Friday, 5 February 2010

My new video on Cornish Buddhist Philosophy

Dharma is universal, and seeing as Cornwall, including Midcornwall and its environs is at least partly in the Universe....


My new short video on Buddhist Philosophy can be found on my other site, salted.net

Enjoy:)+:)=:):):)

Thursday, 4 February 2010

Me talking about Rebirth

Saturday, 23 January 2010

Short Story: The Enlightenment of The Buddha

Hi,


I have just put up a Short Short (1000 words) on my salted.net site.


Thanks!

Salome!

Enjoy:)

Mat


Friday, 15 January 2010

Check out my new Salted.net

I have revamped my Salted.net site and am continuing to do so, please check it out:)


Danke!

Mat

Tuesday, 1 December 2009

Was the Buddha a Buddhist?


I have just published a rather long essay I have written on my salted.net

Was the Buddha a Buddhist?

Wednesday, 14 October 2009

And Whoring Badgers Is Not Enough In Days Like These


This meta-collage took me nearly an entire evening and I think you can trace my aesthetic path between being quite excited by the idea to being quite tired because I have been plastering and stuff like that. Still, the message is in the meaning, or something.

Monday, 29 June 2009

Midcornwall.com Resturant Review: The French Bistro, Truro


Situated in the heart of Truro’s Little Brighton, The French Bistro is the City-Village’s newest restaurant. From the outside there is one thing to say about it, it’s small and quirky. It’s a little bit fairytale; perched on a corner by a bridge overlooking a little river.

Inside the restaurant is small and irregular with angles that you just don’t find anymore. The tables and chairs are all different. The crockery too. Old and antique and, en masse, even before you add any human or cuisine elements to it, you know you’re in someplace rare.

The service was delightful, right from the offset we were made very welcome, even as we handed over our BYOB wine. The fact it’s unlicensed is, like most things in a world that is complex and deep in all directions, both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse, to me at least, because you just can’t beat a draught premium lager in an ice cold tall.

Ohhh baby .. mmm yaa...

But being unlicensed is a blessing because you can bring your own wine and, even with The French Bistro’s very reasonable corkage, that’s going to save you a few bob you could be spending on meth later on, at Vanilla. I am not sure of the BYOB etiquette but I erred against turning up with four cans of warm Special Brew in a tatty carrier-bag. Which is lucky as it would have juxtaposed the ambiance somewhat.

The Menu wasn’t high on choice, but was on variety and quality. The olive’s were some of the best I have had and the starters, mains and desserts all delicious. The food’s got a very homely glow to it, it’s authentic, its’ Bistro! Ohh la la!

Pricewise, The French Bistro is very reasonable, which is good, because due to our inefficient, corruptible and debt-based economic system, there is less fake money to flow through the veins of the Hegemonic Behemoth that is Babylon. Jah bless the Prices at The French Bistro.

Food, style, staff, aesthetic, I can’t fault it, I can only praise it. In my humble opinion, as a man who has reviewed more restaurants in Mid Cornwall than most, The French Bistro is, right about now, right about the most interesting and rewarding restaurant in Truro.

The French Bistro
19 New Bridge St
L
ittle Brighton
Zone One
Truro
Cornwall

01872223068

PS. In the day they also do lunches and coffee (You have to ask for “cafĂ©” not “coffee” though, as it’s French.)

Au revoiur

Donde est le estation de autobus?

Wednesday, 27 May 2009

Truro Skatepark in active look around, nifty!


Check this out:

Sunday, 26 April 2009

Cornish United Nonhuman Influenza Alert

In order to protect Cornwall from the absolutely certain and imminent Pandemic, I have taken it upon myself to volunteer to consider, if you will have me, to be Cornwall's first line of defence against the Biohell that looms scary.

I will code some advanced AI bots to monitor and interact with all information on the internet as well as, via Q-Grid access, doctor's surgeries, the red cross, the military etc etc. Sorted. If I can’t get these bots coded in time I’ll just use Google’s News Alerts, and stuff like that. In fact, forget the AI bots, I'll stick to news alerts.

As soon as I get a sniff that this new Plague is upon the Duchy, I'll wap out a few tweets on it on my twitter account.

If you do get one of my CUNI Alerts please try not to panic, stay at home, stay warm and ABSOLUTELY do not shop in the Tesco's or Sainsbury’s in Truro. In fact, if you’re in Truro, you should leave the moment you get my tweet. Please leave your doors open and keys in your cars in case the emergency services need use them.

To Recap: If you live in Cornwall and you want to potentially save your own life as well as the lives of those you love and care for and those strangers who you don't love but connect with as as fellow, struggling, humans then you should probably partake in my CUNI Alert and lick the back of the digital envelope yourself.

Why would you not?


Life is so precious.


Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Please Boycott Google Mars until Google adds Cornwall’s Capitol City to it’s Weather Gadgets Now!




Today I was outraged by Google. I found that in it’s Weather Gadgets, Google lists ZERO locations in the Nation-state of Cornwall. These weather gadgets are used in the Google Homepage and in Google’s popular spying application, Google Desktop. This is injustice.


The Continent of Cornwall is used to such exploitation by search engine giants. Most residents of Kernow still refuse to use Yahoo search since it’s 1996 mistake of suggesting Cornwall was, in fact, a part of England. And indelibly etched on the expatiations of Cornish IT companies is the shortly lived askjethro.com; after pioneering multi-layered Cornish search heuristics in 2003 askjethro.com was obliterated by the legal canons of A very nameless corporation. I can’t even write that coperation’s name from within the Cornish internet without being sued or a getting mundane rendition to Abu Ghraib.


