Burn baby burn...

The above joke was posted (predictably) on Twitter by ex-kipper leader and Brexit fanboy Henry Bolton. Henry seems to play the text book estuary-gammon, for example he claims publicly to be very much against immigration but in his personal life seems to prefer foreigners? He's been married to a Danish model in the 80s, then a (much) younger Russian woman for a couple of years, then another young Russian woman for another couple of years (spawning kids all the way along) before finally in 2018 ending up on the right side of the Channel with a UKIP supporter/model/actress from Kent (24 years younger than him) whose racist tweets got him kicked out of UKIP (although he separated from her also in 2020).

I think I'm getting a picture of Henry and it's not one that's in any way punctuated by competence or reliability (TBH I feel sorry for his kids!) Henry can't even construct a simple Nationalist joke properly, the Spitfires in the picture are all from the Polish 303 squadron (the most successful in Fighter Command), you can tell by the little blue and white squared emblems next to the props. 

The Twitter burns in response to this post were brutal.

 

I'm not (quite) bitter

While making Sunday lunch yesterday I decided to pop open a can of beer from my local craft brewer Siren. It's a modern take on traditional English Bitter and delicious it was too! Made from traditional English barley and Kent hops the modern twist was the addition of Cascade (an American hop) into the dry-hop (while fermenting) and also Nitrogen rather than CO2 as a way of making it fizzy. This meant much smaller and less obvious bubbles, aiming to mimic the lower carbonation of traditional cask beer, it worked really well (with a hard pour), one to look out for!

 

Zombie stroll home..

 

It was my Wife's birthday on Friday so we decided to walk into town and have a celebratory drink at our favourite bar, it was most enjoyable after a hectic week of work. On the way home we picked up a take-away from our favourite Chinese (livin the dream!) and proceeded to stroll home. On the way we encountered an amazing sound and light show being projected onto the side of a house, it was incredible, hi-resolution and no obvious projection device! Clearly with a Halloween theme the video was showing all manner of ghosts, ghouls and zombies, brilliant! I bet the young kids in the area just loved it (and a few adults too!).

Peak Irony?

Looks like Kanye West has exercised his oversized mouth a little too far recently and spouting his ludicrous conspiracy theories about Jews (among other garbage) has got him dropped from key lucrative endorsement contracts, Adidas dropped him yesterday. Personally I can't see what people see in the bloke, every time I've heard him speak he's sounded like a complete knob to me, and for someone who makes a ton of money from shoes, putting your foot in your mouth has got to represent peak irony!

 

It's just a feeling..

Yeah, I feel like this quite a lot of the time these days...

 

Colours

Loving the Autumn colours around at the moment..

 

Good Advice

Product Advice 101: When you launch a new product into an international market it's always a good idea to check it's name in a few different languages! I remember working for a Canadian company whose name in Spanish translated as "CU Next Tuesday" (this is the SFW version, if you get my drift) - opening the Madrid office was fun, much amusement had by all..

 

Friday Smirk

It's funny what nonsense some people believe..

 

Mystery?

So, UK car production has fallen off a cliff since 2016, that's a shame for all those people in that industry, I wonder what happened in 2016 that could have precipitated this decline?

Walking on marbles

Is it just me or have others noticed an abundance of acorns this year? Perhaps it's something to do with the hot weather we had or perhaps there are natural cycles for these things, anyway, all I know is that traversing certain paths on my daily stroll feels like trying to walk on marbles and as the Autumn wears on it gets more like walking on muesli!

 

Modern Dilemmas

Yep, need one of these for the Women and Teenagers in my life! Although I'm proud to say that we still haven't had the central heating on at our house yet (so far this year), it's getting close though.🥶🥶.

 

Midweek Mirth

This is what I think about the new cabinet (especially the Braverman troll), about as much "integrity" as a cheap Ikea cabinet, should have had a general election!

 

Glass ceilings

One of the scary things about our current economic woes is the rapidly rising price of everyday items in our shopping baskets. One of those items (for me) is beer and it's of particular interest as I'm a keen craft beer drinker, it's one of my hobbies, there's nothing I enjoy more than geeking out over the latest new hop variety from the USA or yeast variant from the deepest darkest reaches of Hackney Wick. Many of the prices for ingredients of the humble pint are now climbing much faster than inflation, for example barley,  wheat, hops and other adjuncts, particularly those that need to be imported have all risen alarmingly in the last 12 month. Other related items such as the gas CO2, which is used to carbonate beer, have gone up a massive 3000% since this time last year. All of this means that pretty soon we're going to bust through the glass ceiling for the price of a pint. 

Typically the average pint would set you back around £4, obviously this varies from place to place in the country but it's a good marker, the ceiling for a pint in most places would therefore be around £5 beyond which most people would potentially feel uncomfortable (or ripped off). In big cities such as London these levels rise, pretty soon we'll be seeing £6-7 pints in larger towns and cities as the average goes up. 

In the case of craft beers things get even worse, the ingredients in this category are often much more expensive (exotic yeasts and hops etc.) and also used in much higher quantities (especially hops) the £6-7 a pint is quite normal for a craft-pint in London already, I wouldn't be surprised to see £10 pints becoming common for certain sought after brews, and fairly soon.

Anyway, I've concluded it's time I invested in some more industrial quality brewing equipment, my home brew set-up is OK but I lack a few important quality-focused items, for example water treatment, temperature controlled fermentation and kegging/canning, I reckon with an outlay of less than a grand I could make commercial quality brews for between £1-3 a pint (depending on the ingredients) With the current economic outlook, the DIY option might be the way to go for a year or two!

 

Go West

Spent a nice afternoon in Bristol today left a rain soaked Berkshire in the morning and managed to find some sunshine out West. Dropped into the LHG brewpub for one of their lush pizzas and a couple of crafty beers and met up with our Son who's down visiting from Scotland and a couple of his mates who go to Bristol Uni. Had a chat and a laugh hearing about the latest student drinking games and left them all to it around 5pm and headed back East, into the rain..

 

Jokes for old farts

Enjoyed this one :)

 

Inclusivity?

Glad to hear it, but why not just say "we welcome everyone"?

 

White van men

White van men, you have to love em, look at this geezer, he's parked his delivery van on a roundabout and swung the door open to block the footpath so that walkers (like me) have to either brave the traffic by walking in the road or navigate the thorny brambles in the verge. Since he was so inconsiderate and absent from  the scene, I did have a quick look in the van to see if there was anything worth nicking, but alas, it seemed to be full of junk so I just walked on..

 

Global warming hoax

Nah, this global warming thing is just a hoax by the military-industrial complex to make us buy more air-conditioning.. I mean this photo is Northern Europe in late October and it's barely scraping 21 degrees centigrade, come on who's kidding who?

 

Hazy City

A view of the City just before dawn on a hazy October morning, amazing photo, shows just how much London has changed in the last 20 years, this could easily be a US city.

 

Friday Smirk

J&M reminding us that we mustn't upset the latest wave of religious (gender) zealots who are convinced only they know the "truth" by pointing out their obvious flaws and fallacies..