- To build a strong network of like-minded or fellow enthusiasts, to be exploited in the future

- To grow themselves mentally and/or physically, become happier and more self-fulfilled

- Escape from the constraints of a home environment, for whatever reason

- To push the boundaries of current knowledge

.. among many others

There are of course other ways to do all of these things but to say that being more educated isn't correlated with higher levels of career and/or fiscal success is wrong, the numbers suggest the opposite. Of course there are exceptions to this and whenever this topic comes up many people like to point them out! But, it's a little like the old argument that goes something like, "my granny smoked and drank like a fish but lived to 90", sure but if you conflate exceptions with the norm then laws of statistics will likely bite you in the bum.

Czech Escape - Part 2

 

This rather grand looking building (above) is the national museum in Prague, it's kind of a mix between the Natural History Museum and British Museum in London having exhibits of both natural and cultural artefacts together in one multi-floor space. We spent a good couple of hours looking around on a rather grey morning, there were many different sections to the museum and an underground passage to another large building next door, you could easily spend a whole day here if you wanted. I was particularly struck by the architecture and also (randomly) the rock collection, both magnificent! Pictured below are the wonderful ceiling in the main reception gallery and also some luminescent rocks!

There were several thing on my "must do" list while visiting Prague, a couple of them were food items and we managed to tick one of them off one lunch time in a little beer garden in the centre of the city (see picture below)

The item in question is Goulash! Proper Eastern European beef stew with paprika and onions, the round things on the left side of the plate are dumplings (not how I remember the little balls floating on top of the stews my mum used to make!) and together form a very traditional Czech dish. It's pretty filling though, if you have goulash and dumplings for lunch then you really don't need much dinner at all, as I found out! Most of the food in Prague was very reasonable, basic but flavoursome and filling, the two meals pictured above with a couple of beers each came to a total of £20, in London the beers on their own would probably approach this total.

Of course I had to sample the craft beer scene in the city and I'm glad to report that it's vibrant and widespread. I sought out a couple of recommended places during the visit and although none of the brewery names were familiar most of the styles were recognisable as were the hop names and adjuncts. Pictured below is a typical beer board for a Czech craft beer bar, a decent selection of pale ales, IPA's and stouts and the prices were pretty good too, nothing much more than £4 for roughly a pint (500ml)

This place was in the centre of town and seemed to be mostly populated by heavy metal fans (tat's and piercings) but they were all friendly enough and very keen to explain their offerings to tourists like us. The other craft'y thing we did was to do a tasting "paddle" in one of the beer places, in the picture below you can see six different beers, all different styles and all very enjoyable, this was around 380 crowns which is roughly £12 (for two paddles of 6 beers) which I reckon was pretty reasonable for the location and the types of beer on offer.

More Prague stuff to come in part 3

Midweek Mirth

Well that's national biscuit day ruined!

Czech Escape - Part 1

Just got back from five days in beautiful Prague in the Czech Republic. Earlier in the year my wife and I decided to tick this famous city off our bucket-list and so booked a city-break kind of deal that included flights and hotel room etc. First stop was the BA lounge in T3 (Heathrow) while waiting for our flight to board and (surprisingly) a little bit of Brewdog! Speed Bird OG is a beer that they created several years ago specifically for BA but I'd never tried it before, it was OK, a little flimsy for me, I guess made for more of a mass market rather than a pedantic old beer-geek. 

We seem to be fated to suffer weird delays and inconveniences whenever we visit Heathrow airport recently, this time the flight was delayed for 40 minutes (not unusual) but when it was called we all had to get on a bus which then drove all through the airport underbelly and popped up in terminal 5, where our plane was waiting. In all my years of flying from London I've never checked in at one terminal and flown from another, anyway after an uneventful 90 minutes in the air we landed at Vaclav Havel airport and the adventure had properly begun!

