Beer of the year

I think I might have found my "beer of the year" last night, I cracked open a can of "This is a Concept" while making dinner. It's a West Coast style IPA from Cornish wizards Verdant, now, one of the things that Verdant are renowned for is their obsession with New England style IPA's which are hazy, pale, hop forward and with hardly any bitterness. West Coast IPA's on the other hand are (usually) clear and hop forward but with a hefty whack of bitterness that leaves your mouth demanding another sip. Usually, when it comes to breweries they tend to specialize in one or the other, however, when it comes to straddling the two Oceans it seems that the lads down in Kernow know how to truly nail both styles. An absolutely stunning beer, almost perfect, soft mouthfeel with keen bitterness, a sweet malt character (like great German lager) big hit of citrus hop flavour and just perfectly balanced. Not one for the mild mannered weighing in at 8% ABV but so rich and flavorsome, definitely one for the wall of fame.

 

Live..

Live footage of the UK leaving the EU

Give it up, losers..

Donald Trump's top team to now sue Grecian 2000...

 

Urban Nature

Nature in all it's glory but in an "urban" environment. This picture is from a competition being run by the Natural History Museum you can see some more examples on their web page (follow the link) and they're stunning. I particularly love this one of the Kingfisher, the colours of these birds are just fantastic and, in my experience, they're unmissable in the wild. Often seen as just a flash of scarlet and iridescent blue darting across the surface of the river or stream, unforgettable!

 

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo on target as usual. When you live by "faith" rather than evidence and reason, anything you may imagine could be possible and perhaps even any deed done in it's defense justified..

A cartoon for everything

Te he... It's true, there's an XKCD cartoon for everything!

 

Pace-maker

Continuing to notice improvements to my fitness over the Summer and into the Autumn, I did a walk today which covered around six and a half kilometers and managed to do it in under an hour. The average pace was a whisker over 9 minutes per kilometer which is pretty good I reckon (for an old git) as when I started walking at lunchtimes back in the Autumn of 2018 my average pace was around 13 minutes per KM. Onwards and upwards, next milestone will be to get a 6k done in under 9 mins per KM, now if only it would stop raining every day I might just make it before the end of the year!

 

Just a blip?

I see that the orange peril is still clinging onto the delusion that he won something, how embarrassing for intelligent Americans everywhere! Although it's not unlike our own bumbling Prime Minister who quotes pointless Latin phrases but can't seem to manage to comb his hair (what is it about some world leaders and their weird hair?). Anyway it seems to me that both cultures (US & UK) these days seem to encourage and reward infantilism, why? Is is the fault of reality TV or perhaps video games and social media, or maybe the lack of critical thinking in schools? Who knows, but whatever the reason, let's hope it's just a blip.

 

The Zoom Economy

It's interesting how different people are dealing with the move to "online working" that's been going on around the country over the last 9 months. In my own case, our (expensive) offices have essentially been shut down since mid-March and although I pop in now and again to look after various computers that need attention I'm not particularly missing "office life", nor does it seem to have affected my productivity in any way. If truth be told my productivity now is probably higher now than it was this time last year! Much less in the way of people "hovering" around my desk for political rather than functional purposes, and distractions from people bringing their bloody puppies, babies and hyper-active toddlers in for people to gawp at have fallen to zero (rolls eyes)  In all seriousness though, I find I'm working less hours and yet getting more done?

Work-life balance is definitely tracking in the right direction, in fact we switched to a 9 day fortnight over the Summer, i.e. people took Friday afternoons off, and again, productivity was just as good as a normal 10 day fortnight (just goes to show what people used to do on a Friday afternoon in the office!) As a consequence of the emergence of the so called, "Zoom Economy" I'm seriously considering moving house to somewhere with much nicer scenery, less cars and warmer weather than the UK home counties, so long as it has good broadband connectivity and decent beer of course! I was speaking to a business colleague today who has "worked from home" on the island of Tenerife for the last 2 months in a fully serviced apartment with hot-tub, pool and veranda overlooking the ocean all for a few hundred Euro a month, and frankly no one even noticed, apart from his own family! Isn't it amazing how, in every crisis, there's always an upside to be found somewhere!

Wuhan birthday wishes..

A rather grim anniversary today. It was exactly one year ago that the first known case of Covid-19 was traced to a 55 year old Chinese man who had visited a "wet market" in Wuhan, China. So far the disease has claimed 1.33 million lives (and those are just the ones we can easily count) To put this into some perspective that's roughly a 9/11 sized event every day for a year (and counting)! This puts Covid at around 10th in the list of things that kills most people worldwide, quite an impressive performance from a standing start last November. 

