Another pointless thread

Odd, my packs (4s, 6s & 10s) of Guinness, Staropramen etc all come in cardboard. Loose bottles etc don't but I generally by packs. Back in the day referred to as "slabs".

No market trips today

Loose bottles for me, plenty of variety both in flavour and alcohol content. Buy them in unit of X bottles, where X is their "X bottles for £Y" deal. No cardboard, but a pain to carry loose bottles in a carrier bag. A 4-pack of cans of baked beans came in cardboard, though.

A good trip to the market today. Not many shoppers and managed to get white Stilton for Mrs L so I'm definitely in her good books now.

Steve

Not sure what it says about me but my last minute shopping today consisted of 4 items....

Cornish Yarg and Aged Red Leicester cheeses, Arbour Nashoba Neipa beer and a bunch of raw beetroot

Do you marinade the beetroot in the Arbour Nashoba Neipa beer? At 6.2% the result will be quite powerful! (Almost as interesting as Steve's 4 pack of baked beanz).

Well that's xmas over, a lot of interesting beers drunk and all the family together.

Next few days will be spent eating leftovers and getting ready for next year..

I think I need a beer at the thought of that...

It's not over until the tree is down and that won't happen at Lubby Mansions until next weekend . After all the time and effort involved in putting it up and making it look just like last year's tree (and the year before's and the year before that and...), it's staying until the last ounce of visual value has been extracted from it. And then I'll try to avoid doing what I did last year i.e. getting the vacuum cleaner's tubes blocked by pine needles. A right pain in the you-know-where .

Leftovers here were all either eaten or frozen by Saturday. Or so I thought. Then yesterday evening some soggy sprouts emerged from the back of the fridge...

Not much beer drunk here over Christmas. However, enough wine was consumed to give Lubbyman a pleasantly relaxed attitude to life for a couple of days. Then reality kicked in as its effect wore off . 'Beer in the New Year' sounds like a good motto .

Steve

There you are. What did I say? you are not drinking enough beer!

OK, so here is what is currently beering-out the old and beering-in the new.








Happy New Year, folks!

Steve

When will banks learn...

A text arrived, supposedly from Barclays, saying a dodgy transaction was on my Visa card.
Could be anybody, but turns out they do this, all you do is answer yes or no..

..I answered no and almost immediately a call from a number my phone said was a possible scam number.
To compound worries the nice lad had a strong Asian accent.

I closed the call down politely and called the number on the back of my card..
... for it to be answered by a lovely lad with a west Indian type accent...

Turns out my card has been compromised and now stopped.

The thing is all contact was correct and all from Barclays but..

..can't they realise that FRAUD calls need to be dealt with by operatives with a BRITISH accent!!

I too have had this call from my bank and then called them back from my mobile.
It was late in the evening so my expectation was that the call handler would not be in the UK.
I was more concerned about the fake transaction than the accent and was grateful that the bank's
system had called it out.
It may be regrettable but in my experience a BRITISH accent is no guarantee of competence, knowledge or honesty.

Totally agree. I've had many scam calls from people with British accents. I've also had a step-grandfather whose accent was incomprehensible to anyone in the family other than my grandmother and my toddler sister. He came from Tyneside in NE England and was always known as 'Geordie'. If he'd been in a call centre, the only people who would have been able to make sense of him would have been fellow Geordies!

Steve

The short answer is, ALWAYS politely to decline the call and ring them back on a known, clean number. As to accents. the Leeds based 1st Direct call center will, 95% of the time, produce someone with the thickest of Glaswegian accents. Geordie or Glasgie are equally impenetrable!

What a great week, sun's been out and it's not been too cold.

Just back from a break at Barnard Castle where we camped for 3 nights, walked around 28 miles and just lay back.

Hope all's well out there.

It has been glorious. I got sunburned on the bowling green, where I also shifted a few pints of "Abbot". Not a camera in sight ! What would CAMRA think of it?

For any "Green-Fingered" members I just thought I'd share a little tip.

I grow Comfrey which I chop the leaves off, mush them up in a bucket of water them stew it for several weeks until it reeks to high heaven. Then I water it down (about 8 to 1 approx.) and pour it round the base of plants (tomatoes, cucumbers, fuschias, and many more) and it seems to help with feeding the plants. Now that's the basic tip but now the "miracle"....

...I have been growing asparagus over the last 2 years and have followed the advice that they are best not picked in the first 2 to 3 years - I have been picking (cutting) the spears from the 2 strongest plants and they have given multiple harvests this year. The rest of the plants have 2 or 3 spears that have grown to 3 or 4 feet and will stay that way until they dry out and fall away at the end of the year. BUT, after pouring the Comfrey "tea" on the plants last night two of them have suddenly sprouted some new spear tips today - nice, healthy looking and likely to be ready in a few days!

It is strange how new things excite me as I get older - I came in from the garden today looking like the Cheshire cat