I’m quite proud of myself.

Apart from last weekend and today, Rod has mostly been working his socks off in Aberdeen. I’ve been meeting the financial advisor, showing round letting agents, auditioning builders, making tea for the handyman, chatting to the electrician and dragging my mother-in-law to B&Q on pensioner Wednesdays.

On the occasions when it’s threatened to overwhelm me, strange things have happened. One Tuesday, as I stomped up to Beanscene with the wee man mercifully strapped into the one place he couldn’t cause trouble, I bumped into the barista at the door with an armful of cardboard.

“Are those boxes?!” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Can I have them?” I asked.

He looked at me strangely. “I’m moving house,” I explained, to his relief. The charming chap even kept them and brought them out to my car later. That, and other odd coincidences like a neighbour’s friend turning out to live two streets away from me in Aberdeen, have made me wonder if they were fateful signposts that I’m on the right path.

I’ve enjoyed the growing feeling of space, in my house and in my head, as I’ve binned, recycled and donated carloads of stuff. I even got up at 5.30 on a Sunday morning to go to a carboot sale. I should actually write a whole blog post on that – the characters I met and the banter we had made standing in a freezing warehouse for four hours totally bearable. I sold every single thing and made £110 to boot.

Today we took the last of the furniture, pictures and kitchenware to the place we’re storing it. We loaded the van with the clothes, TV and Wee Man Equipment for our rented Aberdeen house. On Wednesday I’ll pack what little clothes and plates remain and leave this house. At some point we’ll need to go through an abbreviated version of this process, when we buy a house. But that may be a while. I’ll have recovered by then.

Hooray for house moving!

Read the article here…. Mocopan stands by core values

Excited by the latest story!

Thank you to the Beanscene Editorial Team for a wonderful article.

Alexandre Dumas / The Black Tulip / Americano / Beanscene

The second reason this is in my head right now is because Holly Phillips seems to have discovered the same thing.

Thanks be to the wee man for cafes, eh?

The Figures

Here’s a list of five of the better known coffee shops where samples were taken and the caffeine levels found in a single shot of espresso;

• Highest was Patisserie Francoise with 322mg of caffeine
• Costa Coffee had 157mg
• Baguette Express had 140mg
• Beanscene had 77mg
• Lowest was Starbucks with 51mg

The study identifies factors that could have an effect on the level of caffeine in the coffee such as the quantity of ground coffee used for making the espresso, the grind, the temperature of the water and the beans.

These results are for a single shot of espresso, many coffees we buy from high street coffee shops will be made with two, three or even four shots of espresso. Starbucks have recently announced their intention to start putting a double shot of espresso in tall lattes and cappucinos, the customer will now be getting over 100mg of caffeine in a standard drink.

Other Drinks

So what are the caffeine levels in other beverages?

• Current guidelines suggest that in a 225ml mug of instant coffee there is 60-85mg
• A standard can of Coca Cola has 35mg and Diet Coke 45mg
• 225ml mug of decaf filter coffee has about 6mg
• Red Bull has 80mg and other energy drinks go as high as 300mg per can/bottle

These figures are all taken from www.energyfiend.com. There are many factors influencing the caffeine content of tea, including brew time and temperature of water, making it difficult to put a figure on the caffeine levels.

 The Conclusion

The reality is most of us have no idea how much caffeine we are consuming and the wide variety of caffeine levels in drinks purchased from coffee shops make it very difficult to even try and monitor our intake. So whilst you may think you’re only drinking one or two cups of coffee a day, depending where you buy it, how it is made and size, your one cup could be equivalent to another person’s four cups in terms of caffeine.

I have mentioned in a previous post that I frequent coffee shops like Starbucks, but I haven’t actually discussed my favourite place to sit down and work. Beanscene.

Its a bit cheaper than some of the more popular brands, such as Costa, Cafe Nero and Starbucks. It has a more relaxed atmosphere, comfier chairs and (most imporantly) WiFi access that doesn’t rob you blind. They provide WiFi access for an hour free, every time you buy food/drink. Which, if you’re sitting down occupying one of their chairs for three hours, is perfectly reasonable. You ask the staff for a unique username and password that comes with your order, fire those details into their Beanscene web page login and you’re off.

