Share this, mofos:

When it turned up in the local newspaper, I recognised the alley as one of my regular cut-throughs on runs in the neighbourhood.  Later that same day it turned up on the BBC nightly News so the next morning I decided to go back for my own document of the boondoggle.

Double yellow lines limit parking from the center of the street to the kerb (curb) on the side of the street they are painted; you can stop to load/unload but otherwise the space must be left clear for emergency vehicles.  So, when a fire engine needs to get through the area above…see what everyone is on about?

My own photo really adds nothing to the debate and only serves to show that I need a few more sit-ups and lot less alcohol on a weekly basis (the gut alone would block an ambulance’s passage).  Here’s the same photo with two vehicles illegally parked, scaled to the alleyway’s dimensions:

Everyone wants a picture of this alley, now.  While there setting up my own camera two different citizens with SLRs popped up at the wide end and another at the narrow bit.  I posed with my arms partly stretched to the walls for one of the photographers.

Share this, mofos:

I noticed them before we moved house in January, the thick flocks of birds flying their synchronized and psychedelic patterns in the dusk sky.  I thought it was neat, but apparently it is also unusual for it to last so long or with such large aggregations of birds.  The Beeb (and other news distributors) have taken notice and their stories are worth a look for photos of the beautiful aerobatic patterns.  I noticed patterns, too, on my way to the butcher:

Share this, mofos:

There was little exercise and fuck-all going out for anything aside from bare necessities this week as fever, aches, and blinding congestive pressure took hold.  To have something new for the blog this week, I did what I always do when ill…I scanned the news.  Here are some highlights from the week.

The Crufts Dog Show started this week and will continue for much of the next 8 months.  I used to think that the BBC should dedicate a channel exclusively to darts, snooker, and Crufts but a friend pointed out that they already have one called BBC 2.  It is interesting to see the odd breeds that have developed over the years, though.

Rest in peace, brother Chavez.

Once, me and Hugo were out drinking and, boy, could he put it away!  I overdid it and puked all over myself, covering my shirt in filth.  ”What am I going to tell Jackie?  She hates when I embarrass myself in front of heads-of-state.”

Thinking quickly, Hugo stuffed a 20 peso note in my shirt pocket: “tell her a guy at the bar did this and gave you the note to pay for the cleaning.”

I got back to the hacienda and she hit the roof and I told her Hugo’s story at which point she calmed right down–Hugo was a genius of crisis control.

Then, Jackie said, “hey, Bun…why are there TWO twenties in your shirt?”

“Oh, that other one is from the guy that shit in my pants.”

North Korea severed musical relations with Seoul during the week.  Here we see evidence of Pyongyang’s development of prohibited Boy Band Technology.  Worrying though this may be, few experts believe that this is Da Bomb.

Share this, mofos:

So, four years now (or, rather, next week it will be…here’s the annual reports for years Three, Two, and One for historical perspective).

We just received our new visas valid until 2016 but plan to take the next step toward citizenship in a year, Indefinite Leave to Remain…sort of the British Green Card.  There is an exam, first, but in general it is all downhill from here.

The view from Western Street near the new house…also all downhill

Additionally, we are in the process of moving house (which is why I rushed the annual report a week forward) from just north of the Oasis over to Old Town to a house situated close walks to either the Beehive or the Castle or the Globe (recently reopened!)—three locals instead of one and all three of high quality—and dozens of others a short walk. The new house has three bedrooms each larger than its counterpart in the old house, the two receptions are larger and made into more of an open-plan configuration, the bath is larger and has a tub (not just a shower), and there is a finished basement; on the down side, the kitchen is a little narrower and more primitive as is the small garden but everything we do and everywhere we normally go in Swindon (save for the butcher) is so close.

The only races I did this past year were the London Marathon (5 pubs plus a can of Carling on the last mile) and the Beerathon (5 miles with a pint and a hefty food item between each) and the mileage run for the year suffered from this lack of focus—1950 give or take about 25 (most estimates pretty good using gmap-pedometer), while the last several years (except for the year of the wreck) were in the 2200-2500 range.

On the runs, I visited  255 new pubs with a stunning 67 new ones (steep part of the graph) in September when I took two weeks off work and ran at least 10 miles per day in new territory each day. The 1000th wasn’t as big a thrill as I thought it would be, but I saw some really nice places and met some really fine folk. The September holiday found me visiting Gloucester, South Wales, Slough (exotic, I know) and Exeter along with some nearer-to-Swindon trips. The 100 Yellow Beer Challenge was responsible for a lot of second visits to pubs I might not otherwise have gone to after an initial stop and many of these seemed better the second time around. Oh, and my Workingman’s Club appears to have failed or at least hasn’t been open the last several times I’ve popped by (I have a grand one scoped out for the new neighbourhood, though).

