POUND A PINT..

Not quite.. but almost.

This week it was announced that a Pound Pub would be launching in Stockton on Tees. What's more, this is not a local barmy businessman's idea. It is a test for a potential national chain.

If the venture gets the go ahead, beer would be priced at not quite a pound a pint but £1.50. A half a pint will cost you the £1 coin. However, at £1.50 a pint this is still half the local average price.

The beer will not be watered down. It will not be thrown at you by a rude barman. Neither will it come in a chipped glass or plastic beaker. The pub is achieving this price point by taking away expensive and peripheral benefits – live football matches on big flat screens, for example.

The target for the pub is the kind of people who used to go to working men’s clubs, in other words, regular people who just want a low cost pint and a good chat on a pub stool and nothing more. I expect this pub experience will be good, it will be made by the people. It will be no frills and low cost, but it will not be a negative or poor experience. If it is, it won’t survive. Especially in Stockton on Tees!

“At a time when 12 pubs a week are closing across the country we have to think outside the box a bit,” said Mike Wardell, a director of Here for Your Hospitality Limited behind the idea.

Good luck to them I say. At least they're trying to do something with a fairly run down town centre that nobody else is interested in investing in (or creating jobs for local people in).

Objectors will no doubt carry on shopping at their local supermarket and buying at around 60p a pint whilst harping on about cheap alcohol ruins lives.. Think people, think.
  

NEW GRAPHICS...

This week we are excited at 'Polonsky Towers' as we have launched a new Infographics business (@ewinfographics if you want to follow us on twitter).

Therefore, I thought I'd keep the blog posting light and simply put up a link to an infoG (I am getting tired of typing that long word already?!) about a subject that means something to me - hailing from the land of Fish and Chips as I do...

So, without further ado (click the graphic to go to the original large scale version)...

by Wildyles

east west infographics also has a pinterest board if you want to follow us.
Here's the link.

Expect more along the same theme very soon.

POLKO'S BOWL...

...is full of Oreo's this week (and has been for a few days).  Amazingly not depleted by mini-me being here for the last few days. Think he forgot about them!

Nothing much more than that on this blog update..

..check my recent posts for something slightly more interesting.

P

YOU SAY YOGURT, WE SAY YOGHURT...

Not many people worry about the milk that their yoghurts (yogurts if you're American!?) are made from. But a few have issues with dairy products, and some even soya that is the usual substitute.

Now there's a second alternative. And I must say it sounds delicious..

Co Yo?? I hear you say.. Heaven in a mouthful??

Co Yo is a new Coconut Milk Yoghurt. The only non-dairy, non-soya yoghurt available in Europe at present. They are made with freshly squeezed cream from the white flesh of the coconut, thus provide big health benefits.  With no added sugar, preservatives or additives, Co Yo contains 150 calories per 100g and 0g sugar.

Co Yo has already won  a Natural & Organic Food Awards 2012 category for ‘Best Special New Diet Product’.

It is taking on fast, though a little expensive at the moment.

The official launch website is here. Current stockist map here.  I've searched but can't find it in any online shop selling to the UK at the moment.

I can't wait for the soon to be launched Coconut Milk Ice Cream either!

Enjoy.

CHOCOLATE MICE..

Two important news items almost slipped me by this month.

Chocolate is good for you. We all know that already - it releases feelgood chemicals in the brain and makes life happier, not counting the benefits of sharing chocolates with your friends which it turns out builds up social capital and goodwill - note to friends: I will love you more if you share with me!

A recent research study exercised mice and measured their fitness levels.  A control group were fed small chunks of dark chocolate over the same period and they appeared to have the same if not better levels of fitness as the runners. Here's the link if you don't believe me.. onlinelibrary

Don't get too excited though, a second run of the experiment was undertaken on middle aged mice and the group that ran and had chocolate too did better than the couch-mice who sat around all day (well, I say sit.. but that's quite hard for a mouse to do properly? more like lay around) eating chocolate.

The second is the not so surprising revelation that Cadbury's, purveyors of fine boxes of chocolates that have seen me through many a stressful report writing time, is reducing the number of chocolates in the tin just ahead of the busy Christmas buying period..

No real surprise given the continual reducing size of various chocolate bars over the past years (and don't get me started on cakes!!!  see my December 2010 blog on that one here), but I bet they won't reduce the size of the tin they come in. Oh no. How many people are going to be duped into buying what they think are the same number of chocolates?