Tread carefully, said the badger.





Whether it is marauding mercenaries, mercenary missionaries or men from Microsoft, Cornwall is used to getting shafted. But until now (excluding the infamous “Grampound Line”), the proto-omniscient Googemon has remained on the side of the Kernotropolis.



We have always felt deeply at one with “The G”. When Cornish citizens needed to find out about things in other counties, and sometimes even other times, Google was there. When Cornwall petitioned for a modern progressive online democracy instead of disinterested Westmister-quangol scrag-ends, Google was there with the technology to facilitate and liberate... wouldn’t it be great.


So why... now...
have they forsaken us?


The injustice that the closest weather information Das Googen can supply is
Plymouth is a bitter injustice. And anyone who has ever been to both Plymouth and Cornwall will know how much better the weather always is in Cornwall. Plymouth isn’t Cornwall. They can’t even swim there!



Outrage at injustice often leads to action. I took action. I decided that I would Boycott all Google Services. I would give “The G” “The Bird”.


After less than a minute I realised that this would not be possible. On an Information and Communication Hunger Strike I made a shoddy Bobby Sands. Simply, the sacrifice of my protest wasn't worth the victory.


However, not one to give in totally, I "fine tuned" my anti-Google protest to the totally encompassing and lifelong new protest: The Boycott of Google Mars.


Whilst they mock and ridicule the people of the Empire of Kernow I shall not be looking at their Online map of The Red Planet.
And in this I shall be steadfast - Unless, say, the kids are using it for their homework and they need my help?


It doesn’t matter if you live in Cornwall or not, this is an almost global issue. If you don’t believe me, simply imagine the slight annoyance you would feel if your Capital City wasn’t listed in the Weather Gadgets. I rest my case, and... with you, I pick up my war flag.


My clarion call that shall rattle down these digital ages shall also echo aeons across my small and badly lit office!




Sunday, 18 January 2009

I can be followed on Twitter

I'm not doing much blogging at the moment as I am doing lots of writing, but I am also sending in inande thoughts and actions to Twitter at matripley

Saturday, 17 January 2009

Massive Civil Unrest In Truro Center!!! Resist!!!!


Dismantling The Hegemon, one kidz ride at a time.

Sunday, 28 December 2008

Bad Times, a Letter to Muji


To:Customer Services 
Muji Europe Holdings Limited 
8-12 Leeke Street 
London 
WC1X 9HT 


Dear Sirs/Hunnies,

I have long been a fan of Muji's functional minimalism. I believe your pencil cases are the stationary equivalent of a Zen Koan, and for this I thank you.

However, this festive season you failed me, and, in a deeper sense, you failed yourselves.


I received two Muji gifts from Santa, a pumice stone and an Egg Timer. The pumace stone was a well cut piece of solidified pyroclastic froth that will perform adequately upon corns and dry skin (which I currently dont posses). 

The egg timer leaves me with an incredulous sense of despair at your quality control. Both the package and the device specify it is a 3 minute egg timer but, after multiple tests, including the one on this youtube video, it saddens me to say the timer times a period of 2 minutes and 56 seconds.



I hope you will agree that a four second error is simply not acceptable when determining such relatively short metrics.

I like this egg timer, it looks good, and, before realising the temporal blasphemy this timer commits every time it times, I was going to carry it around with me to time things. This is no longer possible.

I am sure you will refund me whatever this item cost, but I don't want that. I want a either a three minute Muji egg timer that times for three minutes exactly, or twelve Muji egg timers with an error margin of no more than five seconds in either direction. This latter option provides the possibility that when needed I can use all twelve timers and average out the result. Thus, we would hope, achieving something like accuracy.

My address to send either one accurate, or twelve inaccurate, Muji egg timers is:

**********
********************



Once recvived I hope we can put this malign point in our supplier/consumer relationship behind us.

Warm regards,


Mat.....



Tuesday, 9 December 2008

Why the Illuminati are Good For Cornwall

I have been researching the big conspiracies for my new novel, Kingmaker. One of the things that keeps coming to me as unavoidable is how Pro-Illuminati I am becoming, especially with relevance to Cornwall. I guess it's much the same way that researching marine ecosystems would make you more pro-fish. I think that The Bavarian Illuminati may be seen in a bad light just because they are a shadowy secret government that's been influencing the Tides of Man since before the Euphratean slave camps discovered The Power of Few Over Many.


But I think if we could all get to understand the Illuminati better we would be able not only to serve them better but perhaps, in time, really have them open up to us. They are people too and though we only ever know about their generals, the Bildebergers, Masons and Churches, we must assume that they, in some sense, would rather feel loved than hated. Increase the Peace, even with your Hidden Overlord God Emperors.


So, rather than just saying that we should offer an olive branch to the Illuminati (clenched between trembling buttocks), I will outline why I think the Illuminati are A-OK 2 Me.


Firstly, they are European, and although I am not nationalistic in any bigoted sense, I just feel happier that the world's secret overlords are, like, from my patch of The Illuminati Hegemony. If it was the Americans or the Russians or the Chinese who really had been running the show for three millennia it would just seem a bit, I dunno, retarded. America wasn't even around then! 

Secondly, their principles of enslavement have evolved over the last three thousand years into something that is at least able to maintain a certain quality of life for the higher ranked prisoners as well as, relative to the ancient prisoners, much better chances of living into adulthood for the lower ranked prisoners. Every one is a winner with The Sons of Terah.