Best pubs in Year Four (reverse order by First Visit write-up):
The Southgate Inn, Devizes
Byron’s, Swindon
The Hop Inn, Swindon
Dicey Reilly’s, Teignmouth
The Brass Monkey, Teignmouth
One Eyed Jack’s, Gloucester
Ye Olde Red Lion, Tredegar
The Rose of Denmark, Woolwich
The Volunteer Rifleman’s Arms
The Green Dragon, Marlborough
The British Lion, Devizes
The Blue Boar, Alsbourne (for the Dr. Who connections)

Favourite write-ups:
Postboxes
British Citizenship Exam Prep
Risk Assessment-Bins
Oxford Tourists
Assize Court, Bristol

Cock Flavour
Paul Simon in Hyde Park
Edie’s Lawn
The hunt
The Bremen Musicians (German children’s story)
Sex Tourism in Wiltshire
Modern Algebra for Omid
Burns’ Day Lunch

There are others search for ‘made me laugh.’  The blog may or may not have made some of the over 100,000 visitors laugh, but the damn fools keep checking in (that’s you, that is).

Share this, mofos:

1.  Fry some bacon

2.  Fry some eggs

3.  Serve on toast, with some chocolate milk and the Sunday paper

Share this, mofos:

Rarely does a day go by that the Swindon Advertiser fail to tickle my adolescent funny bone.  The Beavis and Butthead moment of Saturday was this:

Share this, mofos:

An arduous journey culminated in landing at the tiny Bremen Airport (larger than the one in Athens, Georgia but smaller than Lovell Field in Chattanooga).  My hotel was attached to the lobby by a covered walk across the tramway and after exchanging notes with my colleague who arrived earlier I retired to my room where I cracked open a Becks and found a rubbery packet placed on my pillow (but I’ve stayed in crappier places that I SHOULD have been able to say that about).

I awoke at 5 by habit but was still sleepy and lounged around till 6 before stretching and going for a bit of a run around the bleak neighbourhood (mostly industrial park).  There are as many bike lanes in Bremen as in a Dutch city, so finding a place to run is pretty straightforward.  Work was a chore because we left so many bits we actually needed back in Oxford (on the advice of my boss and the folks at the development labs).  Non-disclosure agreements limit that discussion to essential that.

Okay, it means radio-controlled clock; but, I like the idea of getting my daily newspaper at a place called, “Funk Hour.”

Work went on, regardless, and we eventually released our tired hosts and my Russian mate went home to the hotel.  I opted to change back into my running gear and went out to explore the beer/running dichotomy, Bremen style.

Bremen is never going to be a huge tourist spot, but it is quite a charming city.  It has a contrarian history (one of the furthest west Soviet Republics, until this was quickly quashed) and the folks here are quite nice if you try at all to meet them halfway.  For instance, I sometimes can surprise myself at my comprehension of spoken German because, although I have good grades on my high school transcripts for German language coursework I have absolutely no recollection of ever enrolling, attending, or being examined in these lessons; nonetheless, I managed to follow the simplified-for-my-consumption conversations at the three bars I hit on the route.  Very nice of them to let me try.

Down an alley I spotted the Spitzen Gebel and dashed in for a pilsner.  I had a Haake Beck, which I think I could get used to, then smelled something strange…hey! Folks were smoking in here!  I only have an occasional stogie, but this is what a bar should be like.  The small venue was packed and friendly and reasonably priced.  Moreover, I was the only non-local in the place despite its proximity to what should have been the highest density of visitors in the town.

Needing nourishment and loving a kebab, I found a döner place.  No, check that, I found a very good döner place and had quite a delicious pita with lamb, salad, and chilli sauce; not at all greasy and the meat tasted like (and had the texture of) meat.  Result.

Tasty and high quality though it was, I wanted something to was it down and to cleanse the palate.  About a third of the way back to hotel I spotted the weird little side street bar, Baldu, with its Tiki Bar interior and 70′s soundtrack.  I ordered a Franziskaner Weißbier and received an enormous glass of this faintly orange and wheat loveliness that I can still make out, faintly, even after the ‘run’ continued on for one more stop.

Everyone else in the bar was drinking equally large or strong drinks backed with shots of something or other (I recognised vodka and got one for myself after even the bartender rendered horrific face-pulls on some spicy black shot one of the punters bought her…the vodka enhanced the FW, whereas the mystery tipple might have ruined it).

