Posts by Peter Ashby
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I'm rather attached to Alison Moyet's version of Windmills of Your Mind from her Voice album. I find it meditative rather than melancholy. But then I am one of those people who have never found Pink Floyd depressing (but then I have all their stuff, not just Dark Side).
-
Well I have got used to checking out the specials on single malts in the supermarket. It will take some adjusting when we go home.
-
@JoeWylie
Me too, until I detected what I fancied was a faint undertaste of formaldehyde. Of course I have no idea of the real flavour of formaldehyde, but I'm a firm believer in the importance of imagination in most things.
Well I am more familiar with the smell of formaldehyde (same thing as taste) than i wish to be. If I open a textbook of anatomy with pictures of dissections or prosections or such like in it I smell formaldehyde strongly. It is entirely psychosomatic, must be one of those smells.
-
@Emma Hart
Also, did anyone else do that 'taster' experiment in high school? Of course I can't know remember what the chemical was called
Phenylketoneuria iirc.
-
@Ben Wilson
People talk about how wonderfully thirst quenching beer is. But there is no way on earth it really is as thirst quenching as something actually designed for rehydration, like maybe water mixed with glucose and salt
There speaks a man who has never had to neck oral rehydration fluid, thirst quenching it most definitely is not. Neither is most water since it is too alkaline. A properly thirst quenching drink needs either acidity and/or an astringent to stimulate your salivary glands. So that after the liquid has left your mouth you do not immediately feel thirsty or dry again.
My missus was on medication that had dry mouth as a side effect, she swore by, and I made them endlessly, lime, lemonade and bitters. The lime for acidity (helped by the bubbles in the lemonade) and the bitters add astringency.
The hops in beer, the tannins (similar compounds) in tea and wine all help to quench thirst. I run and for several hours afterwards my habitual coffee habit is replaced by black tea since it is more thirst quenching. After a long, hot run nothing hits the spot more than a cold, bitter, not too strong beer (which is why hot countries brew lager not Scottish Heavy). The only problem is that the fastest way I know to get pissed is to drink beer after a long hot run . . .
-
Well Ben I will just have to say that your tastebuds are obviously very different from my own. i am a connoisseur of single malt whisky and will talk endlessly about the flavours I get from different malts. The unpeated Caol Isla for eg tastes to me of honeyed green melons. But you have to add enough water to get that it being cask strength. Other cask strength whiskies are drinkable with only a little water and some with none, the cask strength Edradour particularly coming to mind. So the alcohol level is absolutely not something i am going for.
I also like my beer and I will drink anything from 3% bitters to barley wine. The thing I like about the higher alcohol beers (IPAs and proper British Strong Ales) is the intense maltiness from all the malt they have to use to get the alcohol so high. I love the taste of malt extract too, but married to the hops and with all the yeast supplied esters as well the beer is much more interesting than malt extract.
i should add that I have at most two drams a week and rarely drink more than two pints of beer in a sitting and then again only once or twice a week. I now actively dislike getting drunk and drink purely because I like the taste.
-
@Caleb
I guess my unease with supermarket sales stems from the degree to which it normalizes alcohol, placing it on the same level as bread and milk. I'm still not entirely comfortable with that equation.
But that is the whole point. If alcohol is a forbidden fruit then the yoof will WANT it with a vengeance. If, like I was, like my kids were, you are raised with small amounts of alcohol with meals, first at special occasions then gradually more regularly as they get older. Then alcohol is something normal that you consume in social settings because you like it. Rather than something you neck just to get pissed as quickly as possible.
The problem is the culture, and possibly an element of genetics. We know for eg that those from the 'Celtic' fringe here in the UK are more likely to be alcoholic and problem drinking here in Europe gets worse the further North you go. Us Scots are worse than the English (though happier on it I find) while booze sales in Scandinavia are draconian but they still have problems, the locals are seriously into making their own hooch when the state liquor outlets (open god knows when for a short as possible) can't or won't supply.
I agree that the answer is better enforcement of off licenses that sell to minors or the intoxicated. The same thing applies here in the UK, they do sting operations using minors asking for booze but little gets done as a result. The problem is that you are talking of people's livelihoods and THE PROFIT MOTIVE and that cannot be interfered with regardless of the damage caused to society.
I really like small owner operated wine shops, very much nicer than booze barns. Ditto small bars vs large swill pens. However I am aware that others may disagree so who am I to tell them they can't? Deal with the problems properly instead of threatening to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
-
Russell, repair permissions is something you should do, from the startup DVD, every couple of months and after major software installs, including system updates (note to self: do above soon).
I am not suprised that the machine is faster and that fact should stimulate you to do this regularly as the slowdown can be insidiously slow so you don't notice it.
Hell running repair perms is hardly the most onerous maintenance procedure. Compared to having a PC running windoze it's an absolute breeze.
-
Thinking about it I did sort of wag in 7th form. 'Twas nearing the end of year and the person masquerading as our Chemistry teacher (he was a Geography graduate, recent) was trying to do revision type stuff with us. Except I knew it better than he and when he got mineral chalk and gypsum mixed up I let go a sotto voce expletive which I think he heard, just about. We looked at each other for a couple of seconds and he carried on. I never went back.
When it was time for Chemistry, I would wait in the common room till it had started then saunter past with my chem text book under my arm and go sit in the library and do chem revision. I came top in Chemistry that year (only because the girl who always came top in Chem had left after 6th form).
-
Original writing is not all about writing only about what you want. It is about writing originally about any topic. I never felt so restrained in English at school because I could take just about any topic and write originally about it. in 7th form the English teacher wanted to give me full marks for an essay, she took it to the deputy principal who used to write critical reviews for the Herald. He deducted 1/2mark, just on principle. The teacher was still mad about that when she told me the story.
So I don't buy that one Emma. It's like poetry and styles and metre and rhythm. They are only chains if you let them be so. Instead they force you to think harder than in free verse and often the right word is so because it is right on more than one level. A sonnet can be an absolute joy to write even though it can be hard work.