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Below are the most recent 16 friends' journal entries.
| Thursday, January 7th, 2010 | |
freakytrigger
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12:52p |
Chabis & Coolea (cheesy lovers 61 & 62)
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2010/01/chabis-coolea-cheesy-lovers-61-62/ http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16788 Chabis
 A small raw-milk goats cheese, made in Sussex, bought from Neals Yard Dairy.
This is a squat little barrel of cheese. It’s covered with a soft fuzzy white mould on the outside, and is creamy white and crumbly in the middle.
It’s smooth, dense, and sweet, soft and incredibly creamy – much creamier than the average goat cheese, I think. There’s a really subtle fruityness hidden beneath the cream; green apples and a touch of lemon. In the finish there’s a hazelnut sweetness and a very gentle mellow yoghurty tang.
This isn’t a very complicated cheese. It will not pounce on you with its lemony sharpness, or sting your mouth with its prickly moulds. It’s a happy mouthful of mild and creamy goodness – comforting and unalarming and very tasty.
Coolea
 A gouda-style cow’s milk cheese, made in Cork, Ireland, and bought from Neals Yard Dairy
Coolea has a bright fruity orange rind. The cheese itself is orangey-yellow, smooth and nearly opaque, with tiny gaps and flecks.
The rind’s made of wax. I try a bit anyway, because I am a bit stupid very concientious about this cheese-eating lark. It is chewy and waxy and not actually food at all. Oops!
Inside, the cheese is much tastier! It’s dense and very sweet and nutty, with lots of fruit (hi, pineapples!), and a smooth cocoa-like silky dark taste. There are bursts of savoury umami-ish marmitey flavour.
This cheese appears quite innocent - smooth yellow cheese, pretty orange rind - and on the first taste it appears to be fairly restrained; sweet and nutty and mellow. But this develops into a bright zestiness that’s almost spicy, and a mouthwatering savouryness – stronger and more intense than the first bite would have you expect. And delicious!
NEXT WEEK! Cheesy Lover International! I have two smuggled American cheddars to test out. |
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freakytrigger
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7:07a |
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| Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 | |
freakytrigger
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12:55p |
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| Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 | |
freakytrigger
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3:42p |
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freakytrigger
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3:38p |
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freakytrigger
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11:23a |
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| Monday, January 4th, 2010 | |
freakytrigger
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8:47p |
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| Friday, January 1st, 2010 | |
freakytrigger
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8:49p |
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| Thursday, December 31st, 2009 | |
freakytrigger
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10:26p |
DAFT PUNK – “One More Time”
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/daft-punk-one-more-time/ http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16733 (This review, of my favourite song of the decade, was originally written for The Pitchfork 500, which I recommend you own a copy of. Oh, and happy 2010!)
It’s one of the most basic metaphysical questions, phrasable in a hundred different ways – without evil, how can we know what good is? Without darkness, can we truly appreciate light? Without a breakdown, how can we throw our hands in the air when the DJ brings the beat back? Daft Punk’s “One More Time” is therefore more than a French house track with a really, really long middle bit – it’s a philosophical meditation on the nature of human suffering and redemption. Performed by two guys in robot masks.
By the time Daft Punk dropped their second album, Discovery, the French dance scene was dominated by the filter disco sound – woozy disco and funk samples looped over chewy house beats. At its best it was the sound of almost tangible yearning, the release of disco heartbreakingly deferred. At worst it was joyless and lazy. Discovery’s melting pot of cybernetic balladry, soft rock, electro and house was a way out of the filter-disco impasse – but lead single “One More Time”, built on a clipped and phased horn sample, is also a supreme example of the style.
So the message of “One More Time” – let’s defy our exhaustion, let’s keep dancing that little bit longer – is mirrored in its form: pulling out the old tricks for the last time. It’s also reflected in the way guest singer Romanthony’s voice is bent and treated so that he sounds out of breath, fiercely pushing himself on. As long as the beat gives him strength, he and the crowd can keep going. But then the beat stops.
The breakdown in “One More Time” is, as mentioned, very long indeed. Over soft keyboard washes Romanthony pleads in a series of shattered gasps – “Celebrate…don’t wait too late…no…you can’t stop…one more time”. He sounds like he’s praying – it’s a starkly intimate moment.
