pumpkinstrokemarrow

I had noticed the other day that brussels sprouts were being discounted at the Kiln Lane Sainsbury's and had been tempted. But today, down the market, I was being offered 2lbs of small brussels sprouts for £1.80 or 10kg for £5. This time I fell for it and spent a happy minute inserting the small sack into the near side pannier. Despite amounting to no more than around 10% of the combined weight of me and the bicycle, they made a difference to the handling, particularly when cornering. I shall report in due course on the percentage that get eaten by humans - I believe that the chickens down the road will eat green vegetables if we get stuck.

Notice that while the French are content to call brussels sprouts brussels sprouts - or at least something fairly close - the Germans to be difficult call them pink cabbages. Or possibly pink coal. Maybe I need a better dictionary.

I can also report that the second jar of blackberry whisky continues to ferment slowly (see September 28th). Should I take a chance and bottle the stuff for fizzy?

And then on another, different, day, being too far gone to actually read the 'Evening Standard', I made a study of the front page instead.

First finding is that, like the 'Sun', there is a generous use of font, my count making it 19 on this one page, although I grant that I count things like bold and normal as different for the purpose of the count. I believe the idea is that having lots of fonts helps make the page look lively and attractive. Cunningly balanced & steadied by use of the same font for the four bits of news, one large and three small. With further steadying given by the three small bits being both arranged in single column and identical in both font and layout.

Second finding is that, out of the roughly 1,000 square centimetres available, nearly 200 had been allocated to the headline. 100 to the advertisement across the bottom of the page. 100 - that is to say all of 10%. Not for nothing are these things called newspapers - to four bits of word news - one 70 and three 10s. 150 to the bit of picture news about the late lamented leader of North Korea. Picture news in the sense that it was news but virtually all the space was given over to two pictures, one large and one small.

The 'Metro', by way of comparison, had, for me anyway, a rather dull look. Lots of fonts, but they went in for sans serif which do not sparkle in the same way. On the other hand, there was more use of colour. In other ways, the structure of the front page was very similar to that of the 'Evening Standard'. So while they did not have the steadying effect of three identical bits of word news, they did have three identical references to stories inside which achieved the same visual end. The big bit of news was about the same size. The headline was about the same size but by being deep rather than wide drew more attention to the amount of space it was burning up. All in all, not as attractive as its rival freebie.