You know who I think the real culprits are? The stores that continually offer tins of chocolates as loss leaders to draw people in - stacks and stacks of them greeted me last time I walked into Tesco at 'half price' allegedly.  Who would pay £10 for a tin? And our local Co-op never seems to have an end to the 2 for £8 offers on Roses tins?  If the stores are offering the discounted product, then you can bet they have been squeezing the manufacturer on cost.  The manufacturer is then only able to maintain their required profits by doing two things.

The first is to substitute cheaper raw materials into the mix - not something advised in the UK chocolate market which is dominated by only a few brands and where any reduction in quality, if perceived by the customer, would lead to mass switching of brand loyalty and significant pain to the business.

The second option open to manufacturers is to reduce the number of chocolates in the tins.  This latest reduction sees Roses down to 1 lb 14 oz from 2 lb 2 oz.  That's a reduction from 964g to 850g for metric-heads.  Equivalent to an 11.8% reduction.  Not a small graudal amount in anybody's book???  Cadbury's Heroes - always and unexplainedly a slightly more expensive purchase for a less luxurious set of chocolates I think you'd agree? - go down from 936g to 794g, a whopping reduction of 15.2%...

Not much we can do about it - except switch brand or get wise and stop buying the Heroes on rational economics grounds. Cadbury's Roses were always my favourite anyhow.
 

PARIS...

..and so 7 July sees me travelling back to Paris, a sort of delayed business trip, re-arranged from a meeting in a bland glass office at Brussels airport to a much more likeable location, and an excuse for me and my partner in crime/life and all other things to spend a few days in a warmer city than our windy Yorkshire farmhouse..

I have been doing my fair share of last minute reading up on the latest clubs and restaurants etc on the web and this struck me as a great new site being developed by a load of freelance bloggers:
http://www.breakintoparis.com

It carried an article about Paris coffee shops/patissieres that was very interesting and carried the unforgetable and wholly agreeable line.. " Regardless of your reasoning, please, do not go to Starbucks! Like hooking up with an ex, you will regret it! And if you don’t, you should."

and so, to Paris.. a tout a l'heure....

CUCUMBERS... (AGAIN)

It has been a while since I substantially blogged.  So, I thought I'd return to one of my favourite pet/hate topics. Cucumbers.

They have been in the news recently due to the possible link between cucumbers and the European E.Coli outbreak which appeared to start in Germany.  The German authorities very quickly centred on cucumbers as being the culprits.  In error as it happens, but not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. Any adverse publicity for the slimey green things the better I say!

Cucumbers. Blood pathogens. Bean sprouts.  Who would have thought it?

Well, actually, much as I'd like to condemn all cucumbers to the untimely death they received when discarded and shredded recently (see pictures), in the final event they were not to blame. boo!

The E.coli outbreak in Germany during May 2011 was actually caused by the humble bean sprout.  Well, technically this isn't true either.  The outbreak was most lilkely caused by poor hand hygiene.

Somebody that had a virulent strain of E.coli after eating bean sprouts failed to wash their hands sufficiently and prepared food for others which then became the carrier for the spread of the outbreak.  3,000 people were affected but not all 3,000 ate the originally contaminated bean sprouts, so humans largely had themselves to blame.  A common cause of mankind's problems I think?

So, onto E.coli itself.  A magnificent all-conquering bacteria in many ways..

Escherichia coli is named after Theodor Escherich who first identified the bacteria in 1885.

E.coli falls in the family 'Enterobacteria', which means that they live and thrive in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals. Human babies are born without these bacteria but tests have shown that they populate the human intestines in less than 2 days of being born, passed to the child in water and foodstuffs.  When we say 'a' bacteria this is technically wrong.  E.coli bacteria come in very many flavours (though I wouldn't advise you tasting any of them for obvious reasons!).

The most feared strain of E.coli is called strain 0157. This produces the Shiga toxin, released locally in the gut to damage the cells that line the intestine. 0157 has been responsible for some very large outbreaks of food poisoning all over the world in the last decade, involving hundreds of thousands of people. This is the strain at the centre of the German outbreak.

E.coli are not all bad.  We have them in our guts to help with the balance of digestive enzymes and, somewhat ironically, to protect us from other pathogenic bacteria. Only some, thankfully quite rare, strains of the bacteria cause damage to humans and other warm blooded animals.

There are 5 main 'nasty types' of E.coli, all produce the runs (diarrhea) of some form or another. Some cause only mild diarrhea (with or without fever), others diarrhea with potentially lethal damage to kidneys or the urinary system.  Two types are exclusive to humans only; enteroinvasive E.coli and enteroaggregative E.coli.  The most common form, enterotoxigenic E.coli (ETEC) causes more than 200 million cases of diarrhea and 380,000 deaths a year, mostly in children in developing countries and travellers.

