Nudist Hotel In Birmingham

Like who wouldn't want to visit Birmingham. It's got all those really popular tourist attractions like, erm... motorways?

But if you are visiting, and just happen to be a nudist, then I hope you watched the Hotel Inspector this week. There could be no better set-up for the Channel 5 pun writers. And they didn't disappoint. Here are the ones I noticed, there were probably more.

• The cracks are beginning to show
• Eager beavers
• Improve the bottom line
• Meat and two veg (that was something about the food if you were unsure)
• The fire-pit is an ideal place to roast your chestnuts.
• Sagging profits
• Salad isn't the only thing that comes undressed
• well-clipped bush
• rude awakening
• Is the end in sight?
• [She] uncovered dull decor, ...
• Get exposure (on the internet and radio)

I am going to end my blog there. You could say the end is in sight.

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Eat More Fish

After my post on why I shouldn't eat meat I saw an advert for a show on a very similar topic. I didn't watch it, but I guess the gist of Channel 4's investigation is that you can't have cheap ethical meat products. I have really gone off having meat in convenience food like pasties or sandwiches from the shop or whatever. But I am still cool with having meat occasionally when it is the focus of a meal. We have completely stopped having spaghetti bolognaise (with meat), we just have spaghetti and a jar of tomato sauce now.

I haven't even posted about Eurovision that is how much I haven't been blogging. But when the musical elite of Europe came together to laugh at the contestants in Baku I had a barbecue to mark the occasion, and on that barbecue I put some mackerel. It was an exciting day for a barbecue. Good thing I had watched that video on how to clean and gut a mackerel, cos I wasn't expecting to have to do it when I was planning the meal.

Guess what's in the bag.

We had more fish on a birthday barbecue a couple of weeks later, including a trout. Not only that, but on two occasions now I have made a quick and possibly healthy lunch by getting a fish fillet from the supermarket and pan frying it. If you do this from Sainsbury's they give you a free knob of interesting butter. You don't get that at Morrison's. Sainsbury's really know how to look after their customers.

Felt all cheffy spooning my foaming butter over my fish. 

An Update and An Apology

It's obviously been a long time since my last post, so there is a lot to say. We seem to be going at about one post a month. Wow.

My rhubarb has died. Possibly this was due to all the rain we have had. Maybe it would have died anyway, we may never know. I might try again next year, I will see how I feel. However for the time being, project rhubarb has utterly failed. For a contrast, my peonies seem to be doing alright. One of them had a flower which was quickly destroyed by heavy rain. It now has another flower.

I had a wisdom tooth out. It hurt for a bit, but now it's okay.

Er, it's been raining a lot. And my house leaks. That's not cool.

I have had two attempts at a mushroom risotto. The first recipe was created by the founding member of the Essex school for spasticated cooks: Jamie Oliver. The second recipe I tried is the property of the Walt Disney Company, and very nice it was too.

Mushroom Risotto with extra mushrooms. For people who really like mushrooms. Oh, and JO suggested putting some freshly chopped herbs on top, cos that's trendy. Or it would be if you could chop them into small pieces.

Inspired by Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's book, I had a go at a minestrone soup. As he suggested I put beetroot in it, and (unsurprisingly) everything went purple. I never thought it could be so difficult to tell a carrot from a potato. It was definitely a first attempt ministrone, and quite different to the red water with tiny vegetables you get in tins. I would like to have another go sometime, I think I could change some things and do a better job.

Some of the things I put in my soup: peas, chopped tomatoes, carrots, celery, beetroot, onion, macaroni, courgette, red chard. It also had potatoes and garlic. (And you know like water and salt and shit like that.)

Also in the last month my age has changed from a prime power to a different prime power. That doesn't happen very much after the age of 9. You get 16-17, 31-32 and not many people will make it to the next one.

Never had Irish coffee in a wine glass before. I thought it was a bit weird, but I was wrong.