And, my “regular” Beanscene does a mean beans on toast for a decent price. Awesome.

The only drawbacks? The spelling always looks wrong, no matter how many times I confirm it and trying to leave this comfy chair I keep sinking back into…

One cold night back in February on our way home from work, Pamela, our flatmate and myself decided to stop by our local Beanscene for something warm. I remember it being so cold I couldn’t feel by fingers and wanted something to take all of our minds off the miserable weather.

Walking into Beanscene, we noticed that the staff had propped up a large specials board at the front counter which read ‘Try our new chocolate pizza!’ at the very top. All three of us turned to each other with the same look on our faces….

“Chocolate pizza?! Eugh!”

We ordered some coffee and sat down, but as we did the member of staff at the counter shouted over that we should try the chocolate pizza. Apparantly it was the first day that it has been put on sale and as of 7pm none had been sold. He even added that if we didn’t like it, he’d let us have it for free and take any suggestions we had to make it better! Not being able to argue with that, we ordered one to share between the three of us.

Roughly ten minutes later the pizza was brought over and the same member of staff asked us to be sure to let him know what we thought of it when we were done. We were a little trepidatious at first – after all, how would chocolate sauce taste on a pizza base? We each took a slice, had a bite and glanced at each other with a look of surprise. It was good! The base was warm and sweet, light like the inside of the doughnut. The strawberry topping complimented the nutella sauce well and the marshmallows finished the whole thing off perfectly. The pizza was nowhere near as sweet as we all thought it would be and we were happy to report back to the staff that we all enjoyed it very much.

I have no idea if the pizza is still a regular feature on the menu at the Battlefield Beanscene or even if they sold anymore. However it certainly served it’s purpose and fed our bellies well on a cold, frosty night in Glasgow.

www.beanscene.co.uk

“I’ll eat my own shoes if you don’t hear these songs blaring out your wireless in months to come.” – Chris Rodger, www.glasgowmusic.co.uk

“So intense was his set that you feared for his guitar.” – BluesBunny.com

Recorded at London’s Livingston Studios, under the tutelage of established producer and songwriter Ken Rose (Warners, EMI and Giorgio Moroder Music) and his recently launched Telescopic Baby project. As much a collective as it is a label, the Telescopic idea is to key into the development and nurturing of young talent ensuring each artist maintains full artistic freedom whilst reaching their full potential. It made perfect sense following a meeting last year that the Telescopic founder volunteered his vast experience in the creation of Alan’s new EP; which is the next chapter of a story gaining rapid momentum.

Alan has previously played numerous live shows including Connect and Hinterland Festivals and has shared stages with artists such as Brett Anderson (Suede) and Colin McIntyre. In autumn 2010 Alan was asked to tour round Scotland’s Beanscene Coffee shops to follow in the footsteps of KT Tunstall, Amy MacDonald and Carrie Mac who have all kick started their career through this opportunity.
McKim is up for Best Acoustic Artist at this years Scottish Alternative Music Awards. He has also been a finalist in the Billy Kelly Song writing awards.

www.alanmckim.com
www.facebook.com/alanmckim123
http://soundcloud.com/alanmckim
http://www.glasgowmusic.co.uk/ReadRepArticle-0000000008

Sumerian EP Launch
Stereo, Glasgow
Saturday 16th April
Doors: 7pm
Tickets: £5
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_scotland&query=detail&event=434404

Previous single

This means that I’m effectively housebound. Unable to leave the flat in case I miss them, while nursing a deep sense of foreboding that either:

a) I’ve already slept through them buzzing my flat and when I check their website it’ll say they tried to deliver it but were unable to.

b) Nobody from the Royal Mail ever actually delivers a parcel anymore as it’s too much hassle, so when I check back on their website it will say that they were unable to get anybody in so they could deliver it – without them having bothered to bring the parcel with them – and to contact them to arrange re-delivery, whereupon exactly the same thing can be re-enacted. I imagine them having “Parcel Mountains” like those EU grain mountains that we used to always hear about.

