Dave's Free Press

Mulled cider

To half a gallon of strong sweet cider, add half a lemon, half an orange (both chopped into tiny bits, as unto those who are naughty in the lord's sight), some sugar, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg. Bring to a boil, and simmer for a couple of minutes.

Queen's Christmas Speech Drinking Game

Drink whenever she:

• says "my family" or "I";
• says anything fatuous;
• mentions the country

Halloween

Total number of small children who came round trick or treating this evening: zero.

This is most unfortunate, as it means I didn't manage to get rid of any of the cans of vile lager left over from when I had a visitor a few weeks ago.

Cider duty exemption

Small cider producers are exempt from paying duty on their booze, something which is vital to the survival of many of our hundreds of small cider producers. Moves are afoot to re-examine this exemption, and possibly scrap it. If this happens, it will mean the end for many small-scale producers and the consequent loss of many unique brews. There is a petition on the PM's webshite, asking him to ensure that they can continue brewing. I strongly urge all of my UK readers to sign up.

A brilliant idea

I have had a brilliant idea.

Take a bottle of gin. Drink half of it. Then fill the bottle with biltong. Let it sit for a coupla weeks, pour through a coffee filter into another bottle, and you have meat-flavoured booze! And alcoholic meat! Huzzah!

Ministry of Truth

The Minister of Truth, he say "never mind the previous drunken babbling, it was never here". Look! Kittens!

Precision

Today I was at precisely 0°0'0". Greenwich is cool. I yelled very loudly "THE WORLD IS MEASURED FROM HERE". Aside from the museums, it is teeming with fine pubs, at which I got very precisely tipsy.

An etiquette question

When one goes to a restaurant and finds that one's neighbour is one of the waiters, what should one do? I got drunk (well, more drunk) on sake and broke crockery.

Sorry Geoff.

YAPC::Europe 2006 report: day 2

It appeared to be another day of mostly social track, although I went to a few talks in the morning. Back to the same place for curry again in the evening. Very good. I remember what it was called now. Bombay Mix, Broad St, Birmingham.

YAPC::Europe 2006 report: day 1

Most of the talks on the programme didn't particularly appeal, so after Larry's keynote and Ovid's TPF talk I disappeared for the, errm ... social track, yes, that's it, the social track of the conference, which was at the Wellington pub with its fifteen real ales. Mmmm.

That went really well :-)

In the early evening we came back to the hotel where we picked up some fellow-travellers for curry. Mmmm again.

YAPC::Europe 2006 report: day 0

As the train arrived in Birmingham I realised why I hate this town so much. It's because it's just a larger clone of Croydon, only with a nastier accent. Several of us attempted to drown the hideousness with BOOZE. I dreamt that a drunken dha came back to the hotel with me and loudly claimed to be a political prisoner.

Damnit the sun is rising

Damnit the sun is rising and I only just got back from the pub (via Bob and Kake's place). Ah well, this presents me with a good - nay, unique! - opportunity to see what the overnight mailing list traffic is like! Never let anyone say that I'm not dedicated!