Jean-Paul Sartre was very intelligent but he was far from wise. For example, like many French, he thought life was a serious matter and wasted barrels of ink trying to prove and explain it. A throughly silly task worthy of the French.

Merry Christmas!

its not christmas yet.

happy new year. doesnt that sound sillly.

I think I've got ASD. I'm scrupulously fair and polite with people, but only because if they're unreasonable then I get to spend no more time with them than is necessary. Yes, it's all making sense now.

I was fortunate enough to have the Xmas I wanted to have. I have been hosting it for ten years and am closing in on perfection. Others think I can cook, but I know I can't. I can serve food that is nice to eat, but I have little understanding of how flavours work together, and seem unable to make a good sauce or gravy. My strength as a cook, however, is in the preparation, and all that involves.

Like Ray Zee says, thanks for being here on my blog. Happy 2020.

Happy New Year. 2020 will be Grand.

your good to have around charlie. thanks for being here.

New regime. Don't leave it all to the weekend. I do enough for the day, but get caught up in Highgate. Two girls get in. Phenomenal genes. Hillview? Never heard of it. They'll direct me. It's a private road. An extensive private estate I was unaware existed. A sterile, dreamlike utopia. Perfect view of London. And I am one for a good view. Parliament Hill nearby, Primrose Hill, Greenwich Park are the classics. I prefer the obscure factor. Dartmouth Park nearby has a good view, as do Blythe Hill fields and Pollards Hill in south London, for the purists. But Hillview has a very good angle.

so you gave them your card and told them to call you sometime if they wanted a tour or someone to hang around with that was fun and enjoyable. oh wait that is what i should tell dave to do.

Dave's younger than me.

It's the middle of the night. I can't tell if my body clock is in synch or way out of it. That's freedom for you.

The roads are nice and empty in January. I like it when you can drive. A young, hippy couple get in at Euston. Or maybe brother and sister. Either way, she's fatigued. Elsworthy Road. A useful road, consequently full of speed bumps, and also private security. Vigilantism. Okay... is that the Primrose Hill Road end, or Avenue Road? They'll probably come to understand the fine-tuning.

“Hippy couple “???!!! You still have hippies in London. Has the meaning changed from bygone Day’s of Yore, known as The Sixties? Or are these the young retrograde hippies of which I have seen a few.

Well they had long, unkempt hair, were dressed scruffily, and may have been wearing headbands. What more do you want? Emmett Grogan running around shouting Ringolevio, One, Two, Three!?

I want LSD handed out free to any takers on every street corner in London.

its caught, caught, caught.

You've already had enough, son. Time to go home.

I had neither Kith nor Kin in England, and was therefore as free as air - or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (quote from a Sherlock Holmes Story; Dr Watson speaking)

Free LSD to the Rabble of London will help to alleviate the constant depressing drag on the populace that living in a cesspool causes. A few pints of Beer just ain't enough.

The sort of piss you drink certainly won't be enough. A few pints of Abbot, however, always does the trick.

.Abbot_beer/profile/

It is a Pale Ale and only 5% ABV. A Girly Drink. American IPA's taste so much better and pack a better punch. Hell, our Pale Ales are just as good if not better than the sewer scum sucked up by the London Rabble.

Limey go home.

zeno cant pick the right place to drink worth a dam. but dont underestimate his choice of beer. it is quite good.

Your puny Yank pint sizes are an abomination to beer drinkers (473ml vs 568ml google tells me), and it was only recently you lot stopped boasting about how great your piss weak lagers like Bud are lol.

You aren't and never have been a nation of beer drinkers, Johnny come lately.

we dont do the metric system for measuring the size of a beer. no need for us to cave in to what europe wants to do. and who drinks anything in milliliters any how.

Missing the obvious point that the ml here is serving as a comparative measure because fl oz are also different in the US duh.

Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, there has been a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop opposite his house in Baker Street for at least the past 35 years. I have never tried it, but keep meaning to do so. Curiously, there are very few other branches in London, yet this is the biggest ice cream chain on the planet. It's a mystery...

probably because they have corn syrup instead of sugar to cut costs in their ice cream.
it seems its a dying franchise the way they run it. read the ingredients in any ice cream before you eat it. it should only have milk, sugar, cream, and sometimes eggs. you shouldnt have to eat a mix of chemicals in ice cream because they want to save money or have it last for months in the freezer before they sell it to you.

I've been reading about corn syrup. Good hypothesis IMO.

I finally watched the Sherlock series on BBC iplayer recently. It's very childish, of course. You can get on the internet a three-hour tour of the locations in a genuine, iconic London black cab for £300, or more. Three hundred pounds? What kind of monster tourist pays that? I'm in the wrong game.

There used to be one on the Finchley Rd in the stretch between the tube and Frognal station, when I was a teenager living around the corner.

It is fructose (sugar) and glucose (sugar). It doesn't have any magical properties other than being slightly sweeter than sucrose (sugar). If you eat corn, you turn it into fructose and glucose.

There are upwards of 38 people who actively avoid high fructose corn syrup while still eating sucrose (and strangely fruit - a major source of fructose), but the economic impact on companies that use the syrup is even more limited than you'd think.