Hello everyone, i’m back, more or less. There is no internet at the new casa spinneyhead yet. I need dial up to order broadband, so that’s the first priority- the hell with the unpacking.
Technorati tag: moblog
Government safety advisers are recommending that doctors check their patients’ diets before prescribing certain drugs, because some interactions can be detrimental or even fatal.
News like this is one of the reasons I’m considering a food/ diet/ health blog for the Spinneyhead family.
Avoiding interaction: what not to mix
Warfarin to prevent blood clotting
Reacts with cranberry juice and green vegetables. Efficacy may be reduced by ice cream, soya beans and avocados, although clinical significance and prevalence of this problem is unclear
Cholesterol-lowering or immunosuppressant drugs
Patients should not drink grapefruit juice
Sedatives; other drugs including paracetamol
Should not be mixed with alcohol
Lithium to treat bipolar disorder
Patients must not vary intake of salt once they have been stabilised on the drug
Oral contraceptives; anti-depressants in the SSRI class; anti-HIV drugs
Do not mix with St John’s wort, even though there is evidence that it can help treat depression too
Antibiotics in the tetracycline and quinolone classes
Milk and dairy products can reduce their effectiveness
Technorati tag: Beer
From Channel 4’s money pages, some of the things that are VAT exempt-
# Funerals
# Children�s clothes (up to age 13)
# Submarines
# Houseboats � as long as they don�t sail anywhere.
# Jaffa Cakes � even though topped with chocolate, the sponge makes them a cake.
# Chocolate spread
# Frozen food you have to defrost or heat before consumption (fish fingers, pizza, gateaux, etc).
# Bottle/tube of ice cream topping sauce.
# Milk drinks (including milkshakes).
# Tea, coffee, cocoa & drinking chocolate.
# Potatoes
# Microwave popcorn
# Tortilla chips
# Direct flight on Concorde (When they existed)
# Limousine to/from the airport as part of a flight
# Encyclopaedias
# Comics
And some “luxury items” that aren’t-
# Headstones and commemorative memorials
# Children�s clothing that could be worn by a small adult
# Boats weighing less than 15 tons designed for �recreation or pleasure�.
# Touring caravans
# Chocolate biscuits � classed as confectionery.
# Frozen food you eat frozen (ice cream, lollies, sorbet, etc)
# Ice cream topping sauce sold on an ice cream.
# Alcohol
# Alcohol-free beer & wine
# Carbonated drinks (Lemonade, cola, tonic & soda water, etc)
# Potato snacks (crisps, chips, French fries, etc)
# Ready-to-eat popcorn
# Hoola-Hoops
# Pleasure �flights to nowhere� on Concorde (While they lasted)
# Flying lessons
# Private hire of a limousine to/from airport
# Book tokens
# Business cards
Technorati tag: Tax
Anheuser-Busch plans to release a beer laced with caffeine, to help people stay awake and drink for longer now the licensing hours have changed. It’ll probably taste awful.
Technorati tag: Beer
Smells like charity.
Your chance to own an Ian Pattinson original, only �2.50 (plus posting & packing). I’m selling the beer posters I managed to retrieve at the end of Beer Fest, all for a fixed Buy Now price. All money raised, after costs, is going to Rag. Check out the listings on Ebay.
What is the Bogle? I’m impressed, posters have been popping up around UMIST (and elsewhere I assume) advertising next year’s Bogle. This level of early promotion hasn’t happened for the last few years.
Rag’s own gallery of BeerFest pictures, including yours truly sketching yet another beer barrel sign (and 2, 3, 4). I’ll get the rest of Sabs’ pictures put up asap, honest.
On the subject of the unique spinneyhead created beer signs, there’s a free listing day on EBay tomorrow and I’ll be selling them all. Money raised will, naturally, go into the Rag coffers.
Beerfest pictures from Sabs’ camera. This is the first batch, featuring all the custom signs I made for the various ales, more to follow.
Update I have been ordered to say “Thank you Clare.” for inspiration and muse like stuff provided whilst designing some of the signs. She’s particularly responsible for making me think of beaver.
It’s been an interesting week on Spinneyhead mountain. Tasters-
Team Spinneyhead is down a member. I’ve been meaning to hit the delete button for a while, and finally took the symbolic move last week in preparation for the Small Claims bitch slap. And after I’d made him a millionnaire as well. I may recruit a replacement (or more)- CVs, covering letters and bribes to the usual place.
The Small Claims Experience is temporarily stalled. I can file the claim for free if I fill out a form about being on Jobseekers and provide a letter proving it. Except that the last letter I have from the JSA is to tell me they’re suspending my payments. I started doing part time work a few weeks ago, ferrying drunken students home from the Union on Friday and Saturday nights. Friday is part of my social life, I know most of the people I transport, Saturday is quieter and better for sitting in the bar and getting coursework done.
So far I feel like I’m doing it for love, however. It was three weeks before the University’s pay department bothered to pass on down the line that they needed more info than they had originally requested and they’re not going to pay until it’s provided. Which wouldn’t be so bad, it just means that I get my pay in one big chunk. But I made the foolish mistake of telling the JSA that I’m doing part time work. Now they won’t pay out benefit until I provide them with payslips to prove my wage. Because I’m not getting paid, I’m not getting the benefit I should be getting because I’m not being paid.