For me the most interesting points about E.coli infections relate to their genetic characteristics.  E.coli bacteria per se are not bad.  As above, they live in our bodies and help us.  The nasty strains are bad because they have taken on parts of DNA from other bacterium.  They acquire extra genes and these genes code for toxins or proteins which turn the useful E.coli bad in the same way as you should never allow a Gremlin out in the daytime.

Another genetic trait is once turned bad, the bad strains of the bacteria not only 'give birth' to more nasty bacteria (the usual route through which say a virus or other infection spreads) but they can also pass on their genetic code horizontally across an existing population of otherwise harmless bacteria (through the same process that turned them bad in the first place). This is known as bacterial conjugation or transformation.  Once a few get into your system, they turn the existing population against you as well as multiply their own. Nasty!

So, a few pictures?  They are quite beautiful in their own micro-biological way..

Pretty huh?

So, what of the German outbreak?  After back-tracking on their cucumber story, German health officials say a woman working in a kitchen of a catering company near Frankfurt became infected with the bacterium after eating bean sprouts and then passed it on to 20 people she prepared food for. These 20 people passed it on in turn.

 
Cases began appearing at the start of May 2011 and the outbreak swelled to crisis level over the next three weeks causing 39 deaths and affecting almost 3,000 people.  The city of Hamburg became the outbreak epicentre.

Now, PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS!
    

MR KIPLING BAKES EXCEEDINGLY SMALL CAKES..

 
Take a look at the picture below.

Nothing wrong with that you say?

Well there is actually.  This is a Kipling's Bakewell Slice.  Bought in the past few weeks and sitting there on the plate ready to eat.  The texture and taste were as good as ever.

However, I've been eating these same cakes since the mid-1980s and as soon as I got it out of the packet and put it on the plate I noticed just how small they've become.  Box in hand in the store you wouldn't suspect it.  But as soon as you place the cake relaitve to another object that you've had a while you get a reference point - and it becomes immediately obvious Mr Kipling is trying to take me for a ride.

This is not limited to Mr Kipling of course.

Have you seen the size of those Cafe Nerro cheesecake slices lately?  And they still want you to part with near enough the same money it would cost for a much more nutritious and filling main course in a reasonable restaurant for a slice and a mug full of coffee dressed up as something exotic and Italian.  Again, don't get me wrong I love a slice of cheesecake and a Mocha as much as the next person in the Costa queue but how much? and where did the cake go?

The same story goes for crisps and chocolate bars too!  Mr Walker (US readers substitute Mr Lays) and Mr Nestle are taking everybody for fools.  And the sad thing is we're falling for it.

As an example here's the same cake, Photoshop'd and made 124% thicker, broader and longer (my estimate - looks about right).  See how it sits on the plate like you used to remember it doing in the 80s?  Now that I don't mind paying for.

As someone who was here at the weekend noted these cakes have gone from Bakewell Slice to Bakewell Slither (thanks Laura).

I'll be baking my own from now on.
 

BANG!

 

The picture says it all.

We had a free pie this weekend, courtesy of a bag full of Blackberries
from around and about these parts and a box of apples from a friends
tree at their stables.

And with pie must come custard!

But it got me to thinking about the explosive nature of custard.

Well, not the custard so much as the cornflour in it that thickens the custard
on heating.  Like any fine sifted flour it has ignitive properties.

If you have a flour mill anywhere near you try getting close enough to take a peek.
You'll find warning signs all over the place and a massive earthing strap around the
building to stop any build up of static electricity inside.  Contractors that get called to
work inside the buildings are specially vetted and have to use special tools that
won't spark (plastic or rubber covered spanners and hammers etc - same as in
an oil refinery).

Just imagine the bang from one of these 3Kg commercial custard bags emptied
into a large steel drum!? Now there's a thought for another weekend's experiments!

                          Weird but true!

 

POLKO'S BOWL...

  

...is currently empty?????

Q: Any ideas for a filling anyone?

 

FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD!

  
Mrs Polko and I are on a Big Cat hunt at the moment.  Originally it was going to extend to a 100 mile perimeter of our house, but seems to be extending itself into a national hunt..

..more on that later, but whilst on said hunt we stumbled across a great place yesterday.  We were in the North East, or at least on its border with North Yorkshire.  The Cleveland hills as a backdrop and lush green livestock farmlands mixed with a little arable as far as the eye could see.