The power of this song is that it’s a dance track that’s extremely hard to dance to. When the beat collapses, what can you do? You can beg along with Romanthony, look at other dancers, stand with arms outstretched, give up entirely. Whichever you choose you can’t help but feel uncomfortable, physically exposed – Romanthony’s desperate need becomes yours too.
And just as you think – even if you’ve heard the track a hundred times – that maybe the beat won’t return, it does, and with an exultant shout of “One more time!” the party is saved (and so are we). |
| Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 | |
freakytrigger
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5:00p |
The FT Top 25 Pubs of the 00s No 13: Cask
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/the-ft-top-25-pubs-of-the-00s-no-13-cask/ http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16719  Most of the pubs on this top 25 list have offered years’ worth of fond memories, but even so there’s always the chance for new discoveries. You have to sneak them in though sometimes, when your contingent of drinkers has visited the Doric just once too often in recent weeks and the area in question isn’t too difficult to escape from if necessary. Mentioning that you’ve just read about the place on a beer geek’s blog is probably not going to be much help in the matter. And quite apart from straying outside the comfort and convenience of London’s West End, you’re not usually going to be able to entice people to visit an estate pub.
Estate pubs, of course, occupy a special place in pub fandom. Being integrated into the fabric of a residential (often Council-built) estate makes them peculiarly close to the lives of the residents, and often makes for a more cosy and welcoming environment, if always with the danger of a hostile reception for outsiders. You never can quite be sure. Cask, which opened in mid-2009 as a renovation of the old Pimlico Tram, is classic estate pub from the outside: dark and forbidding, squirreled away at the foot of a fairly ugly post-war residential block. However, inside the space has been opened out, with light streaming in from large windows at the right of the pub, the walls painted brightly and decorated with maps, and plentiful cushions lining the benches.
This in itself could be the prelude to some hideous gastro-pretentious makeover (the place is worryingly called “Cask Pub & Kitchen”, and the particular shade of green adorning the walls isn’t exactly comforting), but where Cask excels is in the range and quality of beers they offer. Five handpulls which offer dependable and ever-changing stand-bys like Dark Star ales and the Everard’s Tiger which provided our group sustenance all night on our first visit. Add to this a vast range of German and Belgian bottled beers, and a few ciders, and you’ve got… well, something that’s starting to sound like ad copy, but I’m trying to get across that this is a good pub in the hinterlands of Zone 1.
I use the word “hinterlands” advisedly, as of course it’s not so far from civilisation (aside from the tube station, the pub’s not exactly a stretch of a walk from Victoria), but somehow Pimlico remains a corner of central London which just seems cut off, a quality exploited by Ealing Studios in its 1949 comedy Passport to Pimlico. Perhaps this is due to its primarily residential character (rare enough in central London), or perhaps because it’s physically cut off by the train lines into Victoria, but then perhaps it’s just because those of us who go out drinking can’t reach our homes so easily from there.
Therefore, the fact it shows up on this list is a sign that the pub is getting something right, and it’s why we’ll be finishing up there on our annual pub crawl this year.
(Cask on Fancyapint.) |
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freakytrigger
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7:49a |
The Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl 2009: Das Pimlico Boot
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/the-annual-between-christmas-and-new-year-pub-crawl-2009-das-pimlico-boot/ http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16259 Every year since pubs were invented (nine years by my reckoning), the fine drinkers of Freaky Trigger and ILX have spent the 29th December in a pub. Well, at least seven pubs infact, for the 29th is the date of the Annual Between Christmas and New Year Pub Crawl. Why the 29th? Well it’s the quietest pub day of the year, so we do our bit for the licensed trade and try to bolster their coffers.
Past crawls have taken in the Euston Hexagon, the Mornington Crescent, strange arcane routes across the river and last year a foray into Marylebone. This year we are again pushing further afield, by about half a mile and have settled on the wonderful environs of Pimlico, and its surprisingly large number of estate pubs!
So I give you Das Pimlico Boot (when you see the map it makes sense).
We start at 3pm by Victoria Station: The Kings Arms: http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub1525.php
4pm: Jugged Hare: http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub1521.php
5pm: White Swan: http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub447.php
5:45pm: Morpeth Arms: http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub446.php
6.30pm: The Grosvenor: http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub3547.php
7:15pm: The Pride Of Pimlico: http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub3833.php
Finishing at
8pm: The Cask: http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub3531.php
We will then stay at the Cask til kicking out time, or someone suggests going to another pub to make it eight (I think we eventually made nine in the end last year!) Please come along, and if it is your first time remember this isn’t about drinking (completely) – rather savouring the interesting architecture of London’s pubs. Well, maybe a bit of drinking too.