The run started to approach my shoddy airport neighbourhood so I scanned side streets until I spotted a bier sign down one.  I pulled up to the building to find it was a pool hall complete with some stinky bikers out front.  It was still pretty tame inside, the soundtrack included Meat Loaf and the house wine was, I shit you not, Motörhead Shiraz…I had already ordered another Haake Beck but I really wanted to toast Lemmy (maybe I can get someone from work to come shoot a few racks before I have to leave).

 

Share this, mofos:

I need to get back to the Hash, soon.  I’m even seeing hash lyrics in adverts in the local paper:

“Head? Who said, ‘head’?”

Share this, mofos:

Nice afternoon in the Vrijtof

We planned the Netherlands trip around a Bruce Springsteen concert at PinkPop, a music festival going on during Pinkster weekend every year since 1970.  Unusually fair priced (we also saw the Hives, the Specials, Seasick Steve, and 8 other acts on our day ticket), even the food tickets were reasonable (although the food sucked…€2.50 for a beer seemed fine, though).

Maastricht is a little city in the conservative southern Dutch province of Zuid Limburg, full of students and bars and tourists largely from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.  When I last visited in 2001, hardly anyone spoke enough English for me to communicate (but my rudimentary German and French kept me from starving lost in town).  This trip it was hot and sunny and everyone spoke English to us as soon as we tried to use Dutch.

The Specials and some of the mostly white crowd.

On Sunday, the convention centre near our hotel had the annual Eerste Pinksterdag Vlooienmarkt (flea market) and we had a wander around since the rest of the city was locked up (save for the bars and some restaurants).  I got the clock, here, for €20; it was running a little slow but I think I got it adjusted.

Stolen web picture, but we are under the orange circle at the right

As the Specials note, though, “it’s later than you think.”  We continued to enjoy ourselves the rest of the weekend before heading back to Amsterdam for my birthday pancakes, and stashing the little pipe I brought along for this trip near the RAI Station.

This was my first overseas trip since moving to Swindon and the Advertiser publishes photos of idiots holding up a copy of the paper in foreign lands (a segment called ‘Where in the World?’).  I got in two of these but they haven’t yet been published:

In a Maastricht neighbourhood on one of many stylised donkeys

 

This finally appeared in the Advertiser at the end of summer

 

time = Bruce minus 20 minutes

Share this, mofos:

I thought I had exclusive license on all 'Bunny' names, but apparently not

This is a grab bag of stuff from this month, maybe becoming a recurring feature.

The concept of ‘Qualifications’ is a funny one in Britain.  To be qualified to do something doesn’t mean that you have the skills to perform a task, but rather that you have “done a course” at the end of which you have received a certificate (literally, a printed out and endorsed bit of paper) saying that you are thus qualified.  As an example, I am not qualified to use a step ladder in this country and when I ask our facilities personnel at Oxford to borrow one it is denied me due to my lack of qualifications.  It doesn’t matter that I was using 20 foot high ladders to climb into hay lofts in the mid 1960′s, that as part of my jobs in a steel mill and on construction sites I dragged acetylene cylinders up higher ladders still, or that upon landing in Grenada (yes, technically I am a war veteran: the beaches were nice and the live fire was distant) I wasn’t allowed to retrieve my cameras and film until I had hauled enough explosive ordnance to level St George’s for my jarhead and squid colleagues up–you guessed it–a ladder down the ship’s hold.  Nearly 50 years worth of experience, but it is deemed too risky for me to climb three feet up to secure some copper tubing with a zip-tie in England , so I have to put in a work request (and, yet, they turn me loose on high voltage systems and powerful motors–kookoo).

So it is amusing to know that a ‘QUALIFIED‘ plumber installed the drains in the trough urinals at the Oasis gym not only poorly (the solder is sloppy enough for me to feel I can comment on it) but upside down so that a half-inch of piss accumulates (diluted, to be sure, by the occasional burst of water):

I mentioned something about the preponderance of lost kitty articles in the Swindon Advertiser in a post about the Queensfield.  Here are the moggy-and-other-small-pet-related articles from the last few days (Tuesday through Saturday) in the paper, not including the pet supplement in yesterday’s edition:

I mentioned a duck I was roasting, and the recipe is worth trying.  My version slit the skin in a few places, salted the inside and threw crushed pepper on the outside, and stuffed it with ten or eleven crushed garlic cloves and a handful of thyme sprigs.  This was tented under foil and shoved in the oven at 130 C to be turned over hourly, then the temperature was raised to 170 C after 4 hours and it was uncovered until the end of the 5th hour.  Served with some sautéed kale and a little rice, this turned out pretty well.

Ready to cook...

...it tastes better than it looks.