We had just finished looking at a cat (not to our liking as it needed too much spending on its cosmetic appearance for our money) when we asked about local pubs for food.  We were 90 minutes away from home and it was 19:30 so thought it best to eat there.

The guy who had shown us around mentioned a place in Potto called the Dog and Gun Inn.  Sounded good so we drove the 3 miles and came to a rest outside a very well kept village (famous for being the home of Prestons of Potto, a large haulage firm you often spot on the motorways - another reason we wanted to go and see it!).

Walking in we were taken aback as we could just as easily have entered the Malmaison Bistro in Liverpool (where we enjoyed lunch a few weeks before). All modern lines, browns and greys on the wall and dark brown leather everywhere. Mid priced food but clearly with a nod in the direction of providing interesting combinations and unusual meats.  More city centre than North Yorkshire Moors!

I opted for Duck Two Ways.. a confit of leg and a fillet of breast with the sweetest red cabbage.  Not to be outdone Mrs Polko opted for Pork done Three Ways..  again a confit of shoulder pork which was soft and gorgeous, a nice crispy braised slice of Belly Pork and sauteed loin (which I thought would have been improved by being a pork roule with forest mushrooms or pesto etc - a Polko special recipe!).  The specials board was awash (ha ha!) with fish options and there was a good selection of vegetarian filo parcels or pasta based dishes.

I also had a blueberry and maple syrup cheesecake to end that was a very different taste to any cheesecake I've ever had before.  They even served my espresso with a separate shot glass of water too. 10 out of 10 for attention to detail.

It would have been reasonable if it hadn't been for Mrs Polko getting a taste for the house wine! so out of a £55 bill in total £40 was for the food.

They have bedrooms that again look more akin to Malmaison than the rural idyll it was located in, if not better than your average Mal room. Nice clean toilets with automatic lights and sensors galore. Very tasteful. No gimmicks.

Well recommended if you're passing and worth a slight detour off the A1(M) or the A19 if you find yourself in the vicinity.

Shame we didn't like the cat, but spotted another one in the car park as we left.  We'll be back some day I'm sure.

COUNT THOSE CALORIES...

Once upon a time in New York.. a few restaurants started to publish calorie counts on their menus.  This trend started slow but grew and grew.  Until one day people in New York woke up to notice that they couldn't avoid calorie counts here, there and everywhere..

And one day a politician woke up somewhere in New York State thinking, this is a good wheeze to get me noticed.  He huffed and he puffed, and he pushed and he pushed until some months later (it must be said under heavy attack from the powers that run America's large fast food chains!) a new Healthcare Bill has been passed and now proudly shows off Barack Obama's signature on the bottom since Tuesday.

A central component of the new law is the concept of calorie count disclosure - chain restaurants with more than 20 locations will now have to place (prominently) the calorie content of an item alongside its price.  This is estimated to affect over 200,000 locations in North America.  Vending machines will also have to comply.

Rationale: increased information flows to consumers who can now make better decisions based on the true cost of their consumption (ignoring for now the hidden environmental cost of ripping up agricultural lands or forests to feed cattle for burgers or plant more coffee beans - that's another story that I'll get to one day perhaps).  Information to hand at the point of consumption notice, not posted down some dark hallway, on a hamburger wrapper once you've bought it or on the company website.

Result? Well, on first glance this has to be applauded. As an economist more information is good in my book whatever and whichever market we're talking about.  But, when you start to think this through isn't it just passing the buck from a legitimate government job of informing and educating to the companies and their consumers.  This last group are critical too.  All data (from the Western world at least) display a clear correlation between higher obesity rates and lower socio-economic classes of society.  Seems clear.  Let's help exactly those people who are suffering from a lack of education about what is good or bad for their health?  But, it strikes me it's not so simple.  A simple calorie count isn't going to do much for somebody who can't put the calorie count in perspective, 500 calories? but 500 calories out of what daily allowance for me?  And I'm not going on to the seemingly large body (!) of people who seem to take pride in going against official advice in the first place.

Of course calorific intake is also more complex than a simple counting of numbers.  500 calories in a fat-laden burger does not equal 500 calories in a suger-laden drink. I'm sure any dentist would agree.  So, in my book good labeling needs to reflect this not ignore it.

What we are really talking about here is moulding human behavior.  Making people change.  That is a tough thing to do - especially when it goes against self-interest - much, much tougher than we think. Unless a nudge has a shove attached (and calorie counts on their own don't) most people will remain unmoved.

