Archive for the 'places' Category
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Strong tea was the drink that fuelled the Industrial Revolution, sweetened with the newly cheap sugar from British slave plantations in the West Indies. If the working classes drank enough of this comforting sweet tea, they did not notice the inadequacy of their diets so much. Tea was no longer a luxury but a necessity.
Torygraph article on tea.
Posted in drinks, great britain, places | No Comments »
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Lovely, refreshing, luminous orange Irn Bru:

I used to drink this and Tartan Special quite a lot when I lived in Scotland.
Posted in craziness, drinks, great britain, photos, places | No Comments »
Friday, February 19th, 2010

Apparently it’s called “Sushi Bar“. It’s impossible for non-Japanese.
Posted in craziness, food, games, little things, nature, people, photos, places, stupidity, 日本 | 2 Comments »
Sunday, January 31st, 2010

My not-so-new but favourite blog is Cooking Issues, which is the French Culinary Institute’s tech blog.
Some interesting articles to start with:
Posted in best, big things, blogs, craziness, drinks, food, people, photos, places, science | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Posted in big things, food, photos, places | 4 Comments »
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
I took this photo last week during the cold snap. It’s of a large field next to the house, covered in snow.
Click for the big version!

Here’s another — the enchanted forest:
Click for the big version!

Posted in big things, great britain, nature, photos, places | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
Chipperfield Common, covered in snow:





I got a bit lost and had to follow my own footsteps back:

Posted in big things, great britain, lunacy, nature, photos, places | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
New sink …

Posted in big things, great britain, photos, places | 5 Comments »
Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Crazy Japanese …. One of them looks like lovely Yuka though.
Posted in big things, food, nature, people, photos, places, 日本 | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009





Something of a lost opportunity. The Two Brewers is a traditional pub in just about the perfect English village setting (yet close to London). With the right owner it could be a great pub, but instead it’s a moderate chain pub with restaurant-cum-hotel pretensions. The food was 5/10, certainly not bad, but nothing of note.
Posted in big things, birds, food, littlebritain, nature, photos, places | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 6th, 2009
After months of wrangling and worry we finally exchanged contracts on our new house. Here it is. The strange raised section with a window on the right is the wretched flying freehold that caused everyone so much trouble:

The lane:

Big garden!


This is where Mito can stay when she comes. Probably when the house was built in the 1920s it was the toilet …

The village common:

Posted in big things, littlebritain, nature, photos, places | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Posted in blogs, nature, people, photos, places, 日本 | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
The BBC says they expect more spiders this autumn and BBC listeners have confirmed it. I’ve noticed many more spiders in the past couple of months. Here is a beautiful example from our garden, just a common garden spider, but she’s looks like a little tiger.

Posted in little things, littlebritain, nature, photos, places | 3 Comments »
Monday, September 21st, 2009
N-tsun bought me a Ladybird book of British Birds for my birthday last week. By coincidence I just saw a large display of Ladybird books in the Oxfam in Berkhamsted. Quite expensive!

Some people are serious collectors of this stuff …
Posted in books, people, photos, places | No Comments »
Saturday, September 12th, 2009
It’s been one year since I bought an iPhone, and to celebrate that I bought the Bijin Tokei iPhone application.
It shows you a different lady every minute. As the website says: “In addition, it is likely to be able to meet the same woman every 24hours.” (Really? Is that how it works?!)
Here is an excited looking Miss 18:45:

4 out of 5 for effort but sorry Miss 18:50 is saucier.
They’re also different (sometimes) from the ladies on the website:

Was it £1.79 well spent? You decide …
Posted in birds, craziness, people, photos, places, 日本 | 2 Comments »
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Click image to enlarge …

Previously …
Posted in big things, photos, places | 3 Comments »