Off Topic The Review Thread

Gin is the trendy thing in the UK now, seem to be hundreds of small distilleries set up, very hipsterish. My wife has a collection of them, but I don't drink spirits anymore, and only ever drank gin in rare and specific circumstances.

 

My Dad used to swear that Holland Gin would always cure a stiff back!

I enjoy gin & tonic water on ice with a slice of lemon & lime. I would highly recommend Gin Thuya for your wife.

Compared to the cheaper UK gins (Gordon's etc.) this stuff is pure nectar.

 

My Dad, perhaps an early hipster, in his wine cellar in 1964, actually a side extension room onto the garage.

We could buy those empty oak sherry casks for a pound to finish our wines in, prior to bottling.

 

He only needs a beard to make hipster, he's got the threads.

Did your family take baths in elderberry wine? Or were you all very thirsty?

 

It all started after our cherry plum tree, that always flowered, but never bore fruit, produced a bumper crop and my Dad's good friend Cyril Berry, who published many books on wine and beer making, suggested he show us how to make wine from the fruit. As a family we would emark on excursions into the countryside to pick fruit - elderberries, sloes (for sloe gin) etc. The Elder is interesting as a white wine (that has a distinctive cat pee smell, not taste), can be produced from elderflowers and a deep red/purple wine from elderberries.

As a youngster most Sunday mornings meant a trip over to Cyril Berry's to see what he was up to, with tastings of his fine wines on the go - great as a 10 year old, no alcohol problems here. I recall on one visit his olive green painted concrete garage floor was now purple after he broke a 10 gallon glass carboy of bilberry wine (very fragile when full to any contact, as was the case here).

Back to our wine cellar / garage extension, this is where our white bull terrier, Kim, would stay in his box/bed when we went away on a day trip - he was contained here out of the house. Well, after one such trip we returned to find his box floating in wine - he got bored and pulled the bung out of a 20 gallon cask of citrus wine (expensive wine as fruit was bought rather than country picked). Kim attempted to clean up the mess he created by lapping up the spilt wine, so he was a totally drunk dog.

 

Thats all my Mum ever drank, G & T.

 

After nearly 40 years, l've stopped drinking bourbon, ( because of the cola factor )...... so 6 weeks ago, l started drinking gin & tonic and l'm getting by not drinking soft drinks anymore with exception of the little sugar in tonic water.
Sometimes, l just have it with lightly air rated spring water with a dash of bitters or lemon.
The joy of getting older and having to adapt for the sake of trying to look after oneself.
Such is life.

 

I can recommend going onto the Amazon website - looking up the product Veet For Men (a liquid hair remover) and reading the product reviews. Some are very funny indeed.

 

Must admit I've developed a taste for Gin, whilst we were away a few weeks ago the ship we were on had a Gin Bar, something like 25 different Gins, my favourite was an elderflower gin with elderflower tonic.....

 

Romance With A Double Bass is a lovely little film, one of John Cleese’s first performances after he opted out of Monty Python’s fourth season of Flying Circus.

Based on Anton Chekhov’s short story “Roman’s Kontrabasom”, this comedy short tells the tale of Smychkov, a musician hired to play double bass at the wedding of Count Alexei to his reluctant bride, the Princess Constanza. Arriving at the castle early on a hot day, Smychkov is sent packing until the ceremony. He strolls the grounds, and decides to cool off by taking a dip in the lake. Unbeknownst to him, the Princess is also in the lake, looking to retrieve a valuable fishing float.

When their clothes are stolen, both are left naked and in some dilemma. After a predictable embarrassing meeting, they realise that only by working together and using the case of Smychkov’s double bass as concealment, can they get across the grounds and into the castle without creating the massive scene both fear. It’s a good job Smychkov didn’t play the triangle…

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Cleese and then-wife Connie Booth deliver great performances, scattered with typical Cleese lunacy here and there amid an increasingly complex journey towards clothed safety. And the film is actually surprisingly innocent and naive, considering both Cleese and Booth spend at least eighty percent of the film naked. Of course, nobody can spend that much time naked on film without a little attraction, and so …

The supporting cast are good value for the minimal time they spend on screen, however this is really a vehicle for the two leads.

Running at around 40 minutes, it’s well worth looking up, whether you want to enjoy the comedy, whether you relish the sight of John Cleese’s buttocks and a very full frontal Connie Booth, or even whether you are a die-hard fan of Anton Chekhov screen adaptations …

 

Our white elderflower wine seemed to have a disturbing cat fee odour when fermenting, but thankfully not in the taste. We also made elderberry wine that was quite the family effort teasing all the tiny e berries off their storks with a comb. A brewery here makes an excellent elderberry flavoured beer.

Sloe gin is very easy to make now for Christmas drinking.. Not sure if you have sloes growing (blackthorn?) over there, but as a family we would go out into the countryside and pick them this time of year (very sour, wouldn't eat), prick them with a needle and place in large kilner jars with a little sugar and gin, then shake jars each day and by December you could remove the berries in a filter to just leave the clear delicious purple liquid - Sloe Gin, very nice, so easy to make.

 

G&T - great for keeping the malaria at bay in the colonies.

 

Goal Live. IPhone app. Free.



Some idiot Leicester City fan recommended it to me. Set up alerts for any club you want, from what I can see anywhere in the world, and it pings you with line ups, goals etc. It's incredibly fast, much faster than BBC/Sky etc, frequently you get pinged with a goal and then five seconds later with a 'goal disallowed' note. Downside, if you have an Apple Watch, is that it pings through to there as well, so at certain times of the weekend (I have four teams which I follow) you can get repetitive strain injury of the wrist (that's my excuse anyway).

 

Just downloaded this, what a great app - cheers.

 

Do not think the new Alien film is very good
It's a prequel yet the tech is more advanced than the original Alien

 

On a whim I went out to the cinema last night (Tuesdays are 50% off tickets) to see the film Wind River and it was excellent, really enjoyed it, great performances, especially by Jeremy Renner, so I would highly recommend it. Review attached:-

https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/blogs/staff/entries/2017/sep/04/review-wind-river-2017-one-of-the-best-films-of-2017-from-the-writer-behind-sicario-and-hell-or-high-water/

 

If you've not seen it, watch Hidden Figures. It's excellent.