Bad Manners still going!

“GET WELL SOON BUSTER!”

[CLICK]

was a post written 2 years ago when Buster Bloodvessel was laid up in hospital in Italy. At the time it did not look good. It was even reported in the NME that the  front man from Bad Manners was in a bad way and obituary writers were being summoned in readiness.

However all is well with the big man, which puts a smile on my face. As in my recent trawl of various ticket agency web sites to see which forthcoming The Hives gig  was nearest to me I saw the list of bands due to play at the Reading festival next month. There they were, Bad Manners, and with a future Christmas count down tour lined up too. I might even go to the Fleece on December 15th and see them for myself! It has been a while.

Anyway Buster looks the picture of health to me – here he is playing Mighty Sounds festival in the Czech Republic in June. Good news I say.

bbv2

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Alan Border! The former Australian cricket captain, who is 58 today was quoted in the week as saying about the current team’s batting in the Ashes series so far :

“Our major concern right now is the performance of the top six. I could honestly say the nine, ten and jack [No 11 batsman] looked more competent than our one, two and three. If that was me in the top three, I’d be embarrassed.”

Chin up mate and enjoy your special day!

Caption Competition.

2013-06-08T103240Z_1707123003_GM1E9681F2Q01_RTRMADP_3_CRICKET-CHAMPIONS

Great photo from REUTERS/Philip Brown of two blokes who could play a bit in their time, but now just enjoying the day at Edgbaston yesterday.

But what were they saying?

My guess is that Warne was saying to Vaughan.

“Hey, I reckon that the Aussies could bat for a day and a half in an extended game over here this Summer.”

To which the ex-England skipper replies, “Yeah right, maybe against Scotland!”

Any other suggestions?

Box of vinyl………(6)

Got the old box of 45’s out for a flick through.

A bold purple cover stood out; I had rediscovered a GothRock classic. The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary. In fact it gets a brief mention in a previous blog, but I think that it deserves more than an honourable mention.

The-Cult-She-Sells-Sanctuary

The video was not that great, but I do remember it being on the video jukebox in the “Volley” on King Street. Video jukeboxes were all the rage back then after the dust had settled in the Betamax/VHS format war.

Goths were pseudo punks in the mid 80’s.   The sort of mainstream Gothic rock singles that were out then on the video screens were things like this Cult track, Killing Joke – A Love like Blood and Billy Idol’s – White Wedding.

I did like a lot of that style of music. Robert Smith of the Cure was a clever bloke in my opinion who wrote some unique songs. Siouxsie and the Banshees were another band that I thought were pretty sound. I never bought a Cult album though, but the single here was good to bop about to.

So this landed in my singles collection.

Coming back to King Street, pubs and music videos a couple of personal favourites of mine back then that were also on the jukebox were The Ramones – Teenage Lobotomy and Van Halen’s – Hot for Teacher. They stick in the mind. I somehow still remember staring through the smokey fug at the tv screens to watch those two videos, whilst I nursed a beer in the upstairs bar  The Ramones promo video was not as slickly produced as Michael Jackson’s Thriller,  but was a load more scarier from memory. I cannot find the actual video from then on-line today. Maybe it got banned by the Health and Safety people.

The Van Halen video just appealed for base reasons I suppose. Watching it now makes everything seem so dated. I will not post it as it is degrading to women, all warm blooded males can Google it.

Why does it feel like you have been mugged off?

The truth about Stella Artois:

There are three numbers that I would like to include within this piece. They are 1516, 4.8 and 284.

Now then a bit of trivia to start with on one of my favourite subjects…….beer.

The world’s oldest continually valid food and drink regulation was put in place in Germany in 1516. The Germans are very proud of the “purity law” that came about nearly 500 years ago to protect the integrity of their beer. This law states that beer can only be made from 4 ingredients: WATER, HOPS, YEAST and MALTED BARLEY.

SAMSUNGAs a consequence any beer that is brewed and is sold in Germany that contains anything other than these 4 basic ingredients  is not allowed to be called beer. If it contains colouring agents, preservatives or different fermentable material other than barley, then it has to be called EXPORT rather than beer. The implication being that if it is not brewed under the 1516 legislation then it is not fit for the domestic market.

Now for some strange reason Stella Artois actually draws customers’ attention to the fact that it is not made purely from barley in its packaging that quite neatly displays a maize cob on its packaging. In declaring that Stella is brewed with “four ingredients” the manufacturer clearly displays symbols for water, hops, barley and maize.

