That was a good week that was

Last Friday took me over to Norwich for a Trekker demo then I finished the day working at home. I then received a call from, well, lets call him G saying he’d be late in to Ipswich. I decided to fortify myself with a large haddock and chips for with G around the stars were aligned for a heavy evening.

When I eventually met him in Ipswich station we took a taxi to the crowded fat cat. Of interest was the posh sounding bloke behind the bar and the range of imported beers not that large, but budvar and other German beers along with a range of 12 or so ales from the UK made a good showing. The ales were none too interesting though so after one pint for me and a huge Scotch egg for he we found ourselves in the Dove.

The beer selection was much improved really because of the range of beers on offer and by this I mean styles. Golden ale, porter, stout, old ale and bitters were all evident and supped by the both of us. We were then joined by some of my Ipswich drinking mates and had a cracking night.

We finished off by ordering a curry and getting a taxi home with the grub. More beers were sunk and the nosh consumed. I even remembered to bring Clare some beer back!

Saturdays’ breakfast was balti peanuts and a coffee beer picked up from the ale shop on Ipswich station and then G departed.

The rest of the day was nice and quiet as was the weekend really. Clare went out to a gig on Sunday night so I went in to town for a few hours but nothing else of note happened.

Tuesday found me making a quick journey up to Scotland for literally 6 or so hours for some Trekker dems and then Lucy and I drove down to a lovely little hotel near Workington as we were to toil in the area on the Wednesday. That could be my last time up in Scotland for work but more on that in a future post.

I was closer to home in Chelmsford on Thursday and then in London and the office for Friday. I had a teleconference with Lucia this afternoon which was as always with her pleasurable

We have friends coming over on Saturday evening and I’m probably going to go for a quick pint when I return to Ipswich at around 9:15 tonight. I couldn’t face the rush so took a taxi from ST Pancras to Liverpool Street, yep a copout but well, as Steve would say, ‘the dog was tired.’ Its true, I was walking between the stations and Jaid actually dragged me in to a cab as a lady was getting out. It wasn’t even at a rank. I guess after living in the south for over 3 years she’s twigged as to what they look like and enjoys riding rather than working across London. Anyway, we’re now a quarter through 2007 and spring will be springing soon, so time to be happy. Oh, and I've also sorted out my bloglines this week and have a stack of feeds of interest to a Yorkshire man in exile in East Anglia.

Ardbeg Lord of the Isles - 25YO 46%c

Nose: milk chocolate, smoke and peat. A little mandarin orange and sweetness. Develops with time. Give it 25 minutes to an hour.

Pallet: sut pepper and a drop of custard. lush oak cutting through, drying coco. Smooth as a smooth thing on an ice rink.

Finnish: oak, peaty finale with lemons. Ever so long

Notes. This has risen in price by 30 quid since I purchased my two bottles. I opened this one the night I moved to Ipswich as a celebration. Good aaah, its good. Is it worth £125 now? I’m not sure. I’ll keep my other bottle for a few years. This though is Ardbeg from the mid 1970s and a special dram to be shared. No distillation at Ardbeg between 1980ish and 1990, you do the maths? This won’t be available in a 25 year old version now for many years.

Score: 92%

Edradour 10 year old UCF

Signatory own the tiny independent distillery of Edradour in pirthshire.. One of the smallest in Scotland its output is hard to come by. The unchilfiltered version is always from first fill sherry and though slightly different each batch should exhibit very similar results. They also do a filtered less expensive version of this 10 year old.

Nose: on first wiff Christmas pudding and custard. Turns more alcoholic in time with sherry woodup fron. Clare gets bananas!

Palette: creamy currents and dried fruit. Ever so sweet and full bodied.

Finnish: short but lingers just long enough to keep you interested on proons and sugary notes.

Notes: I didn’t like the smell at all when I first opened the bottle but it’s got better after 3 days. Sweet sherried but something does not work for me. It’s still a good dram but not up with the aberlours and glenfarclase’s of this world. I’d love to try this matured in a bourbon cask but fear the sherry is masking an overly sweet and slightly off spirit. Over 32 quid for a 10 year old malt!! I won’t be buying another but in some odd way could drink a lot in a sesh? One that takes a bit to love maybe?