Between hour one and two of the roast, I went out for a run and stumbled upon this weird looking statue of Diana Dors, Swindon’s gift to middle-aged drag queens:

Swindon is home to the Research Councils, UK, so science research gets occasional coverage in the paper.  It is good to see that funding for researchers at Leeds that I originally reported on is to continue at, I believe, Leicester…not sure, I really only looked at the photos in this article:

The funds were allocated in small bills....

 

Share this, mofos:

With a proper southern accent, I present you with I Like Dicks, Happy Dicks and Clawed Dicks:

{and the uncomically named Billy Florence, of course.}  My thanks to the UGA Chemistry Department newsletter for keeping me abreast [heh-heh] of happenings back home (see, guys, I DO read this thing).

It really makes you wonder, though, why they couldn’t get the grandpa, Harry, to come out for the tournament.

Share this, mofos:

So it has come to this…1000 posts in less than 3 years (975 days, to be precise).

In that time we have come quite far together:  712 pub stops, 4025 miles running (1740 unique miles in the UK, at that), almost 96000 views of this blog  (averaging about 200/day the last few months after slow beginnings) and tons of ridiculous shit that I should bring me disgrace.  In that same time, I have only managed my way onto one proper publication (with acknowledgements in a few others, although another paper from the Cambridge work is almost finished) and one patent, and for that meager output I truly am ashamed; but, my big bag of guilt still has a bit of spandex left and, besides, I left plenty of tired, old impropriety across the Atlantic to make room for new experiences so let’s keep piling it in.

One of my favourite pub experiences was early on at the Chequers in Cottenham which I hope has reopened since we left the area. I have some favourite pubs in various places but no one favourite nationwide yet.  The map, linked here and over to the left of the page gives you the names of pubs reviewed or otherwise used as a template for my blather in this document and makes a nearly comprehensive reference for planning a pub crawl in Oxford, Swindon, Cambridge, Ely, Faringdon, Kidlington and Bicester; many other areas are covered less extensively but it should continue to grow over the coming years.

Pub count by date...summer surge came late this year

Here are some of my favourite posts out of that ridiculous collection, if you are at all interested or just bored:

Picking on the deceased, especially one’s betters, is always worthy: Arthur Stanley Eddington plaque.    Other times, the sciences offer jobs that are hard to resist (but the job has been filled and removed from the HR site since then).  Never sure if it was an attractant or repellent, and still don’t understand what the dog had to do with it (unless it was a Cocker).

Many articles about running as tourism have been posted, but some are better than others.  Place names tend to be the best for humour…like these here.  Or this one. We actually drove about 10 miles out of our way one weekend trip for this hamlet, but the signs have been stolen so often they stopped putting them up.  Claims to never having paid for it aside, this was a nice if mistaken sight.  Deep in Cambridgeshire you find some good place names, and they seem to treat strangers well on Hills Road Cambridge.  Our first trip to Wales resulted in disappointment with this highway’s promise.

The daily Haiku was a feature early on, before I realised just how many pubs were going to be reviewed.  The best ones happened spontaneously like this one on a trip to London.

As I write this I am suffering stigmata…okay, I accidentally stabbed myself in the palm with a screwdriver this morning.  Still, religion figures into the blog from time-to-time as it did about the ex-masturbators and the fisting-for-Jesus folks.  In Italy, it is hard to escape the influence of the Church and so we gave into its temptations.

An eternal Dylan fan and no stranger to public nudity and substance abuse, I felt kinship with these guys.  Other times the news is just ironic on its own.  Romance is alive and well in Ireland, as this guy proves.

With luck running will continue and I’ll cover many more miles of virgin territory and review loads of worthy races (although my feelings have not changed for the ‘Finisher’s Medal’).  Barely 1/10 of 1% into the stock of pubs to visit, I should be able to maintain this pace of coverage for awhile, as well.  Best, to all, and here’s to 1000 more of this nonsense.

Share this, mofos:

16 August 2011, Swindon Advertiser, page 3 above the fold

On Tuesday, my local paper made me laugh out loud on the bus ride to work with the page 3 article above.
1: The rivers around here can be waded across by small children.
2: A substantial fire brigade response seemed warranted.
3:  Animal rescue specialists were found and dispatched to the scene.
4 (and best of all): The cow finished its drink and got out on its own, probably due to the disturbing approach of sirens.

They call it “the Silly Season” when politics shut down at the end of summer because there is usually very little to report.  The Swindon Advertiser is a true local paper and covers almost nothing nationally relying on, for example, 5 or more reports of missing kitties to fill column length each week (the town is the size of Chattanooga, but there have been roughly 5 murders logged in two decades–compared to more than 100 per year–so fair enough, eh?).

Here’s a Google street view of the crossing at Hannington Bridge: