Bloody typical

So, typically, just as I start blogging a bit more regularly again, I lose my internet connection at home.

I went out last Thursday evening and met up with a friend at The French House in Soho. A lovely little bar, with lots of character, but it only sells John Smith's extra smooth on tap or Theakston's Old Peculier in bottles. They also don't do pints, and they don't allow mobile phones. It was a hot day and the cold John Smith's was quite refreshing and went down surprisingly well. I used to drink proper John Smith's all the time, but I'm not a fan of pressurized bitters. I had a couple of bottles of Old Peculier, and a Duvel too. While we were there Peter O'Toole popped in and stood right next to me! Which was nice.

Friday evening I discovered our internet connection was down, and it has been down ever since. Tiscali technical support are useless, except to tell us that it is a problem at the exchange and there engineers are working on it. They appear to have no idea what the problem is or when it will be fixed.

In the meantime I've drunk a few more ales from Suffolk, but I guess I'll have to sample them all again if I'm going to review them.

Ridley's Old Bob

Ok, I know. Ridley's were an Essex brewery, but, like so many breweries, they are now owned by Greene King and Old Bob is brewed in Bury St. Edmunds, as are the other 2 beers in the picture. I hope I don't offend anyone by counting these as Suffolk beers, but I was too lazy to walk to Hammersmith to look for more beer.



I had this beer with a vegetable casserole and the two went together well. The initial aroma was quite chocolaty, followed by the scent of hops. The taste is full bodied, not as overpowering as some of the stronger ales, which this isn't at 5.1%, but it's good for sipping or gulping, which is the kind of beer I like! It's a good, proper, no-nonsense bitter. The bottle says that it is "rich and spicy", but since I've been drinking stronger beers the last couple of days I can't say I agree. At least it doesn't say it has a fruitcake aroma. It does say it is a twice gold medal winner, but it doesn't say where.

Adnams Broadside

Tonight's beer is Adnams Broadside, possibly not the best accompaniment to pasta and pesto as it is another strong dark ale. It has an earthy aroma and a treacly taste. Like many strong ales, the bottle describes it as having an aroma of fruit cake. While it is a good beer, it's a little strong tasting to drink more than a couple of bottles of, which is probably just as well as it is a strong beer at 6.3%.



As an aside, Adnams use the wonderful iconic lino engravings of Christopher Wormell on their beermats and advertising. You can't fail to recognise an Adnams beermat. He is also (I should say primarily) an illustrator and has produced some wonderful children's books like The New Alphabet of Animals and Teeth, Tails and Tentacles.



You can buy Christopher Wormell's work from The Illustration Cupboard.

Beer, beer, beer

I think I've found something to write about since I'm not moaning about London Underground so much. Beer. At the moment I'm drinking a bottle a night, for purely medicinal purposes of course. This week I'm trying out Suffolk beers, as my wife is from Suffolk, there are plenty of breweries there, it's fairly local to London, and I like Suffolk beers.

The following "reviews" have already been posted on the Beer thread at Neil Gaiman's boards.



Greene King Strong Suffolk Vintage Ale, bought by my wife as she is originally from Suffolk.
To start with, the bottle says that it is "a unique blend of two classic ales, BPA and Old 5X. Old 5X is aged in oak for 2 years". I don't think I've ever had a blended ale before, or a 2 year old one (except perhaps from one of those pubs that only sells 1 pint of bitter a month, so the beer has been sat in the cellar for 2 years in an aluminium cask).

This beer is good. Very good. It's strong at 6%, dark, and quite sweet. On first taste it reminded me of honey, but the notes on the back say it has a spicy, fruitcake aroma and flavours of oak, caramel and burnt toffee, which I can't disagree with. I probably couldn't drink more than a couple of them at a time, but it goes very well with food. Highly recommended!

Tonight I have a bottle of Adnams East Green Carbon Neutral Beer.

Immediately on popping the cap I could smell the fresh, crisp aroma. it's a fairly light beer, both in colour and strength at 4.3%, with a fresh, crisp taste to match the aroma and a light citrus hoppy flavour. (I decided to describe the flavour in my own words and found I was very close to the way they described it on the bottle, so this thread is educating my palate.)

It is made at their new brewery in East Green, Southwold, which is the UK's newest and, they believe, most energy efficient. The Adnams bottles across the range now use 33% less glass and feel quite lightweight and delicate. The ingredients for this beer were locally sourced (Maris Otter malted barley, Boadicea hops) and the with a little offsetting it makes the beer carbon neutral.