Thirdly, they are Smart and Smart is better than Dumb (Remember you can hate Bush and Brown and still be Pro-Illuminati). BecauseThe Real Illuminati are a quasi-totally-secret-society (“the line between two shadows is stronger than the edge of sword” Analogs of Terah CIXIXIIX) most people never get to hear about how smart they really are. Which is a shame. Making a best selling fiction novel exactly about them to destroy the sniff of them that people had after WWII and during the Cold War was a work of genius. Putting your secret overlord “tags” all over the place, Awesome! As was smuggling the debt of existence into religious guilt to gain extra shackleless control. Who would have come up with that today? Nobody!!! These guys, throughout history, have again and again trumped the prisoners at every turn. That's why they are the masters and we are the slaves. Respect.



Fourthly, when the Illuminati Hegemony is ready to fully homogenize the world into a global unified socio-economic slave camp where punishment is the absence of false-liberty and reward is relative to subservience/genetics there will at least be easier travel. Many of the barriers to global travel in the past have been due to secret conflicts with maverick secret governments who have accidentally discoveredThe Power of Few Over Many. When we are finally totally enslaved, thes boundaries won't be possible, which means less queues and more time on the beach for all of us.


Lastly, and most Importantly for Cornwall, when it comes to secret governments its consdiered better the devil you dont know than the one you do. This may seem counter intuitive, but remeber the entire edifice of your life is a facade covering the invisible bars of a slave camp, and thats much more counter-intuitive, Don't ya think? A Prince Charles is kind of a Secret Overlord in the sense that his overlording is secret, but he is a very public figure and I just cant help feeling that we ar being treated unfaily when the rest of the world has fully secret, secret slavemasters.


So, I hope like me you can see that Illuminati Hating and Baiting is just wasting their time – which is much more valuable than our time to the ultimate progress of humanity – and our own time, which you have very little of, and even less that isn't working to keep the prison running; satisfying its its multitude of requirements.


In the Long term The Illuminati are good for humanity and, in the medium term, I really think they can be better for Cornwall. Much better than the feelble shadow-puppet hands of the House of Windsor we have currently.

 

However, this raises my concerns for Cornwall; Historically the Illuminati have had no interest in Kernow at all. They sent a scouting expedittion from phonecia thirty centries ago and that was that, like Wales and the Faero Islands, Cornwall has simply not had anything the Illuminati need and this worries me. What happens when the world's population is fully enslaved, chipped and dipped apart from the Cornwall? What happens when we are on holiday in England  and dont have the right ID cards to use a public Toilet? Do we get left out of the free therapy drugs, comsumption implants and TV credits?


It happened with Motorways, Powerstations and A-Bomb testings and now its happening again with our probable exclusin from The Sons of Terah's evil plans, Cornwall comes last.  Every time:( 


Don't hate them, just because they own you.

Tuesday, 4 November 2008

Review: Piero's Ristorante & Pizzeria, Truro

In pursuit of pomodoro perfecto...

Where can you find MidCornwall's best pizza?  Is it on the same menu as the most mouthwatering melanzane mozzarella?  Is it accompanied by an above average avocado prawn? Wherever it is, I want to find it, eat it, and eat it again and again.  To paraphrase a cheesy movie I once saw: pizzas are like weddings: everyone likes them.  What's not to like?

Well.....actually, there's a lot not to like.  Like sweetcorn out of a tin, spinach out of a tin, pineapple out of a...you get the idea, and on one occasion, leftovers from a Sunday roast.  Rank.  Then you've got the 'deep pan', the culinary equivalent of David Grey.  I could go on.  But I won't, unless I meet such a ghoul on what I imagine will be an epic trek through as many restaurants with a pizza oven as I can stomach.

Restaurant number one: Piero's, Truro.

If I was the location scout for Life On Mars I would have them have dinner every night in Piero's.  There are pepper mills in there older than anything in the Royal Cornwall Museum.  But there's nothing wrong with eating in a Thatcher Years Italian Bistro theme park, provided the pizza is good.  But is it?

I went there last night with my Mamma, bambinis and esposa? (ok no more cod-Italian.  My husband).  All had pizza (vegetarian, kids', and the prosaically named 'multi topping') except Mamma mia, who had lasagne.  The place was much busier than we expected for a Wednesday night, and I think a fair bit busier than the management expected too, if the service was anything to go by.  The waiting staff were pressured, but always pleasant.  It took long enough to get served for my youngest to make and discard a party hat from her napkin, make two solo trips to the toilet and finally attempt sleep on her chair.  She's only four.  It was probably about 35 minutes.

But holy moley, when the pizzas arrived, everyone woke up.  It's not every day your dinner is in the shape of a rabbit's head with spicy sausage eyes.  For the record, I'd rather mine never was, but the kids were well impressed by the pizza pet portrait.  My own pizza was the usual round shape, and looked pretty appetising.  It had some zingy fresh spinach on it, a floury, broken crust and a fair tomato/ mozarella ratio.  Great.  Except for the presence of my own bete noir,  the rotten reanimated corpse of the once golden headed beauty queen of the vegetable kingdom, the dread yellow peril: sweetcorn.  

Once I had scraped off the offending veg, the pizza was actually pretty good.  Nice and crispy base and flavoursome fresh toppings.  The 'multi topping' pizza did indeed have a variety of things on it- vegetables, salami, bacon etc., but sadly no exotic items, like artichoke.  Must be the old credit crunch biting.  The lasagne, the size of a child's bed, was declared 'good'.