Score: 80%

Old Chimneys Good King Henry Imperial Stout

This imperial stout is brewed near Ipswich at the old Chimney brewery and is a recreation of the style Catherine the Great used to favour. It’s thick, strong decadant and roasty.

It slipped in to the glass almost flat with no head so to speak of.

The nose is dark chocolate and toffee with a winy like complexity reminiscent of many strong ales. Clare gets a treacly note.

The pallet is thick and almost chewy with more treacle toffee coming through. Lovely coffee notes.

The finish is more of the same with a lovely sweetness holding it all together. A belt of port like alcohol warms as it goes down.

Thanks to Adi from the Dove for this liquid treat.

Co-Op Beers

If you can’t be arsed to go to town this weekend then try some beers from ya local co-op. Just a quick run down of the ones I’ve tried.

Your local Co-Op has some smashing bottled ales brewed by some well known brewers and all worth trying.

Firstly the Fairtrade Bumble Bee ale brewed by Freeminer brewery isn’t my cup of tea but I’ve never been a fan of honey beers so I’ll not say much on this if you don’t mind. If you’ve tried Waggle Dance from Young’s or Honey Dew from Fuller’s that’s the style and its not a bad effort but my least favourite of these bottled offerings though less sweet and clawing than the Fuller’s and Young’s honey beers.

We move on to the environmentally hip with the co-ops organic premium ale brewed in Scotland by the Caledonian brewing company. This tastes like Golden Promise ale from the same edinborough brewery though maybe not as complex but could do with a little more byte to balance out the malts. Pasturisation of this ale takes the body away from what could have been a substantial gulp.

Next is Co-Op strong ale brewed by Thwaites in Lancashire. This reminds me a little of Newcastle brown but a little sweeter and much nicer, good for the winter. If you’ve tried this style of beer in the north of England you should not be disappointed by this offering. What a lovely malt kick. Just a superb brown ale and well worth the money. More complex and darker than the above organic ale.

NB, these first 3 have Braille on the bottle! Way to go co-op!

My personal favourite is the bottle conditioned Gold Miner golden ale from Freeminer brewery in the forest of dean. Though it doesn’t have a Braille label it has a peel back section giving information on the beer which is comprehensive to the extent of being anal. I guess its interesting though and a snippet is below.

‘Ingredients: Water from natural sources under the Royal Forest of Dean; Barley grown
in the Cotswolds and hand malted by Warminster Maltings; First Gold whole hops grown in the "Three Counties" Yeast.’

A top draw drink and one heck of a thirst quencher. Reminds me a little of the wave of golden beer ale is offering its reputation on these days but with the bottle conditioning complexity is the watch word.

I’ll also briefly mention that the co-op best bitter at 4.2 in cans is brewed by Cains of Liverpool and very good value in fact a superb 4 pack of canned bitter for under 3 quid and with the cains hallmark jammyness as in the brewer’s best with not as much hop evident but more Chrystal malt to make up the flavour.

Changing style to a solid Czech beer you can’t go wrong with the co-Op’s own version. I’ve read on the web that its just a beer brewed at the large Staropramen brewery but don’t know how true this info is. Its not a Budvar but still lovely beer and good in the summer. Better than the tesco Praske Pivovar Vratislav Czech Lager but 20 pence or so more expensive a bottle..

Mini Casks and Summer Lightning

I’ve just opened a 5L mini cask of Summer lightning from Hop Back Brewery. I’ve mentioned these casks before but its like a small keg with a tap that dispenses real ale.

Clare purchased me two mini casks of Evensong from the Durham brewery which is a top pint in this format a few weeks ago.

Anyhow, the casks will last around 4 days once opened and it tastes very much like a pint of real ale one would get from the pub and quite different from even bottle conditioned ales.

The Summer Lightning is a hoppy golden ale best served chilled but the hops are earthy goldings and evident on the nose.

The pallet is a little spritsy like a pub pint and malty.

The finish is bitter and hoppy and so long lasting in a sharp kind of way.

This format of ale presentation is really good and I’ll investigate more mini casks from other brewers in the future.

This particular beer can be purchased from the Hop Back web pages for 30 quid which gives 10L in two casks including delivery which was next day. The hop back ale will last up to a year before opening but other brewerys products will last much less than this. Hop Back have assured me that this is deffenetly real ale with yeast in keg and all.

Dram this Snow

Well stone me it’s snowing outside. Such was the slushiness of it all I got a taxi to the station for my 6:13 train to Cambridge today, I’d normally walk the 1.7 miles to the station if it’s fine but not in the snow, I’m not tramping up and down hills and getting wet through from passing traffic for anyone especially at half 5 before any sensible people are out of bed. ‘It’s cold’ I thought as I stood on platform 1 of Ipswich Railway station my hand rapped around a particularly crap cup of tea purchased from one of the concessions nearby.

My usual whisky postings have dried up a late but this is set to change over the next week or two as I’ve some interesting old Ardbegs to taste plus a Welsh whisky. I’ve got plenty at home to get through but just haven’t been drinking much whisky lately. Living near the Dove Inn has rekindled my interest in beer but the expanding gut means I’ll have to change my ways soon.

March and District Museum

Our trip to the March and District museum was most enjoyable yesterday and only a few minutes walk from our hotel.

We were shown around by a knowledgeable and patient guide called Charles who with much attention explained the history of the town through the many interesting exhibits on display. It would be not unfair to suggest that Charles himself was a fascinating gentleman coming from Droylsdan and working in the RAF fixing and maintaining bombers on the Cambridgeshire airfields during the second world war.

The museum is volunteer staffed and has charitable status for funding. I guess you could say it was quaint with people who obviously care about their past attempting to preserve a long gone history for others to enjoy and learn from. In any case the visit made an interesting and in many ways fascinating few hours entertainment.

Oliver Cromwell Hotel March

Clare and I arrived at the luxurious and homely Oliver Cromwell Hotel in the Fenland town of March yesterday afternoon for a weekend away. Our rooms are large and well appointed but three locked doors off our mane suite have me a little concerned that something mysterious is afoot.

Upon entrance we took advantage of the swimming pool, steam room, sauna and Jacuzzi but gave the gymnasium a miss maybe today or Sunday? then retired to the bar for a couple pints of real ales including brews from Abbeydale of Sheffield, Occam of Peterborough and Nethergate# from Essex. Clare also had a budvar and then we fed dogs ETC.

The grub in the hotel is fantastic and we each demolished a sumptuous 4 course meal and had a laugh with our waitresses. One cool thing, they were playing the female fronted goth metal band Within Temptation which I found just sensational as we ate. Not loud but just in the background and it worked rather well with Sharron Den Adels enchanting vocals complimenting the food.

It was then time for comic relief and a bit of kip. We intend to visit the March Museum today and also recover from our breakfast.

Beer in Bury

As expected my parents landing last weekend was an orgy of food and ale. Seafood in the Woolpack on Friday evening, a roast dinner out on Sunday and dinner in the highly polished and gastro style Old Cannon Brewery in Bury ST Edmonds on Saturday.

I’ve wanted to visit this town and the Cannon for a few months now and neither disappointed.

The cannon was large and airy with plenty of hooray henrys eating by the time we’d gone with their little Jemimas and Justins tagging along.

The best bitter was a treat but the blonde bombshell a little eggy and thin, kind of a let down for what should have been a hoppy fresh golden ale. The highlight was the Gunner’s Daughter which though a strong brew hid the strength well and was full bodied.

I took the opportunity to try the dark seasonable beer, the name escapes me but to my pallet it was just evil. Somehow plastic tasting if that makes sense with a beautiful TCP note.