And now the apology. In an earlier post, I told the world some of my opinions about information. At least I thought I did. I have since re-read a book I first read about 10-15 years ago, and discovered that those ideas had been implanted in my brain by the book, and were nowhere near as original as I thought. The simile between us living in the information age but not knowing what information really is, and iron age men being good at manipulating iron without appreciating its chemical structure was from the book. As is the separation between actual information and whatever physical means is used to store it.

There was one way to think about information in the book that I had forgotten, and so didn't write in my post thinking I had made it up myself. I can now repeat it safe in the knowledge that the author of Goodbye Descartes got it from Alice in Wonderland.

Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin; but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!

The grin is not part of the Cheshire cat. When you move the cat the grin remains. Similarly, information is not a part of a book, or a CD or whatever.

Jubilee Time

Time for a blog.

Yes, I realise that its very presence makes the first paragraph redundant.

So, The Queen has held on for another 10 years - well done luv. And what better way to celebrate than with a Lego model of a 153 year old building.

For only £24.99 you too can build a badly named Lego model.

I know of two things nicknamed "Big Ben", and they are both between 2 and 2.5 metres tall. And neither of them are towers. You see, Big Ben is one of the bells inside Clock Tower. I have no trouble separating the concepts of "building" and "bell inside building", but why do so many people find it so difficult? I don't even object to people saying, "I'm going to London to see Big Ben", because I reckon "see" in an idiom, when you might literally mean "visit".And by "visit" you might mean "experience". And by "experience" you might mean "hear".

'Big' Ben Roesthlisburger: Definitely not a building.

Maybe I am too stupid to be able to cope with metonyms. Maybe I won't have to, as it looks like Clock Tower is to be renamed.

Lawn Care

The grass got its first trim on the year today. But not until I rewired the plug - I felt really manly. I also got my strimmer out and tidied up the edges. Then I got out my bottle of Asda brand weed 'n' feed and treated the lawn to some chemical care. Then I read that the stuff doesn't work very well if you apply it within three days of cutting the grass. Oh well.

I felt I better seize this opportunity to cut the grass as it has been so wet lately. While I was pushing the mower around I got to thinking how it is that we have had lots and lots of rain, but there is some sort of water shortage going on. This seems somehow inconsistent. But then I remembered weatherman Shafernacker saying that only 4 months in the last two years have had above average rainfall. That factoid stuck with me, cos to me it is a clear indication of climate change. As I was pushing the mower around I made lots of assumptions about statistics and then concluded that the chances of only four months out of the previous 24 having above average rainfall were very low indeed. I decided it should be "24 choose 4". Which I then calculated to be one in 198. Being a grumpy old fart I concluded that all this rain may have caused floods and killed somebody, and made my roof leak, but the long term effect of climate change is a hosepipe ban in many English counties. I then applied my weed 'n' feed with a watering can.

The chances of any one month having above average rainfall is fifty-fifty. Maybe. Maybe not. Did Thomasz mean the median average? If he did then I think my maths was fine. I get to assume the months are independent and recall the binomial distribution from A-level maths. On the other hand who actually uses median averages these days? It if more than likely that the statistic reported on the TV was the mean average, in which case I am not sure what it says about anything. You can't relate the two averages without knowing more about the distribution of values.

Consider the "monsoon" pattern of rainfall. (One of the two things I learnt in GSCE Geography. The other was that Rotterdam is a big container port with a "hinterland".) In India or wherever they get monsoons it only rains for one or two months of the year. All their rainfall comes all at once, and it doesn't rain in the other months. You could say that this climate has 10 or 11 months every year with "below average" rainfall. But this pattern of rainfall has been happening for millennia, and only some very poor statistical analysis will link it to climate change.

Peppered Steak

I have never been much of a fan of steak. I guess it goes back to my upbringing. I am not saying that we were poorer than anybody else but when society was starting to put everything on credit my parents instilled in me the virtue of restraint. So expensive things like steak were just not something we had, and I grew up in a world free of people talking about how great it was. By contrast my wife is american. She decided we were to have steak recently and I was like, "really?" I pointed out that they are expensive, bad for the environment and not particularly healthy. She pointed out that they share all of these failings with minced beef to a lesser or greater degree, and I quite happily eat minced beef. This forced me to consider my stance on minced beef. (The other option would be to enthusiastically start spending loads of money on luxury beef and get high-cholesterol as a reward.)