Facebook event here if you want to invite other people. |
| Monday, December 28th, 2009 | |
freakytrigger
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8:06a |
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| Sunday, December 27th, 2009 | |
freakytrigger
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8:40a |
The Sun Never Sets On The Empire?
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/hooray-for-the-arts-council/ http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16708 A wonderfully atmospheric podcast produced by our own Elisha Sessions form the Hackney Podcast which takes a long look at the history of the Hackney Empire, and tiptoes into its current woes. Eli has written on here in his Hackney Empire New Act Of The Year pieces about the future uncertainty over the operation of the Empire, one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever been in – albeit to see a terrible stage production of The Usual Suspects*. This Hackney Podcast is a great example of “in their own words” history, a relaxed example of reportage without obvious editorialising. I say without obvious editorialising, its clear what the Hackney Elders, regular Hackney Empire goers, think of the current Arts Council initiative there, and I can’t say the comments of the new Chief Executive give much solace. But listen away for a wonderfully atmospheric piece of radio. (As the comment says – though as the comment is from Louis, which is the name of Eli’s 1-year old child I am a touch suspicious).
THE HACKNEY PODCAST: 16
*It was MA research for my dissertation on plays based on films. And my conclusion in this case was IT WAS A BAD IDEA! But at least I got to look at the theatre. |
| Saturday, December 26th, 2009 | |
freakytrigger
|
12:29p |
The FT Top 25 Pubs of the 00s No 14: The Hope
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/12/the-ft-top-25-pubs-of-the-00s-no-14-the-hope/ http://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16703  Anyone who paid attention in GCSE Geography will be aware of the concentric circle model of a town, with the CBD in the centre and the ‘commuter zone’ around the outskirts. Each zone has its own advantages and disadvantages for why people might want to live or work there.
The same model can be tenuously applied to the proximity of pubs to my workplace (situated bang in the middle of pub-saturated Fitzrovia).
A. Less than 2 minutes walk: the pub is so full of colleagues you may as well still be in the office. And they all probably get paid more than you do. The expensive pub is also likely to serve rubbish ale (if any) and will normally have few seats (let alone empty ones) – but its proximity means you can arrive at 12.01pm and nab the booth in the corner. It will have patio heaters on the pavement outside.
B. 2-7 minutes walk: irritating colleagues may be avoided with careful planning, although this often involves conspiring with trusted team members who will then angle to join you for a pint or three. Seats generally available if you arrive before 12.30pm but watch out! Is that the executive director of marketing sat over there in the corner?
C. 8-20 minutes walk: likelihood of colleagues interrupting your lunchtime rant about the uselessness of all spreadsheets is low. However the window of drinking time is drastically reduced, especially factoring in the inevitable post-booze drop-off of Powerpoint Enthusiasm which can make the walk back very slow indeed.
D. Public transport necessary: For obvious reasons this sector must be visited for post-work drinks only. Thankfully the target pub has a zero probability of colleague attendance and it is safe to start moaning about ridiculous HR initiatives.
E. More than 40 minutes on public transport: this will be the Wetherspoons near your parents’ house.
It’s fairly easy to deduce that the ideal lunchtime pub zone lies on the boundary of B and C, and I am lucky enough to have a proper Escape Pub 7.5 minutes from my desk. Tucked away behind Goodge Street station, The Hope has served me countless medicinal G&Ts, soothing pints of Tim Taylor’s and highly necessary Sausages of the Week. It has seen me change out of my (unsuccessful) interview suit in the loo and provided a sane environment to catch an hour of the French Open. Most importantly there’s a massive clock behind the bar that tells me when it’s 1.52pm and time to drink up.
As the Hope has been my default ARGH WERK NOES pub for the last four years, I am genuinely saddened that it has suffered from a run of bad luck of late (through no real fault of the owners). One autumn evening this year we arrived to find the only beer available was cooking lager and bottles from the fridge. Even the Guinness was off! I hope The Hope will sort itself out in 2010. |
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freakytrigger
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8:44a |
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| Thursday, December 24th, 2009 | |
freakytrigger
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7:30p |
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What’s this through the extra-large double-door of the 24th?