The food was expensive but top draw with my Gunner’s Daughter sausages, mash home made Yorkshire ETC going down a storm. So a mix really but its nice to find a brewpub in the middle of GK land.

After this we walked around the market town and found a lovely café shop down a side road with splendid coffee and home made cakes.

That’s my kind of Saturday!

GW Micro Blog

GW Micro now have a blog up. This promises to be more than just a Window-Eyes space as they already have some interesting commentary on Vista. They’re not the first AT company to do something like this though as me mate Eccentric Dave from Dolphin has a little thing going over at the Dolphin WebPages. Much more of this to come in the future? You bet!!

update 1

This should have uploaded last Friday but for some reason it didn’t. Backtracking to the last Friday of February I met up with Paul in Cambridge and we toured a few pubs together but I arrived home in time to help Clare prepare tea which was a bit ST David's day themed. Lamb steaks, pork and leaque sausage new potatoes and leaques. We do this on occasions like ST Patrick’s day, Chinese new-year ETC just for a bit of fun.

Saturday was a big day for me in a peculiar way. I've banked with Nat west for 29 years according to my mum and opening a new main current account with the Halifax was quite sad in some ways since I'd had the piggy banks and all from the Nat west over the years but the bate of a much better interest rate plus 100 quid for opening the account was just too strong.

The afternoon was spent with Robin and then in the Dove at which point we met up with Wersle and Glenda for drinks and a fantastic beef curry at home.

Work wise I was stationed in the north all week but ended on Friday working around the south coast. My parents were over last weekend which will necessitate a few meals out I would venture.

Interesting Beer Blogs

A good beer blog is an international collective of beer drinkers who enjoy writing about the subject including a bloke from Suffolk.

http://beerblog.genx40.com/

Stonch keeps a fantastic beer blog with pub reviews and beer notes. Stonch is a Londoner and a beer lover.

http://stonch.blogspot.com/index.html

Now to Ruth. Classy lass. Probably drinks more pints in a day than me.

http://www.beertester.blogspot.com/

“Turned up to hear the band playing at my new local... and thought it was important
to test every one of the eight, yes eight real ales on offer. If this hadn't entailed
drinking nine pints, I would have been fine the next day. In spite of that, or possibly
because of that, it was a good night.”

W-E 6.1 Beta2

W-e 6.1 beta2 is now up for download with some nice improvements for Vista including better support for the search functionality within the start menu and improvements to the speaking of controls in the speech recognition application. Also many more vista and XP fixes.

Support for list view groupings under XP and Vista plus a new range of start-up options and support for the Braille Connect range of Humanware displays.

Save Braill

As part of my job I advocate for the use of Braille within the classroom and this is a serious matter. If one can’t read properly how can it be possible to deliver a presentation with dignity? Read a menu in a restaurant or Braille handouts provided at a training day? Find your favourite dvd or cd from a collection of hundreds? Read a book? Lable pills or other medical equipment.

Sadly since many of the blindness schools and colleges have been shut down in this country mainstream teachers have thought upon Braille as an inconvenience and something to be avoided if possible. We have a generation of blind people coming through the system who are affectively illiterate because of a reliance on speech based technology and this can only do us harm as a community in the long run once everyone else finds out that a large proportion of blind people can’t read.

Braille was vital to my presenting at university and still is within my job for reading within meetings or giving talks to large groups.


I don’t use Braille often for surphing the web or reading lots of emails but when I require the skill I have it and wouldn’t be in my job today without it.

Please take a look and sign the above petition.

I spy an MI5 career as the blind invisible man

Ian Hamilton is a nice bloke and comes up with some good stuff. this is a funny but sadly true read and just had to be printed on the blog lest it be taken from the above linked pages in the future. I really tried to select a section to print but just couldn't omit anything from this comedy romp.

Am I invisible? Well, some days it appears that I am. There is a strange phenomenon going on which either has to be exploited or investigated. Now I'm not a scientist, but there is an extraordinary correlation between how poor someone's sight is and how much they can be seen by the general public. It's weird. It's like the poorer your sight becomes, the harder it is for anyone to see you. Very slowly you fade away to nothing. There is, perhaps, at best, just a faint outline of a person moving through the crowd. The guide dog can be seen clearly, but the person is invisible.