Having never been to the country before I had been doing my due diligence on-line using (mostly) you-tube and had discovered that not only did Czech taxi's have a rather sketchy reputation at the best of times, but that an honest cab to the city from the airport would cost around 25-40 Euro's depending upon the time of day. An alternative mode of transport (as discovered online) is to take a public bus (#59) from outside the terminal to a nearby metro station (Nadrazi Veleslavin, pictured above) and then take the train into the city centre, total cost 30 Czech Crowns or (roughly) £1, quite a difference! We chose the latter option and although more hard work lugging our baggage, it was very easy, clean, safe and frequent only taking around 25 minutes to reach our hotel in the central district from the airport terminal (probably quicker than a taxi in the rush-hour traffic). Having unpacked and freshened up we headed out into the city. 

One of the things I'd been looking forward to was to try the famous Czech pilsner in an authentic cellar bar, so we did! Above is a picture of the way in which they pour their pints (500ml) as you can see there's rather a large foam head! Whilst cynical UK (mostly Northerners!) beer drinkers would insist that this is somehow a way of cheating the customer, there is method to this madness. The foam head protects the beer from exposure to oxygen and is so thick that it pretty much lasts for the duration, the beer itself is therefore maintained as close as possible to the intended freshness for as long as possible. The double-decoction method of mashing that the Pilsner-Urquell company invented back in 1842 created the world's first pale lager that subsequently went on to become the most popular style in the world. 

This method delivers a beer that's not too strong (around 4.5% ABV) but is very rich and flavoursome and when paired with German noble hops like Saaz and a soft water profile, gives a creamy caramel and spicy/herbal taste that finishes dry and is incredibly refreshing. I concluded that drinking pilsner in Prague is a little bit like drinking Guinness in Dublin, probably the best illustration of the style you can find. More in part 2..

Offended

I see that the Pope made a homophobic slur during an internal meeting this week (he said that gay's shouldn't be allowed into the priesthood because there were too many "faggots" already), but, when this became public he apologised and said that he never meant to offend gay people. Of course he wouldn't intend to offend gay people, we all know that he only meant to condemn them as is the nature of his tradition. So, are the media correct? Is the Pope homophobic? Of course not, they'll be claiming he's Catholic next!

Progress update

Thought I'd check in with my adopted duck family and take a look at their progress. I'm pleased to note that all four chicks are doing well and growing nicely (see picture above) I previously posted about them in late April and they were just balls of fluff now they have proper feathers and are probably flying, obviously not their parents first rodeo!

London Stories

Seen in a London street, it's a boundary marker for the parish/church of St Clement Danes in the City. Legend has it that this name harks back to the 9th century when Danes (from present day Denmark) colonised the village of Aldwych and set up the dividing line between Danish and English control of this island. There are several possible stories though including Alfred the Great forcing Danes to adopt Christianity and Harold I (who had Danish links) being buried there in 1040 among other stories, nothing like a good urban myth to keep the plebs interested!

Friday Smirk

Another excellent effort from J&M, perhaps someone gave his a stiff drink before he was nailed up?

Rock on Rishi

I see that our current (unelected) Prime Minister has called a general election for July 4th this year (in about 6-7 weeks time), perhaps fitting that it poured with rain during the announcement and the song "Things will only get better" (Labour's 1997 anthem) blared from a nearby street. As you can see in the photo as he turned his back on the cameras it was clear his suit was drenched, as if he wasn't wet enough! Anyway, let's hope we see the actual back of his entire Government come this July!

London Stories

When I was a student back in the 80s in East London we used to live in a flat in West Ham, right next to the tube station, behind these flats were some football fields and behind those a huge graveyard. The graveyard and crematorium were built in the 1870s to relieve the pressure from a hugely expanding Victorian London and the surplus of dead bodies that needed somewhere to go! Anyway, one of the more famous graves in said graveyard belongs to one Elizabeth Stride who died in 1888. Her claim to fame (if you can call it that) is that she was officially the third victim of Jack the Ripper, I'm sure she would have preferred to remain anonymous! However, here she lies to this day, or at least her mortal remains do. 