The other sticky point is of course implementation.  Under the Bill the FDA now have 12 months to come up with the national standard for labeling but there is no mention of a final deadline for restaurant compliance. Through my experience advising government on environmental policy design in the early 90s I've seen this problem a good few times.  Politicians love new legislation that sets out the plan.  Something to get them a few column inches, a photo in a paper and a shot at a radio interview.  Trouble is once the moment has passed the hard work begins and the politician is fixated on the next vote winner with little or no come back if their last conquest and victory lays on a shelf somewhere.  Some of the work I got involved with in the 90s is just about coming round again now in 2010!  Time lags make any benefits that much harder to achieve whether we're talking about the environment or people's health.

Expect some very dragged heels - especially from companies with much yellow and red in their logos where a regular size drink can contribute 50% or more of an adults daily recommended calorific intake or from the insane grinning man with glasses and a white beard...

Count the calories?  Count the consultant lobby firms more like!

As a funny aside, Vice President Biden and Barack Obama staged a TV handshaking session on Tuesday (see, happy to take the limelight now, where will they be in a year's time if the FDA fail to hit the deadline?). Biden was heard to say to the President right at the end of the national TV slot, "this is a big fucking deal!"  It's nice to have real people in top slots.

7 REASONS WHY CUCUMBERS SUCK..

Mark my words, this funky cucumber will not be smiling by the time I'm finished with him...

1. First has got to be the smell. That rank greener than green, so called fresh smell - and before you start saying they don't really smell of much, you're wrong, they do smell and the smell is a strong one. Alright.  So, smell is my number 1 gripe with these vegetalia.

2. On a culinary basis, what are they actually good for beyond decoration material? How many cucumber goulash recipes do you see?  How many curries have cucumber at their heart?  Ever had cucumber in bread instead of walnuts or tasty seeds?  No, I didn't think so.  And what's more, they're not even a great item to decorate with!

Here this chef has ingeniously tried to make the cucumber more interesting

by boring a hole in it before reverting to that age old tradition of slicing
And it still looks naff...

3. Linked to the last reason is the consistency of cucumber.  What is it? Liquid or solid?  I've scoured the web's scientific resources only to draw a blank. Mush is my conclusion. Pure mush in the mouth.  Ask yourself, why would you want to introduce such a sensation to your mouth's most wondrously subtle taste buds?

4. The third reason is probably the source of most people's disliking to the bumpy green things. Anyone over a certain age (I'd say around 30 or so) only has childhood memories of salads as cucumbers cut in thin slices and served with putrid one-variety lettuce (whose latin name is probably boringa non-tasti lettuca) with a few tomatoes sliced in the same way on a plate.  Anyone younger than that age will tell you quite plainly, THAT'S NOT A SALAD!!  And so my childhood memories of thoroughly crap salad have been compounded and my anger clearly focused on the cucumber element. I HATE THEM!

Yet more thinly sliced bundles of puke. This time cleverly mixed with lumps of tomato
and called a Cucumato Salad! (exclamation mark part of the recipe, not my addition)
Doesn't it look delicious?

5. Beyond their near-uselessness, foul consistency and tendency to (still) crop up as thin slices in a poor excuse for a salad at small sandwich bars, local pubs serving "traditional home made food", your grandma's Sunday tea and any other place that hasn't dragged itself into the 21st century of culinaria (at least Grandma has an excuse, she smells worse than the f'ing cucumber), they taste odd.  Not odd in the "mmm... interesting, I'll have another try" way, just odd in the "get that thing as far away from me as possible" way.

6. In these days of children running amock with knives stabbing their way through half the High School population (what was that? you say you don't believe the stories in the NOTW or The Sun?) one must also consider the worth of anything in your house for home security purposes.  Here the cucumber truly sucks.  Try hitting something with one.  In a personal combat situation they snap all too easily for my liking.

7. The latin name is Cucumis Sativus.  Whoever heard of such a stupid name.  Moreover, in other European languages it's nothing sexy either, limited to variants of concombre or gurke basically. Even the Germans, who have a habit of making some crazy long-winded, difficult to pronounce words out of foodstuffs, simply use the boring gurke. Just boring.

[STOP PRESS: I may have found one use for the cucumber. I play a lot of Scrabble and the letters that make up cucumber add to a reasonable 16-point score - more on a double/triple letter/word place obviously.  Not the best of eight letter scores but pretty good for a vegetable. I will give it that at least]

However, in summary...

DEATH TO ALL CUCUMBERS!

POLKO'S BOWL...

is having a Flakey old time at the moment!

but I'm sure they won't last long after the next weekend is upon us!

POLKO'S BOWL...

...is full to the brim and positively overflowing with Goose Island Root Beer. Mmmmmmmmmm!

Available from the excellent No Alcohol Shop in Manchester or online

POLKO'S BOWL...

..is full of..

avid folllowers of my blog (anyone?) know that this headline tends to crop up randomly when my favourite glass bowl standing on the dining room side cabinet gets filled with something nice.. always food, usually chocolate.

So.. Polko's bowl is currently full of Creme Eggs.

Not for the first time I hear you shout!

No.

But this time the picture is accompanied by this great video that I have been directed to at youtube.  Enjoy!

CREME CHEESE EGGS..

Story of the week for me has to be the Kraft takeover of Cadbury's to yield the world's largest confectioner (behind Willy Wonka of course!).

Question: Will Creme Eggs ever be the same again?

Given that Kraft's processed cheese business is the largest in the world (by a long way) I do hope they don't start stuffing gloopy cheese into those eggs in place of the sweeter delicacy of sugary filling that graces them at present! I'd give it a go, but only once I think?

Some of the objections in the UK appear to revolve around the fact that a social institution such as Cadbury's - large Victorian family, built a village around their factory, invested in a lot of social infrastructure, etc etc - should be eaten up by a US mega-corporation. Like it doesn't happen every week of the year? But this time it's personal - a very large % of the UK population have been brought up on Cadbury's products and there will always be resistance to change. Think Marathon's re-branding to Snickers (possibly a bad example?) or the takeover of another staple Victorian social institiution Rowntree by Nestle..

Perhaps more worrying for those who have part of their pension pot stuffed into Creme Eggs, Dairy Milk and drinking chocolate (that'd be nice!) is the fact that Cadbury's largest shareholder, the billionaire and clearly exceedingly wise investor Warren Buffet, thinks it's a bad idea...

The takeover is going ahead at a 500p per share cash payment plus shares in Kraft which bring the valuation to 840p per share (up from an original approach by Kraft of 770p). Looks ok given that in the last year Cadbury shares have traded between 486.50 and 836.50 per share.

But, and it's a big BUT! At the same time, Kraft Foods rating has been severely downgraded to the lowest investment grade BBB- because they are not buying Cadbury with their own money (which they do not have enough of.. sound familiar?) but with leveraged finance (posh word for approximately $11 billion of debt!) and Kraft stocks which are at poor value.

Will they get away with it? Only time will tell.

On a lighter note if you take a look at the portfolio of Kraft and Cadbury products and mash them up a little, the possibiltiies are endless and mind-boggling..

Cadbury already own; Green & Black's organic chocolate, Maynards, Bassett's licorice, Fry's, Trebor, Trident in addition to their staples Curly Wurly, Dairy Milk, Creme Eggs, Crunchie, Cluster Bars, Flake, Double Decker, Wispa, Twirl, Fudge and on and on

Kraft own; Nabisco, Maxwell House, Oreo's, Milka Products, Philadelphia cheese, Oscar Mayer (cold meat products/hot dogs etc), Vegemite, Peek Freans (Bourbon and Garibaldi biscuits etc)..

Licorice Allsorts with Philadelphia creme cheese filling?
Extra Strong Mint Creme Egg anyone?
Hot Dog flavoured Dairy Milk?
Vegemite Green & Black's?

POLKO'S BOWL...

...is full of Fudge

A DAY IN THE LIFE..

Thought I'd do something slightly different today. The blog will grow by the hour (or thereabouts) as I step through today, a Wednesday, a pretty typical middle of the week day looking forward. So, here's a day in the life of.. Polko. Much for my own benefit as anybody else's. I am pretty lucky as I live in a great, quiet place, work from home with only the odd trip out to see my clients and - thanks to the global financial crisis - have a little more time on my hands than usual (given that a lot of what I do relies on the property market and funding).

08:35. Polko's cat has had his tablets, squeezed in tuna so he definitely takes them. Mrs Polko is outside letting our chickens out to free range, probably getting attacked by our cockerel who, given it is Spring, has become a bit of a nutter again. Breakfast at desk = vanilla coffee and cinnamon and raisin muffin. I may go back for a bowl of cereals. BBC News website to check how many more people have died from flu overnight (see last post!) and read about Brown & Co's latest stunt - every home in the UK to receive a leaflet about how to cut down the risk of contracting flu? hmmm. One thing did catch my eye on the news given that most holiday companies and regular airlines are being sensible and cancelling flights, etc.. British Airways, which has four flights a week to Mexico City, said it would not be cancelling any flights. Very sensible.