I think I need to have a chat with Gerald.
Went XBox hunting with Damian on Saturday. It was an adventure in itself, involving car crashes (oh, okay, we saw a low speed collision in the Big W car park), misdirection and an industrial amount of toilet roll. I forced him to bring it back to casa Spinneyhead and unpack it so I could play Halo. It’s a good job I’ve got no money, really, because I’d just have spent it all at Costco and the European markets.
There are more little tidbits of news, but I’ll save them for later.
The other reason for non-postage was a temporary lack of broadband at casa Spinneyhead. But it’s back now and I’m a happy bunny.
Beerfest-
Lady-like behaviour from Lesley
Chris gets his bra size measured.
And then has an out-of-body experience.
Last night was the only one I’ll be drinking at this year- tonight I’m driving the safety bus. Magically, my phone could sense my inebriation and, as the evening wore on, took pictures to reflect it. (Though I have to say, I was very focussed on the lapdance I got from my potential nude model.)
And finally, cheesey dancing behind the vodka bar. It’s .3gp format, Quicktime should be able to play it.
No posts yesterday, due the drinking game that is Beer Fest 2004. This years theme is hammered, and Ian has been busy putting up his ‘art’ work and talking someone in to posing nude for him….
or just turn up at UMIST (sorry, University of Manchester, northern campus), and ask George (the man at reception) for directions. Tell him we sent you.
The world’s smallest brewery, situated in a disused outside toilet in Wales.
via BoingBoing
Last beer. We’re almost there.
Griff says- it’s like something you’d get at beer fest
Daz says- it’s like barley water.
Simon says- it looks like it should be lighter than it actually is.
Today is the day i try to get on the crown’s gallon board. I forget what number challenge it is. The rules- eight beers of 4.1% or higher in one session, having declared your intentions.
I’ll try to report on each shot and give a verdict upon it. First up is northern 45. 4.5% tangy and crisp, a summer beer.
Due to the farce that is online booking, we are not in a car zooming to the lakes but in Kro enjoying a beer.
Tomorrow we drive! (Probably.)
The Move festival yesterday, in the rain. I got there by a convoluted route, involving a lift out to Eccles New Road and hopping off the tram to catch a shot of The Mirrorcow.
I met my sister at the tram station. Security were asking everyone with glass bottles to get rid of them. I had the brainwave of dumping two bottles of Stella into my water bottle and donating the other two to security. But it turned out we weren’t supposed to bring any alcohol in. It’s all part of a scheme to fleece the punters by selling them overpriced booze once they’re inside the festival. I downed the two bottles I’d opened and tithed the other two to the good natured but confused bloke who’d stopped us.
That much beer that quickly made me a bit fuzzy for a while. Thankfully Jo and I had both planned to avoid the expensive food stalls and there was quiche, chocolate brownies, cold mega-veg roast and jasmine tea to keep us going. We bagsied seats in the stands and kept them until the pixies set.
First up were the 22-20s. Raucous indie- guitar stuff, which I’m always a sucker for. Very good. They released a single- Shot Your Gun at the end of last month.
Second set was The Stands. Folksy tinged stuff. Not as good as 22-20s. Album- All Years Leaving.
Tim Booth has a very distinctive voice and his current music is a progression from his days in James. Good stuff. He still dances like he’s pissing on the middle rail, though. New album, Bone, released last month. (The Best of James is worth a listen as well.
Goldfrapp. Perspex guitars, theremins and a singer so high pitched windows must have been shattering for a mile around. Strict Machine is their most recent single, Black Cherry the album.
I’ve seen Frank Black a couple of times, but this was the first time I’d seen Pixies and was the main reason I bought a ticket. Absolutely awesome. The rain started coming down hard for the last two songs, but that made the atmosphere better, if anything. Wave of Mutilation is the recent best of. Last Splash by The Breeders and Frank Black for an idea of what Frank ‘n Kim have been doing in the meantime.
Stereophonics were going to be a disappointment after the might of one of the most important bands ever. They make a nice enough noise, and have done some songs I really like. They just weren’t good enough to hang around in the heavy drizzle for the whole set. A couple of good songs then we left to avoid the mad charge for the Metro. Best Stereophonics album is their first one, Word Gets Around, where they document small town Welsh life, which is so much like small town Cumbrian life that it holds a special place in my heart.
All in all, a great day and well worth the money. Sunshine would have been nice, but rain was so much more Mancunian.
Manchester City Centre Management Company are planning �1000 fines for skateboarders. Somehow, and I can- just- see the link, this is supposed to crack down on teenage drinking and drug dealing. Perhaps they’d be better off targetting the drug dealers and the shops that sell alcohol to the underage?
Skateboarding is banned in the city centre, but there have been no facilities provided as alternative locations. MCCMC’s rather pathetic argument is that there is a skate park under the Mancunian Way, which would hold more water if they didn’t immediately add that it hasn’t even opened yet. They should at least stop being twats and run this campaign when there’s somewhere else for the kids to go. I’d be all for lifting the skateboard ban in some small part of the city centre as well, possibly with a curfew.
Let’s hear it for the introvert. I’m a bit more introvert than I am extrovert, and it doesn’t always take alcohol to help me flip between states. But if extrovert means the sort of gobby moron who’d volunteer for Big Brother then I’m on the side of the quiet ones every time.