Maize is an adjunct (an alternative to malted barley) often added to the fermentation process in the form of corn syrup to increase alcohol content, make the beer lighter in colour, or simply to cut costs. Yeast is left out of the list, despite being an essential for any fermentation to take place. This is I assume because all the yeast is filtered out of the final product.

The bottom line is that Stella Artois would not pass the German Purity law, but that was always a given. It just seems strange that the marketing people decided that making their beer with maize was a good selling point that was worth advertising.

So thaSAMSUNGt is 1516 done, but there are two more numbers to mention one of which is 4.8.

Did I just say 4.8?

It seems that the new standard “premium” lager ABV strength is 4.8% in the UK. This means that Fosters can step up with their “Gold” product and flex their muscles with the “premiums” as 4.8% represents a stronger concoction than the regular Fosters sold for years at 4.0%. Hence the large figures on the packaging and bottle label declaring the new found strength of the well known lager. The size of the bottle is in a slightly smaller font as these bottles of “Gold” are 30 ml smaller than the traditional  330ml. 330ml is the standard size of soft drinks cans in the UK and is the standard size of a 6 pack bottle of beer in most EU countries.

Now back to good old Stella Artois. Under close inspection of the product packaging of its 6 pack of bottles it is hard to find where its vital statistics are displayed. On the main side panels of the cardboard packaging only a bar code can be found.

The top of the packaging helpfully tells us that there are 6 bottles in the pack and also gives the bottle size.SAMSUNG

but you have to turn the 6-pack upside down to find the ABV is 4.8% a bit different from its previous 5.2% mark.

So eventually we get there. Buy a 6 pack of bottled Stella Artois you get a weaker beer in a smaller bottle than once produced by the same manufacturer. 330ml to 284ml represents a drop of just short of 14% in terms of content. It may not be easy to discover, but the truth is there.

Hard to find, but there in black and white

SAMSUNG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further Posts

You drink Stella Artois? Then read on…

Well, it gets worse at the “Beer” factory

Bike Hero #3 continued

Heroes are people who inspire and make your jaw drop.

Mark Cavendish does that. He continues to win stages of major races  the hard way (see the report below)

Mark Cavendish outclasses field to win stage 13 of the Giro d’Italia

One can only admire his grit and determination to get to that finish line first. He still has time to raise his hand to show how many stage wins he has chalked up on this race so far.

It does not surprise or shock me.

parks_week

Just a quick one as I do not want to dwell on this or labour the point.

In Parkinson’s Awareness week the BBC re-ran this news story about a poor fellow who felt the long arm of the law in Surrey last Summer during the Olympic Cycling road race. I did not hear about this as I was away in France during the Olympics, so thanks to Lorraine for drawing my attention to it.

Just follow the link

Link: Man gets arrested for having PD

Those were the days Part 29


papers01The World Patented Roy Bollard filing method ©

When I got my first job in a West London comprehensive there was only one other Chemistry teacher in the school – Roy Bollard. He was a well organised bloke who was a pioneer of the use of audio visual equipment. He moonlighted as the school’s sound and light technician and as a consequence was involved in drama and musical productions as well as some legendary discos. He was the bloke who also did so much to underpin the well-oiled machine that was “Charities Week”. He operated the lights and microphones for the shows, auctions and other events that took place in the hall.

Roy was dynamic enough to use an OHP in his lessons, which was cutting edge in those days. Pre prepared acetate slides were the equivalent of a modern day Power Point presentation. Roy had his own take on using the OHP. He had a huge roll of acetate mounted on his projector which became an organic scheme of work. He started writing in September on the top of the plastic scroll and worked downwards till the end of the academic year. So it became a huge time line that essentially grew into being the scheme of work. After a few years of doing the same thing he instinctively knew where a lesson was on the scroll and could wizz the whole roll of clear plastic to where it was written.

Now the cleverest thing that Roy did was adopt the simplest filing method I have ever seen. In those days you did not have e-mails, SIMS and all that jazz. You got memos on paper, in fact everything was paper based. Roy had one single pile that he put all his paper work on which sat right next to his OHP. It soon piled up, but made sense as he knew where everything was, he just had to sift through the pile to find it. The filing system had three rules:

  1. Anything you get given on paper you read and put on the top of the pile
  2. Anything you need later you find in the pile and deal with it but put the memo back on top (see rule 1). As a result the new and important stuff would be at the top and all the rubbish sank to the bottom
  3. When the pile reached the same level as the top of the OHP ie a about the height of a 30cm ruler, he would get a bin, lift up the top half of the pile and sweep the bottom half of the stack of paper from the desk and into the bin. Sorted!