Know it’s been a hard week when you wander in
Greet the same old faces with a nod or just a grin
Clock upon the wall reads quarter to nine
Neck a jar of gravy and you’re feeling fine
Spot the natives from a mile off with their glasses of wine
Haven from the cold blown wind outside
Exodus from the mind-numbing rollercoaster ride
Done our nine-to-five

So we ask with ease
Another pint please

Lenny’s had a run in with the neighbours again
Julie’s whinging on about her boring friends
Dave’s a twenny-a-day man shuffled off to smoke
Lee’s a one-line silent type but a decent bloke
Forest on the table cos the bar-staff are a joke
Soggy beer mats soak sadly in the overflow
Won’t be getting shaved tomorrow let my beard grow
It’s the look you know

So I ask with ease
Another pint please

Some say men don’t gossip that’s a load of crap
Especially when we’re oiled and the drink’s on tap
We’re ripped off night and day couldn’t tell you a lie
Grafting ’til the hearse comes yet we’ll never cry
At most other times wouldn’t be seen dead in a tie
We’re all fools for licking up to the business class
They don’t know how it is to be short of brass
Over the barrel en masse

Fuck ‘em we all agree
Another pint please

Myself, Ryan, Lauren and Vawn went to a craft evening at The Deaf Cat cafe, where we had coffee and hot chocolate. We then to join a load of lovely friends at the pub. Its not often that there are so many people that I like to spend time with in one room! Here are a few photos:

L-R: Steve and Ryan, Lauren, Vawn

L-R: Vawn, Lauren, Brodie, Andy, Steve, Ryan

L-R: Me, Vawn, Brodie, Lauren

L-R: Ryan and me and Vawn, Lauren and Brodie, Brodie and Andy

L-R: Steve and Ryan being happy

We then walked home, and waited half an hour for food in the local kebab shop, which was horrible food, and which made me get out of bed to forcibly remove the food via regurgitation. Not pleasant… never again.

Today I had a session of Wet, on the Xbox, and I am over half way through now. I am also planning the restart of my driving lessons, which should be next week if possible! I cant actually wait to get my license… one less thing to worry about!

Jenn xxx

(enjoying my lovely pint of Fruili!)

P.S Check out the new post on Magnolia Fontaine by Vawn, featuring the lovely jewelry that Lauren has created, along with the work she helps create, working for Stephen Webster. These photos include the lovely baby hamsters that they adopted from me I am so happy they have been included! So cute:

oh da! ce n as da sa ma accepte la emisiune

dar nu stiu daca se va intampla. o sa incep sa lucrez la “CV” … momentan constat cu stupoare ca nu pot dona sange. nu am greutatea care trebuie. ma gandesc sa mi cos bucati de plumb prin haine si sa beau apa muuulta inainte

haha? da, m am uitat la prea multe filme despre eating disorders. clar

ah si la un pint pierzi 650 de calorii (aprox cat iti recolteaza la o donare: 450 ml) o da! i sooo wanna do it!

I like a good pint. I’m not thrilled that a pint costs six or seven dollars in Toronto, but a good bartender trumps my innate cheapness anytime. Alas, a good bartender can be hard to find.

This is the first time I’ve not wanted to speak to a stranger. I’m tired of trying. I see the puffed ruffled sleeves on your shirt and how the elastic trim is digging into your forearms. You pull a pint, you announce it with a raised eyebrow. I have nothing more to report. You take my money, you return my change. I’ve done this too many times now. I request the time, just to say something. You glance at your watch and tell me. And the man next to me orders shandy and asks me if I think it’s late.

The Parson’s Head was one of London’s oldest public houses, famous for their cellar—and their practice of only hiring travelers.

The Brits would rather be drinking the pints, rather than pouring them.

The staff, whom they housed in a dormitory above the bar, was like a less reputable version of the United Nations. There were Kiwis, Aussies, Canucks, Turks and a few of us Yanks.

Somehow, we got the short end of the international-nickname-stick.

They filled their last job opening—and bed in the Boy’s living quarters with Stan.