Let's not forget that although the cavalry is on it's way in the shape of effective vaccines, it'll still be many months before they start to reach the masses (i.e. you and me) and we're just entering the Winter flu season in the Northern Hemisphere. And yet, there are still people out there who feel "oppressed" because they're politely asked to wear a paper face mask in crowded indoor places like shops, in order to save other people's lives! Ah well, I have it on good authority from a Doctor friend of mine that it's a well known medical fact some people behave like complete arseholes most of the time, still, natural selection is usually swift and reliable.

Covid Adverts

Lovin the new German Covid-19 adverts...

Saturday treats

Treated myself to some New Forest goodness last night (Saturday) while making dinner. It's a DIPA (or Double IPA) made by one of my favourite breweries Vibrant Forest based down near Hythe. The beer was hazy, dank and wonderfully murky and flavorsome, made with one of my favourite hops (Simcoe) it tasted of stone fruits and grapefruit with a decent chunk of bitterness, a class act..

 

History

Saw this, it made me smile..

 

Friday Smirk

"Belief" or as its more commonly known "faith" in the religious context is, I reckon, the ultimate expression of a natural Human desire for things to be as we WANT them to be rather than how they're LIKELY to be. Whisper a few magic words on Sundays and live forever with the people you love in paradise! Now, who wouldn't want that to be true (in principal at least) but, from what we know about the Universe and how it works, the chances of it actually being true are more or less zero. On the other hand, the chances of us all being evolved primates living on an insignificant rock spinning in an unimaginably vast universe that isn't even aware that we're here and who think we're clever because we've taken 4 billion years to discover shoes and fire are more or less 100% likely. As Darwin once said however, "there is grandeur in this view of life" if only you open your mind to see it.

 

Enlightenment

Reading a book about the enlightenment at the moment (Radical Enlightenment by Jonathan Israel), they certainly had lots of new ideas around that time, particularly some of those revolutionary French geezers! (see above) Some of those ideas were even on the right track, as we now know..

 

Bored students

I'm finding that working from home at the colder end of the year is a little less agreeable than the same during the Summer months. The afternoons seem longer and the walks at lunchtime less enjoyable, perhaps it's because I'm getting bored with the lack of variety or perhaps because there's less daylight or it's colder etc. but I'm definitely looking forward to the Christmas break and seeing my Son (who's away at University) and having a break from the daily routine.

The Government have been talking a lot lately about how students are going to get back home for the holiday, there's talk of them all coming back at once during the first week of December, this is so that mass-testing can be done prior to bundling them off, it's not a bad idea but may cause issues where travel options are limited, i.e. I can imagine the chaos as a few thousand students all try to catch the same trains to London on the same day etc.. It might be better to do things in waves, i.e. spread different groups/Institutions over a couple of weeks, but anyway I'm sure we'll get something sensible organized, rail and air tickets seem quite reasonable at the moment.

 

The new normal..

Hasn't that "milquetoast" orange waste of skin and organs pissed off yet?

 

If it weren't for those pesky kids..

Sad to learn today that the creator of the hit cartoon series "Scooby-Doo" has died in Los Angeles. Ken Spears, who worked for Warner Bros. and co-animated the iconic programme was 82 years old.

I loved this programme when I was a young kid and my kids loved it too, especially the movies when they were young, we took great delight in watching them together. There was something innovative about the series, it combined a bit of comedy with a some serious science/sleuthing and came up with a compelling (for an 8 year old) and fun way to spend 30 minutes on a Saturday morning. It taught me a couple of important life lessons too. Firstly, whenever there appears to be something supernatural going on, it always turns out to be someone in a mask that's up to no good and secondly, being geeky is cool!

 

Monday Mirth

Classic Garry Larson for a murky Monday...

 

Sufficient

Decided to cook a lush toad-in-the-hole for dinner last night (Saturday) marking the first weekend of lockdown V2.0. While it was cooking I cracked open a new (for me) can of "Saturated in Amarillo" by one of my favourite breweries DEYA (Cheltenham). Amarillo is one of the classic new wave "American hops", and is unusual to see used on it's own, it's usually paired with something more punchy like Citra or Mosaic. It imparts an orange/citrus background note to the beer but is not massively strong or pungent, it is however very distinct (in a good way!) A delicious beer that slipped down far, far to easily for it's 8% ABV price-tag, 500ml of this was, as the Rolls-Royce salesman replies when asked about the size of the engine, "sufficient"..