Trolley 745

Captured on my second circuit of the day. Or rather taken over from two older ladies who had finished loading their shopping into a car which had pulled in by T.K.Maxx. They seemed quite pleased to be relieved of them.

Returned them to the food hall and then continued around the Screwfix circuit, deciding against walking this one back to Sainsbury's. It was getting late and I had walked nearly far enough. Instead, I pushed it in behind a tree on the Longmead side of the Screwfix Passage. Maybe it would still be there on Monday, which would probably be my next opportunity to deal with it.

Home to read, I think in the Guardian, but I can't be sure as my level of donation to the Guardian does not give me search rights on their website, about how China and Russia are blocking everybody else on the relevant international body from extending and expanding the ban on hoovering up krill in parts of the Southern Ocean. China because they do a lot of the hoovering, Russia just to be awkward.

I have not engaged with the eco-arguments about leaving the krill - and leaving some of them for the seals, the whales and so on - but I was disappointed to read that the biggest player in the southern krill fishery is Norway. Norway is a very (gas) rich country and one might have thought that they could afford to set an example in such matters, without getting tangled up in the details of the arguments.

Since then I have been dipping in the October number of 'drinks business' of reference 2, acquired yesterday, from which I offer a few snippets. One of the those magazines which is a bit stinky because of all the inks they use for all the glossy pictures.

The boss of Ryanair is getting all solemn and serious about all the people getting onto his planes half cut and then wanting to drink more when they have found their seats. Which is amusing in that not so long ago he was explaining that when drink sales on a plane were a bit flat, the pilot would shake it up a bit, a wheeze which reliably promoted sales. He may have made the story up, or least embellished it, being another successful businessman with a big mouth, but it is a shift in point of view at the very least.

We get a piece about the organic champagne from House Drappier. I learn, inter alia, that spraying grapes against mildew - a serious grape pest - with a mixture of copper sulphate, lime and water counts as organic. Perhaps copper sulphate is an honest killer, just killing everything in sight, unlike the tricky organo-phosphates. House Drappier being people I only know about because of the visit to Circulo Populare noticed at reference 3.

While no less a luminary than Sir David Spiegelhalter has a pop at the health people for coming down on low level drinking. They have won the tobacco war and are winning the alcohol war - with levels of alcohol consumption seemingly falling steadily, particularly among the young - so there is no need for them to get all puritanical about it. One might think they just didn't like the idea of people enjoying themselves rather than contributing in some other way to GDP. 

And the Mumm champagne people - one of the Pernod-Ricard brands these days - have taken to shipping the stuff to New York in a new-build schooner, comparable in size to the Cutty Sark and capable of carrying around 1,000 tonnes. Which, given that the schooner is around 80m long is 12.5 tonnes to the metre, which sounds like rather a lot to me. Perhaps it is quite wide compared with the Cutty Sark. Mumm plan to send a cargo every month, maybe more as the TOWT fleet grows. One wonders how the freight charges compare with a container ship - presumably rather more. And what about the winter weather out in the North Atlantic? What about icebergs? See reference 8, from where the snap above is taken.

Then liquid yeast is the new thing in the drinks business. Maybe I could use it instead of dried in my bread making?

The people snapped above dominated the shopping part of the Bing response. And it does rather look as if its use is restricted to the drinks business. Maybe I shall pursue the matter further.

I learn that LeBlanq are 'a well regarded premier luxury cycling and culinary experience brand'. Teamed up with some gin people and the Kenny couple - Sir Jason and Dame Laura that is. LeBlanq are to be found at reference 4, from which I learn that they offer 'world class hospitality & expertly curated riding'. Is this really high end singles holidays? Whatever the case, one would not have thought that all that guzzling was quite the thing for a serious cyclist. Perhaps, provided that you burn the calories out, it doesn't really matter in what form you put them in...

And lastly, that if I were rich, I could assert my richness by paying perhaps £200,000 a case for a fancy wine. It seems that the Burgundy outfit DRC Romanée Conti are streets ahead of anyone else when it comes to fancy prices. To the point where you might count yourself lucky to find a whole case of the stuff for sale. Page 139 of the magazine. Or see references 6 and 7. If I go back to wine at all, I think I had better stick with Majestic.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/trolley-744.html.

Reference 2: https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/champers.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Spiegelhalter. A serious statistician, with a finger in the government statistical pie.

Reference 5: https://www.leblanq.com/.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domaine_de_la_Roman%C3%A9e-Conti.

Reference 7: https://romanee-conti.fr/.

Reference 8: https://www.towt.eu/.

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