Dilemmas part deux

As previously mentioned, I was pondering whether £14 (plus p&p) was too much too spend on a bottle of Belgian beer. I hadn't come to any concusions, but on Friday night I was out with a friend of a relative of my girlfriend(!) and it turns out that he works in the brewing industry. I mention in passing Westvleteren to him.

"Oh yeah, me and some buddies drove out there last year and bought some. I've got some sitting at home, but I've been waiting to find someone who knows about before I get it out"

Looks like we'll be arranging a trip down to his in the New year!

I Really Don't Need Another T-Shirt

But there's at least three Howies ones I love at the moment

Dilemmas

Dilemma #1

I like outdoor swimming. I like Brockwell Lido. There are holding a Winter Swim next Saturday, the 20th, from 12 - 1. It will undoubtedly be cold, it will undoubtedly be "an experience", but will it undoubtedly be a "good idea" ? I can't decide.

Dilemma #2

I like Belgian Beer. Following reading an entry in the Freaky Trigger Advent Calendar of Booze I am very tempted to try Westvleteren 11.3% Trappist beer. It is only made in small quantities by the monks and, by the sound of things, the easiest way to get it is to actually drive to the monastery and pick it up. Having said that Onlyfinebeer sell single bottles for, ahem, £14! And they're only 33cl!!

If I really push the boat out and buy 6, I could get them off a bloke on ebay for a more reasonably 6 for £34.

Can any beer, really be this nice ?

Advent Calendar of Booze

1st of December

From Freakytrigger back in 2003, but still relevant now (no one's invented that much new alcohol in the last 5 years). A bit tricky to navigate to the next day, but normally the link will be lurking in the "Related Articles" side-nav.

EDIT: If you go to Freaky Trigger December 2003 you get a calendar in the top right-hand corner. You can then use that to navigate to each day's entry.

Spooky Art Wierdness At St.Paul's

They also had projections onto the dome on Wednesday night

Modern Toss Christmas Book

Out now! The idea gift. For me.

Bubba Keg

As you might guess I drink a fair amount of coffee. Despite various misgivings about their colonisation of the high-street and their slightly dubious attitude to Fair Trade coffee, I get my coffee from Starbucks as they sell filter-coffee and do a 600ml "venti" size that lasts me the whole morning. This saves me having to leave my desk/spend more money. Obviously that could be waste of a lot of paper-cups, but it's suprisingly hard to find a re-usable take-away coffee cup that size. Until now!

Bubba Keg seem to specialise in cups for long-distance truck drivers, fishermen, camping-types, etc. The 600ml/20oz that I've bought is actually the "mini" size, with their range going up to 52oz. I'm not sure my biceps are strong enough to carry something that weight around!

The model I went for is largely great, although there's a small hole at the top which is necessary to stop the cup exploding or something when you put hot drinks in there, which can cause small leaks.

I got mine from Outdoor GB. Oh and you get 25p of each coffee at Starbucks if you take your own cup.

New Blog

So, having rather enjoyed writing my cycling blog, but not having an outlet where I can write[1] about all the other crap I like, I thought I would set up another blog. It will probably be a bit more random than Idiot On A Bike, but hopefully it'll be of interest to someone out there.

Expect posts about walking, music, java, London, vegetarianism, booze, coffee and books.

[1] I'm aware that one paragraph a week doesn't really consitute "writing".