Born in Sweden in 1843 Elizabeth had a very tough life. She moved to London in 1866 but her lot didn't improve much, poverty, a failed marriage, alcoholism and prostitution, all fairly common for poor single Women in the East End at that time. On the night of her murder she visited the Queens Head pub on Commercial Street (which is still there) and was last seen leaving at around 11:45pm in the company of one or two acquaintances and/or clients. Her lifeless body was discovered at 1:00am the next morning in Dutfield's yard off Berner Street (since renamed to Henriques Street) dead from a fatal six inch incision to the neck aged 45. Forever sealed into London history.

Wet, wet, wet...

Went for a walk at lunchtime, didn't think I'd need an umbrella... 

New Fashion?

While walking to the station the other day I happened to find myself behind a young girl out walking her dog, I noticed a rather unusual bit of branding on her sweatshirt, the name "Voltaire" was written across the back of the garment? One of the key Enlightenment philosophers, thinkers and authors, a Frenchman who also spent time in England and is rumoured to have attended the funeral of Isaac Newton, an infamous critic of religion, committed Deist and all round smarty pants! I did wonder if there was a new fashion for showing off how smart (or otherwise) you are by emblazoning your clothes with the names of famous philosophers**, who would you choose? (I'd probably go for Russell)

**It's actually a clothing brand called Zadig & Voltaire (my Daughter informs me)

Monday Mirth

Ah corporate "happy talk", the customer survey that no one gives a f**k about..

In the can

So, I popped one of my A&H London Black cans last night while making dinner, it all worked perfectly,  the widget in the can created a nice creamy head and the beer was delicious as always, a really good representation of the style and the beer. Not quite up to the high standard of the keg version but pretty good never the less!

London days

Spent a nice afternoon sampling craft beer with a couple of mates in Bermondsey yesterday, the weather played ball for once and it was sunny and warm all day. My friends were down from Cheshire and had never sampled the delights of the "mile" so I took them along the railway arches up to Spa Terminus and The Kernel brewery before turning around and walking back to London Bridge stopping off in selected venues to try out their various offerings on route. Of course I had to drop into Anspach and Hobday for a pint of London Black and was thrilled to find that they had their cans on sale. The canned version is quite new and only came out a couple of months ago and is in very short supply at the moment, I'll be keen to see if it holds up against the draft version which was brilliant as usual! My Northern friends thought it was one of the best beers they'd ever had, high praise indeed, most Northerners I know usually aren't that complimentary about "Southern" brews.

I snapped this shot of the sun over the river on the walk back to Waterloo station, Bankside was bustling with music, food vendors (gorgeous smells!) and people enjoying the evening air, it was a splendid stroll!

Shrouded in mystery (not!)

I'm not sure why so many of our religious brothers and sisters still cling to the claim that the shroud of Turin (pictured above) is physical evidence of their beliefs? Put aside for one moment that the age of this relic was scientifically determined decades ago and it's obviously a medieval fake but take a look at the figure itself, does this look like a first century Jew, more like a Viking god, maybe it's Thor? Now that would be a turn up..

Friday Smirk

J&M pointing out the obvious again. I always wondered how many feminists squared up to some of the misogyny built into mainstream Islam, head in the sand it mostly seems.

Banksy'ish

There's an artist that lurks around our town who loves to stencil funny looking cats onto public buildings and structures. I think they're acting out some kind of Banksy fantasy or something but I'm not sure I'd be too happy to find one of these on the side of my house! Part of my regular walk takes me through an alley between two houses and the picture above is one of the walls, it's just a regular estate house and the cat painter has struck! I guess it could go either way, i.e. either the painting becomes worth more than the house or it's simply criminal damage, only time will tell.

Soane Sunday

 

As it was such a sunny day last Sunday that we decided to hop on a train and meet our Daughter (whose studying in London) somewhere in town. Since it's on our train line and somewhere we'd never really explored we opted for Ealing in West London, Ealing Broadway is an easy 30 minutes from us and only 20 from her so we made a date for lunch and a stroll!