The Radio Caley Awards last night were good fun. Thanks to Michael & Scott for having me on their show, Transmission: Omega, and everyone at Radio Caley for having me along to the Awards. Here’s a wee pic of the Awards do:

As I’m housebound, I’m not able to go out to buy the papers to get a feel for what they’re going on about today. I know I can read them online, but somehow it’s not quite the same. So I’ve decided to go through my cameraphone to see what else I haven’t shown you yet.

Well, did you know that in Beanscene cafes you’re not actually allowed to piss or shit in the loos?

Did you know that Partick Farmers Market isn’t actually an agricultural slave sale?

Perhaps you want to see Sasa Papac being presented with his special achievement award by John Greig?

Or perhaps you want to see Steven Davis winning Rangers Player of the Year?

Right, I’m out of pics, so I’ve had a flick through the online news…

Having heard what the woman said to Gordon Brown, my sympathies would now lie with him in calling her a bigoted woman – were it not that he then backtracked, apologised, said he didn’t mean it, and that she’s a good woman. If nothing else, it means we should be relieved that he never wanted to grow up to be a judge. “I find you guilty – oh, hang on – are you crying? Right, I mean I said “guilty”…but what I actually meant is that you’re a decent and honourable rapist just struggling on with life during a difficult time.”

As for there being too many Eastern Europeans in the UK, as far as I’m concerned there aren’t enough. I’m prepared to swap Mrs Duffy to the Ukraine in return for Artem Milevskiy signing for Rangers.

A relationship counsellor has lost the court case he brought claiming it was unfair to his Christian beliefs to ask him to provide sex therapy to homosexual couples. I think he’d be the perfect person to provide sex therapy to gay couples. If they’ve gone to him because they’re worried that things have become a little bland in the bedroom – who better to reassure them? “So, you’ve told me what kind of things you enjoy doing…and I have to say it’s the filthiest, most depraved, most unnatural, and most extreme form of sexual misbehaviour that I can possibly imagine.” “Wow, cool, and there was us thinking that the spark had gone. Thank you for all your reassurance!”

Dundee bar Lowdown has said United striker David Goodwillie was ejected after being found in a toilet cubicle with a female customer. I did have to read “Goodwillie ejected” a couple of times to make sure I’d got the right words. Presumably he was in the first flush of romance. The player denies the incident though and had previously said that he’s calmed down a lot since meeting his girlfriend. If he met her under similar circumstances then I wouldn’t fancy their anniversary celebrations much. Him pissing on her card so the waft brings back all the old memories…

Oh yeah, between starting this blog and finishing it – the chair’s arrived. In attempting to assemble it, I forgot to put on the footring and now can’t seem to get it disassembled to put it on. Fucksake.

You can see me on Friday night at the Voodoo Rooms for The Friday Fix

Hope you’re all well

Teddy xxx

hiya all. Sorry for not posting this weekend, been so busy!

The connection was claimed to have an Excellent signal strength and to be available at 54Mbps (IP address 10.31.81.85) but it took me two minutes to get through to The Cloud Networks login page, and after 20 minutes of trying to get any page other than a Google search page to load, I realised that (although I was the only person in the Beanscene using a laptop) the wifi system was so poor that it was unusable.

It’s a pity: this Beanscene is a nice place with good atmosphere and pleasantly sunny, but wifi this poor is better not advertised: you wouldn’t want anyone to come in *because* of the wifi. I’ve heard from other customers that this is a common problem with Beanscenes – the wifi service exists in theory but is shoddy in practice. I’ve had similar problems with other chain cafe wifi systems – probably a low-bid problem, but Beanscene is certainly the worst. (Local cafes which offer wifi where the manager herself chose and is making use of the system, don’t have this problem: it’s always chains where the local cafe staff didn’t get to choose the wifi provider and don’t have the authority to change it because of its poor performance.)

But the coffee is good. Seriously: take the “free wifi” signs down. It comes close to being false advertising. Beanscene should stick to selling coffee.

I took this photo here. It’s available on Redbubble: the Scottish Government from Beanscene.