11:00. Started a new job file for a contract won yesterday. Responded to a few emails, most importantly to a good friend in Hungary who thinks the flu issue may have a more sinister raison d'etre - maybe just maybe the virus or at least the advice to stop international travel is related to the fact that those in power (who have recently been pocketing millions if not billions of dollars of government financial sector handouts... where has that money gone?) don't want us bumping into them as they wander the globe spending their not so hard earned new fortunes... Maybe?

Surfed the web for a new bathroom radiator - dark metal tubular model that has varied in price between £505 and £395 delivered, illustrating the power of the web to grab a keen price. Then surfed to www.edmistoncompany.com to gaze at the yachts that are still being bought, presumably by those in receipt of aforementioned government money. Another coffee just appeared on my desk, with a Pecan pastry courtesy of Mrs Polko. Nice.


12:30. Few games on Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare (of course). Skimmed the UK Inward Investment 2007/08 report from UKTI. Riveting. Not riveting as in engineering wise, just an interesting read. Honest. Filled out my 5 Best Rap albums on a facebook app - very hard to pick only 5 of anything but listed 1 x BDP, 1 x EPMD, 2 x Braintax and a Poor Righteous Teachers album I love. Good distribution of the types of rap I like I guess - all saying a lot more than guns and ho's ovr a bassline. I did try to list Hijack (an old South London rap crew) but couldn't as this is probably as rare as a rare thing.. but much better than anything that I've heard since 1990!

13:30. Lunch at desk - mackerel, baked potato and cheddar with a glass of water. Quickly stripped air horns off my old (as in 47 years old) car as Mrs Polko micro-baked the spuds - having a radiator re-cored and so the chance is here to take apart, clean paint and make tidy various bits at the front of the bonnet. My baby is getting there.. More surfing around. Need a funky toilet for my bathroom project and maybe one or two youtube comedy videos to lighten the lunch half hour.

15:00. A few emails sorted out, two meetings set for London in two weeks time. Interspersed with another few games of Call of Duty 4. I am clearly not in an aggressive mood today as I keep losing or winning the coveted award of least kills in the online games (usually of around 12 players). 4pm sees me finishing early today to watch the final game in the quarter final series (game 7 if you're that interested) of New York Rangers' attempt at winning the Stanley Cup. Sadly, my team (New York Islanders) didn't even make it to the playoffs - much the same as me today on COD4 they managed to come lowest of all NHL teams this year. But hey! There's always next year! Some light has started to shine at the end of the economic tunnel - HMV have been cleared to take over 15 Zavvi music stores and one of my clients has just secured funding to build some more data centres (big sheds, super-cooled, served by multiple power units, full of server racks essentially). Sadly, we don't get involved in this type of work so nothing much in it for me.

15:30. More COD4 for me. Mrs Polko is far more energetic and is cutting grass outside. First US death from swine flu is a young Mexican child on holiday apparently. All is good on our hill, clearly not so elsewhere. But, what hype this virus is gettin'!

17:30. I have a bad back at the moment and so instead of sitting for long periods in front of a TV watching ice hockey (see above) I have to get up and do something else to ensure I am not crippled when it comes time to get off the sofa. I either have a very badly strained lower back muscle or Hodgkin's Disease (which ain't nice believe me). I am sincerely hoping it's the former. So, back at desk surfing the web (again) for more information or in the blind hope of finding a website that says, if this is happening it can't be that Disease and must be something less serious. I need to book in with the doctor sort it all out for once and for all. Tomorrow. Honest. (those that know me know I hate anything to do with order, appointments and medical personnel - except sister-in-law of Polko who is a nurse and is therefore ok). Also need to sort out my expenses forms as I have been travelling a lot recently and the receipts are piling up in my in-tray and I'm owed a fair amount of money by my employer. Which is me. So, that's sort of ok then? More ice hockey in a mo'


19:00. My son's favourite team are now out of the Stanley Cup. He won't be happy - I'll text him. He won't reply. He rarely does. Even if I fund his mobile phone top-up... How quick this time has come round - especially when memories of him being 3 and taking his clothes off in Kendals Manchester, calmly sat on a sofa while I was buying some clothes seem only yesterday... Also managed to squeeze in 15 minutes of shooting outside - still hitting right of target - need to adjust my scope I think - before setting to and making some Pecorino and Mozarella Ravioli for Mrs Polko to come home from her horse riding to. Switching to kitchen computer to update the rest of today's blog.