I had to beg and plead my way onto the staff agreeing to sleep in the common room until a bed opened up.

The common room consisted of an old stained couch, a shelf full of tattered paperbacks left from past travelers who had moved on to new adventures, and an old TV that picked up three BBC channels and little else. It was rarely turned on.

It was where the staff spent their shift breaks, furiously chain-smoking before they had to go back down and pour more pints, and now, it was my home.

I tried to sleep on the couch the first night, but it was so shallow, I could only lay on my side, and every time I drifted to sleep I would invariably roll over, finding myself on the floor.

I had never lived without a bed. My parent’s house, my dorm, my apartment—they all provided me with a soft place to lay my head—and privacy, something I had sorely taken for granted.

I realized this after a month of sleeping on the floor and living out of a backpack.

I was just one step above homeless, but it was different than crashing on a friend’s couch back home—I was flirting with international vagrancy.

It was somehow more romantic. Everything was.

1 | 2 | 3

A longish walk from the appartemnt to Sandsend. All along the beach. Lunch in the Hart Inn. It was quite a small place, but very busy. Managed to get a small table in corner, so that was quite good. We had a prawn sandwhich and a bowl of chips between us. It quite ample, with a nice pint of Greene King IPA to wash it down. Weather was great walking there, but it cooled down on the way back, with just a few spots of rain.

Not sure where we are going to eat tonight. Will decide later.

Last night was interesting.. Galavanted around the country side. Took my Gal to see her Gfolk in hospital. In Murdoch. Then to Cannington to get money out. Then to whoop whoop land to meet a boy. And what a Boy he was.. 2nd date is tomorrow.. We ran out of time to talk. We have more in common than most people I know and the same crazy sense of humour that others don’t get.

For example, it made me create my own MLIA, lame I know but I’m getting better..

So yeh, not getting all giddy or excited about it or anything. We shared a nice kiss. I don’t judge people often, but I do by how they kiss.  And he Kisses good, and has messaged me about a million times today. I’m not complaining. And I’m also not going to write anymore about it on here. I’ll Jinxed it. And tomorrow I’m meeting his pet sheep. Excited much?

Cheers! From this evening PUB is open (taking place Wednesday to Saturday) at the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester until last orders on the 5th of December 2009. PUB is immersive theatre which can be washed down with a pint of Holts finest.

c/o ilgiovaneWalter (Sobchak) licensed under Creative Commons.

I am a new member of Twitter, and every Friday I have noticed that in the Twitter Trends is a trend called ‘Follow Friday’.

At first, I wondered what Follow Friday was. It took me a while to figure out (stupid as I am!) – and finally it clicked – follow friday was a way to gain more followers by simply using a sentence in your status.

You could write:

“Please follow me, today is follow friday after all!” as long as your status contains theses words: Follow Friday you status will appear in that trend. However, remember not to keep posting this as your status, on Twitter this is classed as spamming – you could end up with your account being deleted. Perhaps post this as your status for a maximum of twice every Friday.

I hope you find this useful.

Please follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MyTutorialz

Thanks!

Day 11

Yesterday sailed by, easy breezy. Wind in my sails like Captain Jack Sparrow.

Today…not so easy & nothing breezy about it.  I am craving  &%^$#  EVERYTHING! Here’s a partial list:

• Grilled ham & cheese sandwich from Olympic Diner in SF. The waitress would get pissed when I asked if they could throw a fried egg on it, I’d say “pretty please” and she’d bring it out w/ a smile and EXTRA home fries!
• ANY flavor of piping hot ooey gooey mozzarella topped perfection from Rocco’s Pizzeria in Walnut Creek. My creation usually was pancetta, sun-dried tomatoes, pesto, and feta…but sometimes I’d go for traditional red sauce w/ ground beef, garlic, and green peppers.
• A heaping plate of CARNITAS from my favorite authentic Mexican restaurant, Las Montanas in Concord.  Somehow their food isn’t “wet” like most mex places.  It floods your mouth with flavor, but as an example the rice is fluffy and dry and perfect.  The staff is the best I’ve ever encountered.  The drinks always sucked so i stuck with ice cold LAGUNITAS IPA from the tap.
• My own cooking, esp slow cooked homemade spicy tomato sauce w/ pasta…
• A perfect loaf of ciabatta from the BROOKLYN BREAD COMPANY in Carroll Gardens and salted butter!
• The #3 I think it was at the Thai restaurant my boss used to take me to on 23rd street in Chelsea when I worked in Manhattan.  Even when I asked for “not so spicy” I’d cry through every meal and savor every morsel.  I REALLY MISS NYC on many levels.
• Sweet & Tangy pulled pork BBQ  or Tri-Tip sandwich from Firestone Grille in my original hometown of San Luis Obispo CA. Their fries are the bomb, the patio is the place to be seen, and all kinds of micro brewskies. While in SLO why not hit up the Thurs night Farmer’s Market and stand in the ridiculous long line for McKlintocks beef ribs, camp beans, garlic bread & real lemonade… And one more spot in SLO you can’t skip is High Street Deli on, yup, High Street.  San Luis Sourdough piled with whatever you want in between…  
• Chilaquiles w/ chorizo & sour cream at the King’s Highway, the cool new diner at the chic new Ace Hotel in Palm Springs where a friend recently saw Drew Barrymore and company eating.  Wash it down with their house ale that’s only $3 a pint in an otherwise pricey enviro. Go on a Wed night & bring your swimsuit, grab a Tanqueray and Lime at the bar & go join the DJ’d pool party.
• Chili Fries with a mountain of melted cheddar! But the chili has got to be SPICY like Cool Cats in SLO!

Ok, sorry to put you through that if you came to this blog looking for encouragement with your raw endeavors.  But, this is part of it, right?  I’m trying to keep it real and not sugarcoat my experience going raw.

I’m NOT going to eat anything like that today!  And no cold beer! Raw food eating is worth it. I feel good and already look a lot better.  In about a week I’ll post the first before & after pics of my journey into better health. Each Tuesday I will also weigh myself.  My first week I lost 7lbs. So I’m curious to see what week two’s weight loss is.

I feel kinda bad (not really) for posting all those cooked food pics on a raw food blog–don’t judge. So to try and offset the greasy pics above I want to post the best looking raw food pic I have seen this week. They are “Red Pepper Poppers” and that is EGGPLANT BACON! I can’t wait to make them!  The recipe is at
http://www.rawmazing.com/recipes/red-pepper-poppers/

What I ate so far today:

• Watermelon Juice (I just found out it’s an APHRODISIAC! I don’t think chili fries make you a better lover..)
• Pear
• Blueberry Banana Smoothie w/ honey & green powder
• Salad: Leftover homemade pesto, spinach, olives, rawmesan
• Apple
• Vanilla-maca-date-banana-shake
  

***PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT ABOUT WHAT YOU CRAVE AND WHAT PERCENTAGE OF YOUR DIET IS RAW! THANKS! I’m really curious to here from others about this.

~Henry Lawson

I went to the pub last night and enjoyed a beautiful pint from the tap.

It was such a long, tiresome day that it felt wonderful to sit in the warm company of beer and listen to the buzz of strangers around me.

I sat for quite awhile, but knew I had to eventually return to my less carefree life and all the responsibilities that go with it.

And tonight? Tonight will be far less glamorous. Filled with early pjs, home cooked meals, and canned beer from the fridge in the garage.

Yep! I have won a set of 4 Carling pint glasses! These should be turning up soon.

Oh and I don’t just enter alcohol related comps!

I’ve just returned from a morning’s worth of teaching and, having greeted my wife and dogs, done something that, for me, would have been unlikely until about two years ago.  Before then it would have been nearly unthinkable.  What have I done?  I’ve made myself a lovely cup of tea.