After a nice light lunch at a little Spanish tapas place in Dickens Yard (Reineta) we headed over to Walpole park and the Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery which is a short walk from the station. The manor house there was designed and constructed by architect Sir John Soane in 1800, the house was built as a country retreat for him and his family but also as a showcase for the kind of neo-classical architecture for which he was famous (a live-in advertisement!). 

Even though the designs are now over 200 years old the house has a very modern feel to it, many of the paint colours used would sit happily in a "Farrow & Ball" catalogue (maybe that's where they get them from?) and the layout functional as well as impressive. In the picture above you can see the interior of the entrance hall, the amber glass bathed the space in an orange glow as the sun's rays shone through into the marble stairwell all very well thought out.

Much of the plasterwork on the ceilings and walls is very "Wedgwood Jasperware" looking, I guess it was all the rage back then as Josiah Wedgewood's product had only been going a few years (1775) prior to Pitzhanger being designed. 

One of the good friends of John Soanes was JMW Turner whose relationship centred largely around a mutual love for fishing. The ponds at the back of the Manor house hosted the famous English landscape painter many times, they're still there, but I suspect not as good for fishing as when Ealing was considered "countryside"!

The view above is the rear of the Manor, the conservatory windows can be seen which overlook one of the "fishing" ponds, it was a sunny warm day so the surrounding parkland was filled with people enjoying a relaxing Sunday, lot's of kids running around chasing pigeons, a nice day out!

Interestingly I discovered later (after some Googling) that Soanes was commissioned to create a monument in Reading, it's in the Market Square and one of those things that you see all the time but never notice. It was paid for by a wealthy Reading merchant (Edward Simeon) back in 1804 and is called the "Soane Obelisk", I must take a closer look when I'm next in town (see picture below).

London Stories

It's amazing what you find when you dig a hole in London. This particular hole is in Southwark on the South bank of the Thames near London Bridge, the Shard can clearly be seen behind the site. Workers building the foundations for new buildings uncovered a set of huge Roman mosaics on raised platforms, that are believed to be part of a mausoleum structure for the funerals of well to-do Romans. They also found coins, shoes, pottery, roof tiles and metal objects. Discovered in 2022 it's planned that the finds will be restored and put on permanent public display.

Holy Trinity

Snagged a couple of cans of this beauty the other day. It's a collaboration between three of my favourite breweries, Burning Sky, The Kernel and Elusive to produce an absolute banger of a Westy. Bitterness layered with pink grapefruit, crisp and clean with great body, a very good ale indeed!

London Stories

Nothing special from this view but this terrace in Leinster Gardens, London hides a little secret. All is revealed if you look around the back, you can see that the whole thing is just a façade (see picture below)

Put up to hide the underground railway that runs below the houses!

Lights, camera, action

While walking home from the station late last night we were treated to a fabulous display of excited particles hitting the upper atmosphere. The Northern lights payed a rare visit to Southern England and miraculously it wasn't cloudy! Hopefully we'll get the same treat tonight as well, we'll be watching!

Soft Launch

Spent a splendid evening with friends at the new Siren bar in Reading last night. It's not officially open yet but as an investor I was invited to a "soft launch" to help them iron out the bugs in their systems and test the various elements of the service (food & drink etc.) It was a big success, everything worked just fine although the queues were quite large as I reckon they had at least 150 people there all turning up at the same time, a good test I guess. Above is the new beer board, pretty decent selection across thirty odd keg and four cask taps, the best bit was that since this was an invite only event for investors everything was half price! I can't wait for the official opening (Monday) and for this swanky new restaurant/bar to become a core part of the town's hospitality scene (it surely needs a boost!)

Bring it on!

Amazing what a bit of sunshine does for everyone, our little market town looking splendid today.

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo pointing out the obvious. It's funny how certain tribes of people come together to protest against certain issues and yet completely ignore others where, I suspect, an ideological clash isn't present, could it be that some people confuse morality with ideology? 