As we left, I wondered whether I could give Piero's a fair mark.  Whenever I eat there I'm with a big party.  Sometimes it's the extended family.  There are requests for extra olives, dozens of straws of the same or different colours, spills to be mopped up.  Or I'm with friends, talking loudly with our mouths full and ordering another bottle of house something.  The staff are always accommodating, the atmosphere is always festive and you never have to book.  What more could you want from an old fashioned family pizza joint?  I'm giving Piero's seven out of ten for the pizza itself. For the way it takes you back to your childhood quicker than roller boots, nine.


6/10
Kenwyn StreetTruro TR1 3DJ 
01872222279

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Stop the Cornish Henocide!!!!



Today, while researching the Cornish poultry industry, I stumbled upon a dark secret that I believe could shake the British chicken industry to its sick little stick-like knees.


Throughout these isles we eat chickens, especially the non-vegetarians, and what kind of chickens do we eat? Cornish Mother-Clucking Chickens!!! Yes! Its True!!! This outrageous fact is indisputable.


There is a line in Louis CK's stand-up routine where he speaks of how in Chinatown there are vats full of duck vaginas for sale, and he asks rhetorically (and paraphrased by me),  "how much more could you possibly dominate a species than by selling their vaginas in a vat?"


And he is right. But isn't this exactly analogous to the English Imperial Hegemony's decimation of our poultry population to feed the English proles' TV-induced yearning for Mc Nuggets?!!!!


Cornwall has many issues. I think I just found another.



STOP THE CORNISH HENOCIDE!




Saturday, 18 October 2008

Try My New Ultra Mobile Game! For Free In MidCornwall!


Over the years I have designed a number of computer games. MondoPondo is a multiplayer quiz game with adult Truths and Dares. In fact, MondoPondo Wilde was the World's first computer game for Lesbians. And thats a fact. Its now defunct but Lesbians are going strong. Though not at my parties. Alas.


I designed the vastly underplayed 22Kung (from the blurb:"Use your Monks and all your cunning to capture your opponent's Jade Fountain and become the master in a game that combines the tactical planning of Chess, the simplicity and gameplay of GO and the drama of Kung Fu.") which by now I was hoping to have been bigger than Sudoku and Online Poker combined. I think maybe the graphics could have been a bit better. 


And there there was Factland, which I designed a while ago, bought the domian, specced the game and then, stupidly, didn't repurchase. Lesson learnt.


But now I have a new multiplayer game that you can try for free. For reasons of public decency it is only playable by pairs of Male Humans where at least one of the pair is concenting to play. The game, that is causing a stirr, in at least the streets of my mind, is Eyebrow Tennis.

Eyebrow Tennis

How to Play: 

As you walk down the street and a man approaches you you must raise your eyebrows. This is your serve and the completion of the game. You must now decide who was victorious:

Winning and Lossing
  • If the man replies with a Brow Raise, then you are both winners.
  • If the man doesnt raise his eyebrows, then you are both losers.
  • If, as you approach, he raises his Brows before you, then he has won.


You will find, as you get better, that there is much skill, subtlety and cunning in the game's tactics. 

Not only is this a great new game for all the men of the world to play so that there may be unity and a lasting peace, thus stopping, once and for all, masculine aggression's cancerous hurricane upon humanity and the planet; it is also a Paradox of soritian import.




Sunday, 5 October 2008

Review, Gaudi's Resturant - The Best Resturant in Truro Right Now

On Saturday Night we went again to Gaudi's, the third time this year. It was just the two of us and the welcome and atmosphere was as expected. Friendly, intimate and modern.

 

The food, as with the other two times, was just fantastic, in fact, better than the last two times; the same can't be said for all Restaurants in Truro.

 

Starters

 

For starters I had scallops with black pudding that was just amazing. The scallops, I have never had them so perfect in taste and texture, Mmmmm yaaaaa yummy. Mind you, I would have preferred five rather than four of these molluscular marvels, but that is probably a symptom of my gluttony rather than the reality of my expectations.

 

Grenouille

 

In the early days of my courtship with my wife, back before the constant attrition of romance by kids and mortgages and hate, we had a fun bet for fifty pounds that I could be vegetarian. We were living in London and eating out lots and it soon dawned on me that I loved meat way too much.

 

So, via a process of negotiation, nagging and pleading I plotted a path of escape from pure vegetarianism that went taramasalata>muscles>fish>things that can swim>frogs (we had a French restaurant nearby) and finally to Duck

 

Duck!

 

I have never normally eaten Duck, but I did then, and I did on Saturday night. And it was very very very niceeroonie. In fact it was probably the best Duck I have had, apart from that shredded duck you get in Chinese restaurants – I’d be happy if every restaurant served just that, always.  It’s the only time I eat cucumber too.

 

Apart from in tatziki.

 

 

My indentured ex girlfriend had a stunningly tasty (my words, her experience) Artichoke salad for her starter and a "ground breaking" chestnut omelette made just for her because she had had the other two vegetarian options there before. Now that’s service!

 

 

Dessert

 

Bread and Butter puddings are one of the prime examples of emergent gastronomical  phenomena. From just some bread and a bit of butter a skilled Bread and Butter Chef can make a dessert so tasty that you would think it had been made of stuff other than just bread and butter. This happened on Saturday night. So tasty, so emergent.

 

 

 

Another highlight of the evening was us both getting quite squiffy on the Leffe. This is a strong Belgian beer that comes in little bottles and gets you pretty ramadangdingdonged in a nice way, unless you have more than four bottles.

