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Video. You don’t need the sound on to be able to enjoy this.
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“The 696 Form compels licensees who wish to hold live music events in 21 London Boroughs to report to the police the names, addresses, aliases and telephone numbers of performers, and most worryingly, the likely ethnicity of their audience. Failure to comply could result in fines or imprisonment. We believe this places unnecessary and frankly Orwellian powers in the hands of the Metropolitan Police, an institution which does not have the best record of racial fairness. The 696 form can only serve to deter the staging of live musical events – a positive form of activity in London and all cities – stifle free expression and quite possible penalise certain genres of music and ethnic audiences. It is an intrusion too far.”
Category: Food
If food be the food of life, then let’s write about it.
Categories
Melting cheese
I wish that I’d planned this a bit better, and filmed the cheese from the moment when it went into the oven. And used a tripod too. Next time.
And yes, our oven door is incredibly clean.
The other weekend, we were invited to lunch with Tom and Rach. They cooked us pie and a meringue. Both were delicious, and the meringue was particularly photogenic.
This is not the first time that Tom has made me a pie, and I’m looking forward to the next one already.
We also found a happy potato, which Rach could not bear to flay.
I’m clearing up a backlog of photos, and I’ve discovered this delicious treat from a few weeks ago.
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Top 5 leisure activities
*This is a companion piece to a similarly-themed article on Karen’s site which, all things being equal, should be published at roughly the same time. We have not read each others entries before publishing, and have taken care not to discuss them.*
Cycling
At long last, I have found an enjoyable way of getting regular exercise. Going to the gym is dull as dishwater. Karen and I used to play Squash, but haven’t done so since halfway through her pregnancy (though we are going on holiday at the end of the week, and have a Squash court booked). My fitness is returning, and it’s having a major positive impact upon my overall mood.
Taking photos
I wouldn’t consider myself to be a “photographer”, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have recently acquired my first DSLR (a Nikon D40) and am enjoying learning about shutter speeds, aperture, and all that guff.
Playing with Bernard
“Ball!”
“Baw!”
Followed by a bout of wrestling. It’s awesome.
Drinking beer
I like beer. Not in huge quantities, nor on my own in the evenings, but its deliciousness can not be denied.
Eating pie
I like pie. In huge quantities, and on my own in the evenings.
Surely it can’t be both?
This was the best latte in the world. It’s such a shame that you didn’t get to taste it.
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High fructose, low satisfaction
Karen was forced to rescind on our lunch arrangements, leaving me somewhat up in the air. This is a figure of speech. I was not really up in the air. I was stood on the ground, and then shortly thereafter, sat back down in my chair.
So I went to the nearby sandwich shop for the first time in months. I used to go there every day, before realising exactly how much money I was wasting, and all the marvellous things that I could do with that money instead.
I purchased a can of Coca-Cola to go with my sandwich and my bag of crisps. Upon taking my first sip, I was unimpressed. It didn’t taste quite right. Close, but not close enough.
I turned the can over in my hand and realised the cause. Again, I didn’t *literally* turn the can over, because this would have resulted in the drink pouring over my lap. I actually rotated the can, whilst craning my neck to silly angles until I could read the (very helpfully) vertically-orientated text.
This drink had not been canned in the UK, but it was actually made to the US specification. For the last 22 years, Coca-Cola from the US has been made using High Fructose Corn Syrup, or HFCS, instead of sucrose. This is for the simple reason that it is cheaper, because importing sugar into the US is ridiculously expensive, and corn is ridiculously cheap. Other soft-drink manufacturers do it too, along with producers of other processed foods across the nation.
The Coca-Cola corporation, unsurprisingly enough, claim that there is no difference in flavour between Coke made with HFCS and Coke made with natural sugar. To which I counterclaim: O RLY? ((Now that O RLY has passed out of vogue, I feel like I can get away with saying it))
This was such a damn good pizza base, I felt that I should photograph it for posterity.
More photos of the pizza after the “jump”.