I first came to England from the United States in 1999 to study for a year as part of my undergraduate degree.  I returned for true love, further study, marriage and work in 2002.  In between I visited a number of times and even lived in London for a few months.  In other words, over the past decade this American has spent more time living and working in England than in the land of his birth.  For most of that time I was a dedicated, even militant coffee-drinker.  Tea, I felt, was at best a poor substitute for the full flavour and rich scent of a properly brewed mug of coffee.  It wasn’t even in the same league as a decent espresso, never mind a ristretto.  It’s even possible that on more than one occasion I voiced the opinion that many of my tea-drinking friends were people whose hot beverage of choice was warm milk but, feeling to0 old to be seen clutching a mug of that disgusting substance, they used tea bags  and a bit of water to dress the white stuff up in more acceptably adult clothing.   Now I find myself sitting on my sofa, slurping down a steaming cup of Fairtrade Assam with a dog on either side of me as I type.  I’m even wearing a cardigan. . .

When I first came to England I expected to encounter differences, social and otherwise, from what I was used to as a resident of Southern California.  That was part of the point in going abroad.   Some of those differences I was warned about like the fact that, in contrast to where I was from, it was not unacceptable or indeed uncommon for a male under 65 to wear dark coloured socks when he wasn’t dressed for church, a job interview or any other suit-worthy occasion (n.b. I’m getting older now so I don’t know how far the dark sock ‘thing’ still applies to 20 somethings in England today).  Others I got to discover on my own such as the fact that both Americans and Brits use the term ‘fanny’ to refer to part of the anatomy, but not the same part.  Physically the two features are located in close proximity on the female frame and while it can be acceptable for one American to tell another “park your fanny on this barstool and tell me your troubles” the unwitting American abroad who says something similar to a British woman has committed a faux pas not soon to be forgotten.

Some of the differences I got used very quickly.  Baked beans with my breakfast?  Pure genius.  Imperial pints which are just a few ounces larger than the American version?  Yes, please keep them coming.   Doner Kebab from a van on the High Street after a regal number of imperial pints?  Seemed like a good idea at the time though I haven’t had one in years.   Some things took me longer to come around to.  Initially, I was suspicious of the tarry looking substance called Marmite I saw people spreading on their toast.  Eventually, I tried the yeast extract and found I much preferred its salty tang to the sweetness of jam or bitterness of marmalade.  Other things I still don’t understand and doubt I ever will, like the tendency to take a mouth-watering cut of beef and then cook it until it looks, smells and chews like an aged boot.  From my point of view most Americans like their beef over-done ruined as well and I guess I’d just naively assumed that, being closer to the continent, the people of the British Isles might have a bit more of a clue what to do with a good steak.

The love of tea fell into that category of practices I didn’t understand.  Before I came to England other Americans who’d spent significant amounts of time here predicted I would soon be quaffing the beverage.  I was scornful.  Some cited their own conversion from coffee snob to tea sipper as anecdotal evidence of the metamorphosis that I would undergo.  I was outraged they projected their weakness and poor taste onto me.  One or two even suggested that I would find it difficult to socialise if I didn’t drink tea.  I’ve never found that to be the case.

However, after a few years I did find it easier to accept the occasional cup of tea.  Usually this was to make life just that bit easier, not so much for myself but for my friends, acquaintances and a variety of hosts and hostesses who felt bad about making themselves tea and giving me a nice glass of water even though that’s what I honestly preferred.  My aversion to biscuits and other sweet, cakey things didn’t help the situation either.  Once I had a cup of tea in hand I always felt that simple courtesy mandated I drink the majority of it even if I did spend the entire time wishing it was a nice cup of coffee instead.  That was the way things stayed until around two years ago.  I’d accept the occasional cup of steaming brown liquid, add some milk, no sugar and politely sip at it.  I tried to convert a few people to iced tea on hot summer days.  It didn’t work.  Apparently scalding hot tea is the perfect drink when it’s 80 degrees out, just as it makes complete sense to walk through Hyde park on a sub-freezing winter evening eating an ice cream.  Clearly there are things I still don’t understand.