 

 

In conclusion, Gaudi's is still the best restaurant in Truro, and, as far as I know, Midcornwall. It’s not a fast food place so expect to take up the whole evening, but with attentive service and a comforting vibe, that’s all good in this Cornish 'hood.

 

Gaudi's
8 Edward Street 
Truro 
TR1 3AJ 
Tel: 01872 227380

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

On Saturday at Porthowan, we made a spiral jetty and watched the sea take it away.

Wednesday, 3 September 2008

Prase Be To Mallets Home Hardware, Truro!!


Of late I have been battling much against The Hegemony. I got totally Screwed over by Orange (They really are evil) and I have had similar dalliances with deceptive practices by other aspects of The Hege'. 


But today, I took back a Yale Lock that I had purchased and opened erroneously, I assumed it was Exterior, it was not. 

There was nothing but  sincere customer care and service and they exchanged without issue.

Bravo to this small but great little company (I think I praised the St Austel branch here a couple of years ago on this blog.)

Mallets, you put the Heart in hardware.

We salute you.

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

Dear David Pyke and Reverend Peter Ninnis,

Dear David Pyke and Reverend Peter Ninnis (Truro Evangelical Church),


I read with such disappointment about your hateful protest at Cornwall's Gay Pride parade.

You say that Homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God and that the Bible is the justification for your homophobia. I think it its fantastic that you have the right to protest and voice your concerns, but, now I'd like a little say about your "lifestyle".


You base your lifestyle on a book that is provably and unquestionably:

  • Internally Inconsistent
  • Internally Contradictory
  • Historically Inaccurate

This book is an ad hoc compilation of various iron age myths and principles which wasn't "put together" until two hundred years after the purported life of Jesus.

I say "purported" because there is ZERO historical evidence for Jesus, not even amongst the comprehensive Roman and Jewish records of first century Judea.

Please don't let a letter from a stranger make you question your faith. Please go online and try to prove these claims wrong, you wont be able to.

The book that feeds your hatred is at best sincere religious fable, at worse, the cornerstone for a centuries old system of masculine control.

  • The Bible is not true.
  • Jesus probably did not exist.
  • The universe and all it contains is wonderful and explainable without God.

I hope you reflect on these facts far more than you have been reflecting upon what the Bible says about homosexuality,

Regards

Mat

Thursday, 3 July 2008

The Old Grammar School, Truro, a Hamletropolitan Reveiew

If you have ended up on this post looking for a traditional educational establishment in Cornwall's finest city, I am afraid Google has let you down again.

The Old Grammar School is situated in a Georgian building with high ceilings and a warm three dimensional feel. I'm not much of an amateur buildings archaeologist, but I have watched a few episodes of Time Team, and a documentary on Alexander the Great, and I think it the building might have started off to do with dairy production. Allthough other evidence in the building might suggest it was some kind of Cooper’s yard or perhaps a huffler's bump house?

Whatever it was originally, The Old Grammar School is a very well decorated and furnisherized venue. You walk in. Its nice. ‘Nuff said. Great building. But what is a building save for its bricks, mortar, care, style, decor, attention and aesthetic?


I need to tell you not just what it is, but how it is. And I think the best way to describe that is poetically.

/me dons polo neck



The Old Grandma School

You started on a Friday,
But I couldn’t make your call.
We had Folks round for dinner.
And on the Saturday, I had a boat trip.
Falmouth for pasties, St Mawes for beers.
JKQ:Whats better, Falmouth or Fowey?
JKA:Truro
We got the ferry back to the City,
Saturday late at night, not Sunday morn,
You had the kind of vibe, like an opening night.
But it was your second night, not first,
(So that was a good good sign)
And then on the Monday, me, beer , MK,
You were the host that I could boast,
I had drunk in you on "the second night"
"Great bar, that"
"Yea, I was there on the second night"
"Cool"
"Maybe"
And then I went on the 6th afternoon.
Drinking
With people:
The kind of people I drink with at 16:30 on a Thursday
Wife. Two Kids. And Tarryn.
Great Chips.
Really Great Chips
Great Beer
Cold Glasses, Frosty.
Really great chips.
And nice staff.


/me removes polar neck


The Old Grammar School
Little Brighton
Zone 1
Truro
Cornwall

(For long term readers (Clive) I do think these chips were better than these ones reviewed many moons ago here: Review: St Austell Brewery Tribute Beer Battered Chips . These are probably the best chips in Mid Cornwall right now.)






Wednesday, 4 June 2008

Bulletpoint Buddhism




I'm not a Buddhist scholar but I am a Buddhist and I like to think that I like to think.

Over the last seven years I have been pretty deeply involved in thinking about Dharma - the teachings of the Buddha, and trying to make this fit in with my personal attempts at understanding life and reality.


The Buddhism I have studied is the traditional teachings of the Buddha known as Therevadan Buddhism. I realised as soon as I started dipping my toes in this that it was much more level-headed and rational than I would have imagined; Dharma has evolved and taken up the effects of the cultures it took root in, this is never a bad thing, but, I believe, that it might make the core teachings less accessible to western rationalists, such as myself.


The following list of 3 Bulletpoints and their subs I believe captures the very core of Dharma; everything flows from the three doctrines of existence; Anicca, Anatta, Dukkha.


I have used the original Pali terms not to be pretentious but because, as an understanding will show, there simply are not the words or concepts in English to capture the essence of these complex, composite terms.

Please note that this is my interpretation and it is not complete.