Once, I was sitting in the executive departure lounge at Glasgow Airport (now, I'm not saying that to show off but I was put in the elite waiting room by one of the airport staff who thought it would be helpful - actually, I think she was just getting me out of the way) and for some time I was alone, till one other traveller appeared.

The lounge was quiet, with only the faint crunching sound of a blind man and his dog gorging themselves on free biscuits. (I wonder who supplied them?) The other passenger then made a call on his mobile. "Hi, I'm at Glasgow Airport. Yes, I'm completely alone."

I screamed, "No! no! I'm here. Ya-hoo! Yahoo!", while bouncing up and down on my seat.

He continued. "Yes, yes, I can speak freely," he said in a booming voice.

"No! No! You can't speak freely, I'm here - look, see," I said while figuratively slapping him repeatedly around the face.

He then proceeded to go into great detail about what football players he would be buying and selling for his club. "I'm thinking of buying Jo Bloggs for around 200 thousand - um, yes, as long as he gives up the drugs and alcohol. Obviously, it would be good if his foot would grow back, then he'll be the player for us. Selling - well, who the hell would buy one of ours?" It was a Scottish Premier League chairman.

He plumped himself down next to me and confessed to his life


My instinct was to run around the room naked, falling over chairs and tap dancing on the tables while whistling Dixie. Obviously, I didn't do any of these. I sat quietly taking mental notes. Well, it is my job. He was so near I could have reached out and touched him with my left hand. What was he thinking? He was sitting only feet from a journalist. But because I was blind he just couldn't see me. Some people just have to be protected from themselves. No, I'm not going to embarrass him by giving his name.

So, here's my idea. Stick with me on this one, it's good. How about the blind spy? According to a charity for the blind, four out of five blind people of working age are unemployed. A shocking statistic, I know, but perhaps this could be a good way to get many of them back to work by using our so-called natural skills. Being invisible and, of course, our extraordinary hearing. Although I'm not so sure about my hearing. Sometimes I become very deaf, particularly at home, for some strange reason. "Ian, you couldn't do the dishes?" Answer: "Sorry, what was that?" Another yell comes from the kitchen. "Ian, the bin needs emptying." Answer: "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

We've got all the technology now. Talking mobile phones with camera, infra-red object detector, digital recorder, colour detectors and blind-friendly global positioning systems. We've got so much kit that when we plug it in at night to do the charging the street lights dim.

A couple of years ago MI5 was going through a recruitment campaign looking for more agents. It should have started looking around the blind colleges and training centres - not Oxford and Cambridge. Apart from being invisible, for some reason, those of the public who have the special powers that can see us tend to be the mad, bad, criminally insane and deranged. These types always feel the need to off-load all their darkest secrets, as if somehow a blind person knowing them just doesn't count.

Many years ago, I was approached by a man in a bar. He plumped himself down uninvited and started to confess to me about his life of crime. Armed robbery, receiving stolen goods, almost everything apart from murder. If only I'd had a modern phone with a camera, I could have secretly taken his photo, recorded his confession with my miniature digital recorder and scanned the colour of his clothes using my colour detector. Then I could have called the police, giving my GPS co-ordinates, and maybe scooped myself a large reward. The alternative is to try to escape. It's not easy trying to squeeze yourself and a labrador out of the window in a disabled toilet, particularly when you don't know where you're landing.

Even when a blind person can be seen, normal rules of security don't apply. Before the recent tightening of security at airports, being blind didn't appear to constitute any threat. I could walk through customs with 10 kilos of crack cocaine under one arm, a box marked "bomb" under the other one, and dragging a case with "swag" printed across it. But as long as I had a white stick or a guide dog, I had some kind of blind diplomatic immunity. If only David Blunkett were still Home Secretary he could have implemented my army of blind spies.

Ian Hamilton reports on disability issues for BBC Scotland.