Sunday, October 17, 2010
Alcohol from more than one country
Started off with some heavy lifting version of Abbot Ale from Tooting Wetherspoons which came in at 6.5% by volume. Quite a pleasant beer but far too strong from session boozing. More suitable for the armchair boozer, quaffing the odd pint over some history programme on BBC2. Maybe I should write to Mr. Wetherspoon and ask him to return to the early purity of his pubs when they sold good quality regular beer, instead of the odd-ball stuff they seem to specialise in now. Maybe the market for real beer is shrinking again and he is being advised by consultants from PWC or somewhere to go in for oddities to try and puff it up again. Desperate measures.
Then moved onto something called Aguadente de Medronho from the Algarve which came in at 48.5% by volume. Not bad at all, although as usual with spirits, once the bottle is opened (something which proved rather challenging. Interesting plastic contraption inside the top of the neck of the bottle. Maybe there is some special second contraption required to break into the first contraption, not supplied with the bottle), it went down fairly quickly. Now one third full. BH accounted for perhaps one sixth. We had thought that aquadente was Portuguese for tooth water but investigation reveals that it really means fire water - ardent for fiery rather than dente for dental - and made out of the fruit of the strawberry tree, an important member of the heather family.
Prompted by all this alcohol to two thoughts. First, a number of the plays of Shakespeare which I know about deal with the problems of succession to power. Julius Caesar, Richard 2, Henry 4p2, Lear. Macbeth, Antony & Cleopatra and Hamlet after a fashion. A topic clearly close to the heart of the gentry and others in early modern England, fairly fresh from the rigours of the Wars of the Roses. But nevertheless impressive that it was possible to talk about such things out loud, albeit in a veiled, parabolic form. Perhaps part of the story whereby after a lurch to the right (Charles 1) and a lurch to the left (Commonwealth), we Brits were early on the road to modern forms of government and succession.
Second, a division of people into two types. In the first type, exemplified by some authorities by D H Lawrence in particular and women in general, thinking is done by the various organs below the nose. The thoughts are primary, free standing and true. There is no need for any justification, connection or consistency. A and B are clearly both true, despite the fact that any attempt to bring the two together results in a contradiction. Which can lead one into odd places. In the second type, exemplified by some authorities by men and the French, thinking is done by that large organ behind the nose. Thoughts have to exist in a connected, logical world. Thoughts have to be consistent, one with another. Thoughts can be propagated by logic from the inner world, without regard to the outer world or common sense. Which can also lead one into odd places.
Perhaps a day off the fire water is indicated.
PS: either the PC or something connected still very creaky. Has the fire water got into an unsuitable place?
# posted by Jim @ 3:53 AM 