I'm thinking of course about Muslims and Jews, in fact when you think about it quite a few different tribes have issues with Jews and have had them for centuries? I guess old grudges take time to fully heal (about four thousand years apparently) in the mean time some people seem to have nothing better to do than pick at the scabs.

Woke-washing?

 

Interesting story hit the wire today, the CEO and co-founder of BrewDog, one of the original UK based craft brewing companies that started back in 2007, has decided to step aside and install a more "corporate" looking bloke from the retail sector. James Watt, the enfant terrible of craft (according to some people) has many enemies in the media and among the more vocal segments of the various woke tribes. He's been central to several scandals over the years and has been accused of "inappropriate behaviour" and fostering a "toxic workplace culture" among other things. 

I think there's no doubt that Watt has sailed pretty close to the wind on several occasions when it comes to edgy marketing and perhaps playing fast and loose with the truth, however he's not unusual in that. It's also a common phenomenon that when a company and/or person achieves success in this country, and particularly when that success is highly visible and fast then there is almost invariably some kind of backlash. It's strange how success is sometimes viewed here, many people appear to resent it. Of course, I'm not suggesting that successful people are somehow immune from the same rules as the rest of us but equally we should all have a modicum of understanding about what it really takes to build a multi-million pound business these days from scratch and how the people at the top of these organisations aren't saints, they're just fallible people like the rest of us. Many of the accusations levelled at Watt have been sketchy to say the least and it's clear that a certain segment of the media are or have been gunning for him, particularly the "right-on" BBC/Guardian types.

Now though, it seems that the board have decided to install a more corporate shaped bloke in his place. Someone who perhaps will dial back the outlandish marketing stunts, focus more on diversity and inclusion schemes, implement more rigid HR policies and essentially woke-wash the whole thing so that the heat Watt attracted is directed somewhere else. Looking at the CV of the bloke that's replacing Watt (James Arrow) though I do worry about a few things. I think it can be justifiably said that although Watt was clearly very driven and successful he was also a bit of a prat! Your classic "A type" personality who jumped into things with both feet and who often put sensitive noses out of joint. He was however passionate about good beer, and had a keen understanding of his product and what this segment of the market is all about. The original message on the back of their flagship beer (Punk IPA) used to be pretty aggressive, I remember reading it in 2011 it was memorable and to the point and the beer (Punk IPA) tasted new, good and different from the bland mass-produced stuff that was pervasive at the time (see  picture below) This kind of anti "corporate happy-talk" attitude went down well with the original group of people that gravitated to the new wave of beers back then, and was a great brand identity forming step for the company. 

Today of course Brewdog is a huge company that has over 2000 employees and 120 bars around the world, like many it has perhaps become what it's founders were trying to disrupt back in 2007! However, I do hope that some of that original spirit can be retained somewhere, if you ask me there's enough corporate  greenwashing, wokewashing, blandness and indistinguishable product in the world, we don't need more.

Tech troubles

Perfectly on point from Matt today.

London Stories

Dr Salter's Daydream, Bermondsey an interesting installation on the bank of the Thames. The figures represent Dr Alfred Salter his Wife Ada and their daughter Joyce and family cat (seen on the wall above) The Salters lived inspiring lives, Alfred, a physician at Guy's did much for the poor of Bermondsey a huge slum at the time (1898) and set up a medical practice there, kind of an NHS before the NHS existed. Sadly his daughter Joyce died aged 8 after a scarlet fever epidemic swept through the slums. The grief the couple suffered at the loss of their beloved girl was channelled into improving conditions in the borough, Ada eventually became the Mayor of Bermondsey, the first Female Mayor of a London borough. The installation recalls happier days for the Salter's, people that made a difference.

Splitting the "G"

Is this equivalent to splitting the "G" (see here for more information) Not Guinness of course but the wonderful London Black from Anspach and Hobday (London), a much tastier porter IMHO.