Annica, Anatta and Dukka, The Three Marks of Existence

  1. Anicca: All causes have effects/All is impermanent
    1. Everything in existence changes over over time.
    2. All effects are causes.
    3. All causes have effects.
  2. Anatta: There is no soul/self/ego
    1. No Soul: The universe is self-contained and complete.
      1. There is no material beyond matter.
      2. No new ontological material or events are added to or connected with the universe it at any point in space-time.
    2. No Self: There is no thinker, only the thought.
      1. There is no central seat of experience;
        1. That idea is an illusion created as a by product of the fact that there are experiences.
      2. The totality of an individual is composed of an aggregate of the material and emergent mental sensations, experiences, thoughts and self awareness.
  3. Dukkha: Life is suffering
        1. This is the First Noble Truth, Dukka.
        2. Dukkha is unsatisfactoriness.
        3. Impermanence is Dukkha.
        4. Attachment to the idea of self is Dukkha
        5. The diminishing returns on excitement are Dukkha.
        6. Failed Expectations are Dukkha
        7. Angst and Pain are Dukkha
        8. Boredom is Dukkha
      1. Dukkha has a cause:
        1. This is the Second Noble Truth, Samudaya
        2. The precedent cause of Dukkha is the misvaluing of past and expected experience in an increasingly diminishing space of possible experiences.
        3. This creates a Tanha, a craving/thirst/want/attachment that necessarily has diminishing returns and cannot ever meet sustainable satisfaction criteria.
      2. Reducing Tanha reduces Dukkha:
        1. This is the Third Noble Truth, Nirodha
        2. All individuals have the capacity to manage their inner mental life and attempt to reduce Tanha.
          1. It may be possible to temporarily reduce the suffering of others but ultimately Dukkha can only be reduced from the inside.
        3. If Tanha is eradicated totally than Dukkha is eradicated totally (enlightenment).
      3. The Path to reduce suffering is The Noble Eightfold Path:
        1. This is the Forth Noble Truth, Magga.
        2. Magga divided into three domains, the Philosophical, the Moral, and the Mental
          1. Philosophical Development
            1. The Philosophical Aspect of Dharma is rich and challenging and consistent with contemporary science and philosophy.
              1. Right View
                1. To try to see the world as it really is.
                2. To understand Dharma and how the parts are connected.
                1. To be able to see Kammic Connections with increasing clarity internally and externally.
                  1. Kamma is the complex mental/moral/physical causal web that covers human experience and interaction.
                2. To be able to understand becoming and the origination of becoming.
              1. Right Thought
                1. Renouncing the self to become selfless.
                2. Cultivating compassion and morality
          1. Moral Development
            1. The moral aspect of the path is not based on the idea of a moral absolute but rather the practical and pragmatic point that you cannot travel well on the path if you are poisoned by the kammic results and internal/external distractions of the prohibited acts.
              1. Right Speech
                1. To always speak the truth. Honesty is essential to Practice of Dharma. Lies have kammic consequences that can never be predicted and should be avoided even in cases where it is not in ones self interest (though this would not be without exception, of course)
                2. To speak without anger and abuse
                3. To speak with good intention
                4. Not to gossip
              1. Right Action
                1. Not to kill. The taking of life, most especially human life, is wrong.
                2. Not to steal
                3. Not to commit sexual misconduct
                4. Not to be intoxicated.
              1. Right Livelihood
                1. Do not partake in activities that could increase the suffering of others.
          1. Mental Development
            1. Buddhism treats the mind as a body organ that can be exercised and trained.
              1. Right Effort
                1. To analyse and eradicate disruptive mental states
                2. To understand and induce beneficial mental states
              2. Right Mindfulness
                1. To practice inner attentiveness.
                2. To be focused and aware of the sensations, perceptions and thoughts that constitute the mind
              3. Right Concentration
                1. Suppressing worry, distraction, doubt, restlessness
                2. One pointedness of mind







The live and better formatted version of this can be viewed in my google docs here:


http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgxw9rth_344vkzqzfgz

Thursday, 15 May 2008

What is the Purpose of Life in Cornwall?

The natural state of reality is systemless. It is disorder not order. It is less rather than more. It is simple rather than complex. It is low in value and information. The natural state of reality is devoid of complex and connected systems.

Persistence is existence into the future. Given the natural systemless state of reality the only systems that can persist are those that are able to defeat the collapse into the natural state.

Imagine a system at a point in time. If we accept the Law of Impermanence then it follows that this system must change at some point in it's future. This change can either increase the system's arcitechtonics (make the system more organised, structured, connected) or it can decrease it. The natural direction is for systems to decrease arcttechtonically.

All of everything is tending towards nothing and it is only the persistence of systems, you, me the galaxy, that holds this of.

The very root fundamental purpose of life, traceable through a linear and continuous, though vague, path down through the scaled of abstraction;
Beneficial states persist.

The foundational fact of systems is that beneficial states persists. The beak of a finch, a job promotion, the distribution of matter in the universe, beneficial states persist.

The fittest survive. The beneficial persist. In many ways these are trivial and tautological, but in in understanding this tautology with the systems framework you can see why things are as they are. They are as they are because of enough impermanence (time and change and possibility) to allow increasingly more complex systems to emerge from more simple systems.

That is why we are here. The purpose of being here is to continue the persistence of systems. And the method of doing this is by increasing beneficial states within systems.


There is no fundamental meaning to life in Cornwall, in the way there is no fundamental meaning to a joke, but there is a fundamental purpose to life in Cornwall.

:)

Friday, 9 May 2008

The Straight Guide To Queer Clubbing in Cornwall

As all of you know, Saturday is the last night for Cornwall's only gay club; Eclipse is closing down. In the heart of Truro's Little Brighton a swan song shall be sung.