I think this will become another favourite, as it is light enough to drink at lunchtime. MrsK says she has had so many sips of real ales in the last 2 weeks that the baby will be born with a beard.

Another year?

I can't believe yet another year has passed since I posted.

Must try harder.

Wembley Stadium

Just got back from the new Wembley Stadium where we went to see Yeovil vs Blackpool in the Division 1 play off final. Blackpool deservedly won 2-0.

The new stadium is stunning. Coming up Wembley Way, the arch dominates the skyline with the statue of Bobby Moore visible below it. We stood and watched the fans come up from Wembley Station waiting for our Blackpool supporting friends and then our Yeovil supporting friends. We walked round to gate A and got in quickly (the majority of the fans were already inside). Escalators whisked us up to level 5. The view back out over London would have been amazing if it weren't for the low cloud and rain. Fortunately the whole stadium is now covered (although the pitch was uncovered for the match) so the rain didn't effect us. The top tier seating is steeply pitched, steeper than any stadium I've been to in the UK, but less than Yankee Stadium. There is loads of leg room and elbow room.

We'll be going again in a couple of weeks to see George Michael, so we'll get to see the view from the pitch.

The Nuclear Gang

What exactly can the UN do to Iran, the worlds 4th largest oil producer?

Sanctions, as we know, don't work. If we enforce sanctions we turn the Iranian people against us, they suffer, and the Iranian goverment says "Screw you guys, we're taking our oil and going home". So the price of oil goes up again, Bush's Saudi cronies make even more money, a percentage of which they give to fundamentalist madrassas who indoctrinate young muslims into hating the west.

An invasion? If you thought Iraq was a clusterfuck then Iran would be your worst nightmare. A large majority of the people support the government. Those who don't are even more hardline. The type of Iranian who would support UN military action got the fuck out of Persia a long time ago.

Surgical strikes on nuclear facilities? Well, we all know how accurate these surgical strikes are. At the merest whiff of a threat of surgical strikes you will have a few thousand hardline women and children sitting on top of those nuclear facilities burning American flags and singing the Iranian equivalent of "We shall overcome". Then the government will say "Screw you guys, we're taking our oil and going home".

The Iranian government says they want nuclear power. The Iranian people can see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to have nuclear power. "Hell, the French are allowed to have nuclear power and the whole world knows that they are cheese eating surrender monkeys, so why can't we have nuclear power?".

Now, rightly or wrongly, the rest of the world thinks that Iran wants to make nuclear weapons. What is Iran going to use it's nuclear weapons for? A deterrent? The UK has nuclear weapons and we say it is a deterrent. Why shouldn't the Iranians have a deterrent? It's not like the UK has a neighbour who has recently been invaded by a bellicose nation on the back of lies and poor intelligence who have been fomenting war in the region for decades.

Is the Iranian government stupid enough to actually use nuclear weapons? What do they, and the rest of the world, think will happen if they were to use nuclear weapons? They would be bombed so far back into the past that the stone age would look like the distant future.

Tony Blair and his government keep telling us that we have to have nuclear power, it's clean, it's safe, it's the way forward. But those dodgy Iranians can keep burning their dirty oil.

So I ask again, what exactly does the UN think it can do?

Frankly if I was the Iranian president I'd be doing the "screw you" speech right now, before the UN do anything. Let's see how the UN feel about letting Iran have nuclear power when Iran says "if we can't have nuclear power we'll have to double the price of our oil so that we can afford to clean up after our oil fired power stations".

Here's an idea for the UN:

Instead of sabre rattling and sanctions, how about calling Iran's bluff? Iran is a bloody great desert. The sun beats down on it the whole time. We have the technology to capture that solar energy and turn it into electricity. George Bush thinks technological change is the way out of global warming. So why don't we offer to build the Iranians the mother of all solar plants? It'll be clean and efficient. The Iranians will get their hands on some technology that won't cause their fingernails to fall off and their palms to grow hairs. If Iran is serious about only wanting the nuclear facilities to create electricity they can't complain. They'll get the whole lot for free and we won't have to send our troops halfway round the world to protect the oil that we'll be paying twice as much for as we did last year.

Straight Outta Camden (via Charing Cross)

When I hear the new(ish) recorded announcement for Oystercard that is repeated at Tube stations which tells us that they are available "daily, weekly, monthly and yearly" it always reminds me of NWA's Straight Outta Compton. For those that don't know the track, there is a sublime version available for download from Nina Gordon's (from Veruca Salt) website. Be warned - this song is definitely not suitable for work, your mother, or your children, or anyone who is easily offended by foul language.