Maybe I should say more about each of my concerns.

1. Expense. Probably the most obvious (and quantifiable). Meat costs a fortune, and nice steaks cost a lot more. I am led to believe that minced beef isn't that much more expensive than a like-for-like substitute of quorn or similar. If you know better then I invite you to comment on the matter.

2. Health issues. A quick browse of the internet tells me this is not such a simple topic. With some reports linking eating red meat to health benefits and other linking it to health problems. I guess you just need some excitable people who don't understand science to stand up and say, "I eat meat every day and I am as fit and healthy as they come." Wikipedia seems to point out that eating red meat is linked to all sorts of cancers and unpleasant sounding diseases. I guess on reflection, if you have a certain sort of lifestyle then you can benefit from eating lots of meat. For example if run 30 miles a week or regularly enter "world's strongest man" competitions. However, if your week's exercise doesn't extend much beyond chasing the 37A down the road then you would benefit from only eating meat two or three times a week.

3. Environmental concerns. This is not a simple topic either. What is clear is that cows live quite a long time, and eat a lot. When you consider how much energy it takes to produce one kilo of beef and compare this to how much energy it takes to produce the same mass of food lower down the food chain then you quickly see the problem.

One cow

Lots of grain

And that is just one factor. Somebody, (nobody knows who) is quickly chopping down huge swathes of Brazilian rainforest to create pastures to raise beef-cattle. (Insert statistic here about number of football pitches per hour.) This is a terrible idea on many levels: I don't think it is an understatement to call the rainforest "irreplaceable" and the land they produce doesn't even do a good job at raising cattle and only lasts a few years. Obviously no right-thinking British retailer would use beef raised on what was formerly lush rainforest. But when I keep complaining about how expensive the luxury local cows are I am not so sure. But either way, we keep eating burgers and steaks like they are something to aspire to. Then we go and force our culture on the rest of the world and put a burger restaurant in every city. (I don't know, maybe they actually want these things.) This massively increases demand for these products. If everybody on the planet ate as much beef as I do then we would need an awful lot more farms.

It seems I have talked myself out of eating meat. Of course I live in a town full of people who don't agree. I can but try.

In completely unrelated news, I am now the proud owner of a new pepper grinder. It's amazing how it makes food taste better.

Food critics have a lot to learn from me. Obviously the correct way to rate an indian restaurant is by how many pickles they have on their pickle tray, and the way to rate an italian restaurant is by the size of the pepper grinder. My new one has at least two inches on its predecessor, which is why my spaghetti is now more awesome.

And how do you know it has pepper in it when you can't see inside. Oooh, they have already thought about that...

Snooker Re-Rewind

It's snooker season again. Yay. Which has prompted me to think again about nicknames in snooker. In the past only the best or most popular players got nicknames.

• The Nugget - Steve Davis
• Alex "Hurricane" Higgins
• The Whirlwind - Jimmy White
• The Rocket - Ronnie O'Sullivan
• Alan "Angles" McManus
• Psycho - Peter Ebdon

My research has just turned up Alain "Scoobie" Robidoux.  That's a nickname. 

But for whatever reason, every player who gets onto TV these days needs a nickname. And they are really scraping the barrel with some of them. There are some apalling examples that I will spare you. Here are a couple of typical nicknames of modern players.

• The Captain - Ali Carter
• The Jester from Leicester - Mark Selby

... which naturally prompted me to give players my own nicknames. Here are my own suggestions.

• Gypo - Anthony Hamilton
• Stephen "Pies" Lee
• Pizza Face - Steven Hendry
• Pinhead - Graeme Dott
• The greatest player never to win the world championship - Jimmy White

Sometimes, they come up with hilarious names for players in this modern era. Here are some of my favourites.

• The Sherriff of Pottingham - Anthony Hamilton
• Marco "Cue-man" Fu
• Wenbo selecta - Liang Wenbo