I have been here four or five times in the last three months and rate it as Truro's best night night out, being 29% better than Pippa's Disco - which is still pretty fun.


So the writing is on the wall, the only time, perhaps for decades, when you will be able to dance and enjoy the gay atmosphere of a gay club in Kernow, is tomorrow night.

This could be bigger than the millenium bug.

So.....

I am sure loads of straight guys and girls are going to take this chance to party hearty with the Boys from Brazil and the Girls from Lesbos!!!!

"Alpha Base Six, that's a copy. Repeat. We have Sapphists in the demilitarized zone."

If you are gay or a straight female (i.e. bi) then stop reading now. Turn up tomorrow and do what you do. As for now, go and check your facebook/gaydar, the rest of this post is for straight men only.



MEN ONLY NO WOMEN PAST THIS POINT


The Midcornwall.com Straight Guide To Queer Clubbing in Cornwall

FACT 1: Most gay people are just like most straight people with two notable exceptions:
FACT 2: Gay men are often more flamboyant than their straight counterparts
FACT 3: Gay women are often more serious than their bisexual female counterparts.


Once you understand these facts, its easy to mingle, laugh and boogie-woogie with the rainbow massive... but you may need to become "Gay Aware" to really flip pancakes with the homies.

Its revision time boys!


Q1: Should I be worried about gay rape?


If you are a man and are worried about women raping you, then yes you should probably be worried about gay rape as well, otherwise you would be discriminating against a demographic; which is wrong.

Q2: Do I need to worry about what I wear?

Absofrickinglutly! Your not sitting in "Ye Old Smugglers Pub," you're at the forefront... the only
front of the Cornish Gay Club scene. My advise, seek female advise.



Q3: Do I need to worry about what not to wear?

Avoid chaps and chiffon.



Q4: Is there a "Darkroom"

No, but on the 3rd floor of the multi-story, besides the aircon manifold, is a suitable space. Always be safe, make sure your ticket is valid for the entire night.


Q5: What should I drink?

One of the great things about gay clubbing is.... get this... NOBODY CARES about what you drink. So cut loose and maybe try an alcopop or a cocktail.



Q6: Should I drink poppers?

No.


Q7: What If I find out I am gay whilst at Elcipse?

Your life will change significantly, though not necessarily negatively. It really depends on your situation; wife and 3 kids, could be awkward.




Q8: How easy are lesbians to "turn from the pink side"?

Generally quite hard. You need to remember that lesbians are the most disenfranchised of the gender preference demographic and, as such, they have probably had a lifetime of guys thinking they can "convert" them.



If you still think you have the Kaunas to turn 'Lang into poontang then you still ain't got enough. You need to know The Secrets. Which I am about to tell you.


MEN ONLY NO WOMEN PAST THIS POINT (THAT'S A REMINDER)

The Secrets

Secret 1: All of us know that if you're aiming to seduce a woman you must not be too friendly, because then you end up being their friend, which is not the plan.
This is perhaps the key axiom of lady luring. However with lesbians it's actually the exact opposite, you have to be their friend first. Only once you are her friend, is there any chance of creosoting the vicarage fence with her.

Secret 2: Most girls are lesbians really, they just don't know it, and as us guys have known since the time of Abraham, its best we don't tell them.

Secret 3: Most lesbians really are lesbians. I didn't realise this was the case, but, a life of inner recreational lesbianism has shown me that it is.






Q9: Are hard looking muscle gay men as hard as they look?

I'm not sure but I know what you mean. Often gay men can look scary, espcially the big German bears, but Eclipse is a very zero aggro place, which is one of its charms. The only hassle I have ever had there is from a lesbian throwing ice cubes.

(Incidentally if your at work reading this try a Google Image search for "big German bears gay dildo" and see if you can see Boscowan St.)


LADIES WELCOME BACK

So, there we have it. We are the world. We are the people. This is the church. This is the steeple.

I will end this post with a thought


Friday, 2 May 2008

Quick Review: Baba Indian Restaurant, Truro, 0/10

This restaurant is probably the worst restaurant in Truro right now.It's run by a fascist regime who decree that:

  1. You cannot have poppadoms before you have ordered your meal. Achtung! Das Ist Verboten!!
  2. If you order the Phal, and then ask for it to be hotter, this will cost you "About £1.50". I have eaten the hottest Indian in Indian restaurants all over the fricking planet and never ever ever ever has anyone had the audacity to charge extra. Its fricking preposterous!
  3. If, after waiting 40 minutes for your main and ten to get a new drink you try to raise your finger to get some much needed attention you become instantly lambasted as a colonialist biggotpig who "must never do that".
  4. The Poppadoms were unremarkable.

We walked out, before the food, but if the food is anything like the service or attitude, nil points.


Saturday, 26 April 2008

Wooop Wooop

Its 10 to one in Truro.

I have been out with the creme of the Cornish patriots, great fun, great people, and now I'm going out with the creme de la creme of the Cornish gay scene, to Eclipse, again.. wooop wooop.

I'm not gay but I am Cornish!!

And English!!!

And human!!!

Woop woop




Update, Sunday, 10.33 am. Truro. Woop.

Wednesday, 23 April 2008

Truro: One Year In The City, A Metrospective

I have lived in the heart of four Capital Cities: London, Colombo, Sydney and, for the last year, Truro, the capital City of Cornwall. As a boy, Truro was that distant place, where my mum would buy my dad lots of socks in M&S (Before they did food) and I would be very unimpressed by the wallets, also in M&S. It was a distant place, the roads were slower then, a slowness augmented by my mum's Talbot Horizon.