20:00. Pasta made - a change of mind and the discovery of an old-ish avocado in the fridge has resulted in Avocado & Gorgonzola Ravioli instead. The last hour has been one of new things; Mrs Polko arrived home with some fresh goats cheese made from a friends goat's milk.. yummy, I made pasta to a random soundtrack from youtube - spurred on from my search for a Big B track called Hooligan I found a list including a band called Hed PE and their track Ordo Ab Chao - knew it was going to be good when it started with a quote "The puppetmasters create disorder, so the people will demand 'order'." and then a sample saying "President Bush come out with your hands up, you're under arrest..." Check it out by clicking here. Really not my usual cup of tea guv' what with its thrash guitar chorus (Polko is no fan of guitars - having a range of synths and massive array of Reason 4.0 Refills on the theme 'classic analog synths and drum machines!') but a strange and extremely engaging mix of latin percussion, political statements and thrash. I like. A lot. Anyway, here's Big B - big indeed!


22:00. Dinner was great - Avocado works well with Gorgonzola. Lesson of the day digested. Quite literally. Watched some TV - Victorian Farm and an hour programme about wheat farmers on BBC4 (Polko lives on a farm, so this is in the mould so to speak - although this farm is a sheep farm and not arable.. but hey! who's counting). The news is full of the upscaled Grade 5 threat of the swine flu virus, which makes me ever more suspicious of the political nature of the whole event? A good friend of Polko's has a medical degree and I had a brief text chat with him earlier in which he suggested that the only real threat at this stage is to those who are already low in immuno-reponse.. another friend of Polko is stepping on a plane to NY this Friday & I think all will be well there. Polko is also thinking a trip to US is in order to watch the remainder of the 2009 Stanley Cup in his favourite sports bar (in Santa Barbara). California is so enticing this time of year. Any time of year in fact. Oh, and in other news a great big hole has appeared in Barlow Moor Rd, a road Polko used to know well in South Manchester - see here. Which reminds me of that strange unanswered Beatles line, "how many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall".

23:30. Watched a Newsnight special on Obama's first 100 days in office - court is still out on that one. One last glass of wine. One last game of COD4. Mrs Polko is ascending the stairs. Lava lamp is still doing its thing. Another day in the life of Polko is drawing to a close...

Hope you've enjoyed it.

no more later..

ROLL UP, ROLL UP... COME AND GET YOUR VERY OWN...

Towards the third quarter of the 19th Century, when the West was busy being won, travelling 'salesmen' used to roam Arizona, California and Nevada - the so called tri-State area. Of course, the States were not as they are now but the principle still applies. These salesmen or Travelling Medicine Shows as they were known used to wander from town to town with wooden crates packed full of oil of mysterious properties and a bunch of henchmen that would testify to the healing properties of the elixirs. This ointment would solve any health issue you can name, it was also sold as a general cleaner, perfect for use with animals or as a bringer of health, wealth and good fortune all round. The idea was an old Chinese one (with some medical credence for alleviating rheumatism), but mis-used in the new land of opportunity that was opening up by the 1880s or so.

Roll up, roll up come and try our new improved, even better than before, Snake Oil! If you ain't ill, it'll fix your car (a particularly good Big Audio Dynamite line that I'm lifting to make the point!).

The salesmen are still around - in fact they exist everywhere in the world. These days they can be found fronting a whole industry of homeopathic medicines, so called tinctures drawn from root 'holy water' containing one part in ten billion or so of some mystical active ingredient. They are also found wherever you place your money, offering higher and higher rates of return for doing absolutely nothing. Give others your money and they'll give you your very own franchised snake oil sales operation with 'unlimited earnings potential' through addressing envelopes or selling people 'water purifiers'.

In the UK we have a particularly large and organised snake oil sales team, selling people their lifestyle products - from food to clothes, car insurance to bank accounts, children's remedies to funerals. (As an aside my next door neighbour appears very pleased with her new shirt bought from this Medicine Show, and it only cost about £12 apparently? That and a load of chinese child sweat in some unregulated hovel in Quangdong Province luvvie - maybe you should send one of your two daughters there for a while and she can bring you back some more shirts?)

This particular Medicine Show just posted a record £3bn+ profit figure today.

Every little clearly helps them.

To paraphrase and mis-quote another famous line: Ask not what Tesco can do for you, but what Tesco will do you for next?


...for some interesting modern snake oil remedies see Wired's page here