So what happened?  When did I become the kind of person who wakes up on most mornings, stumbles into the kitchen and makes a pot of tea?  How did it happen that after running a rigorous undergraduate seminar I’d walk through the door looking forward to a nice, strong brew?  The fact is that I simply don’t know.  In part I think my tea habit is the result of me becoming even more of a coffee snob.  I rarely drink coffee outside my own house these days apart from when I visit my mother-in-law.  At her place I can make my own coffee.  The occasional Starbucks beverage is acceptable but insanely over-priced; this applies to a few other chains.  Restaurants, pubs and independent coffee shops serve a completely non-potable drool.  Most people I know only have instant coffee in their homes and they mix it weak.  I’m aware that not everyone likes their coffee strong and that’s fine.  Just because I like it that way it doesn’t mean I think that’s how everyone must drink it.  I just know I’ll likely feel disappointed and possibly ripped-off  if I have a coffee at most places in England.  That being said, no one I know likes watery, corked red wine.  I don’t understand why so many people seem to enjoy watery, stale and sometimes even burnt coffee.

So, these days I often stick with tea outside my home and, increasingly I even make it when I’m at home.  I like my tea brewed strong  (some have suggested it’s too strong) but not stewed.  Though I know what builders tea is I take mine without sugar and just a little milk.  I don’t insist on a nice china cup, nor do I have rules about whether milk can be added to a cup before tea is poured into from a pot.  I have discovered that tea can be refreshing.  It can be enjoyable and even tasty in its own, light way.  After a wet walk in a cold winter rain it can be downright comforting to wrap my hands around a nice hot mug of tea.  Though I swore I never would be I have undoubtedly become a tea drinker.  I’m willing to swallow my snobby pride and admit that I was wrong.  Tea is good and I’ve learned to appreciate it though I hope I don’t ever obsess and fret over it the way I see some people do.  I even managed to write nearly 1500 words inspired by the cuppa I made when I got home from work today.  I don’t have much more to say on the subject at this point, but before I finish off this posting can you guess what the most important lesson I’ve learned from my metamorphosis into a tea-drinker has been?

Nothing beats a truly good cup of coffee.

jelly good morning!

As part of our HUGE website update, we received a load of  new work from our artists.  We’d like to share with you one of Jo Bird’s fantastic illustrations.

A Pint of Prawns (with Mayo) instantly takes me to the seaside… and if you like her sea-food themed illustrations, she has also recreated some fish & chips! You can check out the rest of her artwork on our website: www.jellylondon.com.

Don’t forget tomorrow is Designer Pint Night at Hot Italian. There’s lots of great topics to cover, and we’re excited to do so. We’ll be talking K Street and it’s inherent problems and assets, the railyards, business and how down economies spur innovation. We’ll also be covering some recent developments in the creative sector and future design events in Sacramento, including an Oktoberfest party & Helvetica screening, Pecha-Kucha’s first ever marathon, a gallery show of unbuilt architecture ideas and other cool happenings.

This event is open to any and all creative professionals and those of you who share a passion for the visual arts and creative culture.

Designer Pint Night – Tues. Oct. 13th

Hot Italian

16th & Q St.

7-11pm

Well, dang, if this picture is not all kinds of cute.

What a coincidence; I, too, like butterflies and Batgirl and comics t-shirts, and most of all laying around when I should be doing grown-up shit. Call me! We’ll grab a pint!

Just a quick post. Am going to the Red Lion in half an hour, for a pint or two. It’s the eldests drama night, and the ‘luvvies’ like a drink afterwards. May not get a chance to post again.

Upon a tube journey home after a night out i read this article in the daily rag.

Gazza woke up at 11 an and managed to sink 6 pints in 2o minutes! This is some achievement and was witnessed by a female student he had befriended.

I have analysed this data and graphically translated it into a sophisticated table. This truly puts the achievement into context:

so said the wonderous flann o’brien.  today is being commemorated as “arthur’s day”, as in arthur guinness, the brewer and founder of the guinness brewery at st. james gate in dublin, celebrating it’s 250th year in 2009.  though i’ve become a wee bit of a “beer snob” in my days, and spend most of my drinking time at a brewpub, there’s still nothing that compares to a pint of guinness.  it’s the greatest gift ever given to mankind, me thinks.  indeed.