Until recently... Truro was not what she is now....


But now, she has blossomed.

Me, and my family, and the people we meet who live here, and the people who come from all over to visit us, all agree, even the skeptics, that Truro is really good as a place to be. Much better than expected, and we expected it to be good.

These are my comments upon this City of Three Rivers


Location, Location, Location , Location and Location

Truro's Location, in the local and duchy sense is great. Its on the right side of The Grampound Line and its close to a variety of types of places, beach, river, forest, moore and of course, funky lil' city center....

Buildings of the Past, in the Future


Architecturally and Geographically, Truro is impressive. The cathedral, the Georgian buildings, the big wide streets and the rivers and alleyways. Its a great center to meander through.

Thats the dull stuff done... lets move onto the slightly less dull stuff....


In Our Leisure, we do not weep


Recreationally, I cant imagine another place of this size packing this kind of punch. And it seems to be getting better all the time, especially at the weekends. Good Bars and even goodish clubs for wide range of ages and funk-levels. Sure, it lacks much in the way of a recreational sex and drugs culture, but Quintessential Sells Spice Gold, and there is always the internet;)


These are the best places to go out in Truro right now:

  • Bar Q-dos
  • Bijous
  • Eclipse Disco
  • Kazbah
  • One Eyed Cat
  • Pippa's Disco
Stop, Dinner Time

So long as you don't go to the rubbish restaurants, every restaurant in the city is super for both dinner and lunch. Though as with many similar formed microconurbations, brunch, the "
forgotten meal" is not very well catered for. This may change. Fingers crossed.


These are the best restaurants in Truro right now:


  • Bustopher's
  • Chantek
  • Katmandu
  • Manning's
  • One Eyed Cat
Super! Markets! Well stocked for consumption!


Truro, like all other places in the developed world, is in close enough proximity to enough major retailers to provide us with sufficient choice of items to propagate the required consumption anxiety to distract us from the meaningless of our lives and the guilt we should be feeling as we let the rest of the world explode, almost silently, in a cataclysm of over population and underinterest. I guess my only real gripe is that I would prefer Lidl to Aldi.



Little Brighton: The Gay Mecca of Kernow

Before I came to live in Truro if I wanted any kind of man2man or woman2manpretendingtobeawoman action I needed to go cottaging in Grampound road, or pop round to my brothers. But in the last year Truro has gone from full on dull-o-hetrosexual to fully metrosexual and, in places, even bisexual and homosexual.

Its like Rio carnival all year round, and you don't have to be gay to smile:)

The Hospital



When I lived in St Austell the idea of having a massive brain embolism that wipes out most of my cognitive faculties seemed quite worrying, because Trelisk hospital was so far away, but since moving to Truro this worry is gone. Especially since most of these kind of embolisms take place at night when you can get from "home to hozzer" in about three mins in an ambulance, or five in the Honda Jazz.



The Ladies


Most women in Truro dress well and look good, I salute you!

FYI, in St Austell, I'd probably only raise my glass to about 30% of the women, based on effort alone. And I don't consider myself picky.


The Idiots


When you have enough people in once place, you are bound to get some idiots in the mix, this is a list of Truro's idiots.
  1. The manageress of the Three store in Truro.
  2. The man in the council who decided not to steralise all seagulls in Truro
  3. The man in the CD shop opposite Quintessential (He might not be an idiot, but he is VERY VERY grumpy)
  4. The person who checks Tesco's cherry tomatoes for rotten ones (assuming thats done in store).
  5. Me! ha ha ha ha zzzzzzZZzzz.....

Conclusion

Truro. Metrorural. You are the best city South West of London.

Saturday, 19 April 2008

My Thoughts On Being Sacked


I have been sacked many many times. My mum thinks I'm proud of this fact, and she is often right. I have never been sacked for dishonesty or unadulterated laziness, I have invariably been sacked because of:

  1. My inability to get on well with assholes.
  2. My inability to get on with women bosses who I find kinda sexy.

Luckily I have been sacked more times for the latter than the former. I have never been sacked because of a "reshuffle" but this I think is because I have never been employed long enough.

I have also been "self-sacked" many times. I self-sacked myself from work as an Encyclopedia salesman because I couldn't sell anything. I was also self-sacked from work in a sex-shop, I guess I just needed greener pastures. There have been a few jobs I have literally run away from after an episode of self-sacking.




Being sacked doesn't need to be the shameful blot on your CV, so long as your not a dishonest office sex pest, it may very well be a liberating rebirth into a new world of career possibility. Or not. I really cant say.


Incidentally, I havent been sacked for a decade, but I may be on a lucky streak.

My thoughts on "The Who"

As a boy I loved The Who, for all the reasons people loved, and love, The Who.

But then came the 90's and The Who didn't really fit with the non-prescription pharmaceuticals of the Era, so I put them on hold in terms of my listening.




Then as the 90s came to an end I started to get very much back into them.
Until....


Townsendpaedeogate in 2003.


Sex with children is fine if by "children" you mean "consenting adult humans who have parents".....


But the accusations against Pete Townsend where not implying that simple tertiary relationship. So, being a great follower of tabloid-herd mentality, I decided to throw away my MP3 Who Discography and place the The Who's corpus very much along side Jordi Chandler's police statement.


BBC4 on a Friday Night

But last night, my Wonderful Wife and I stumbled upon a BBC showing of a two hour documentary about The Who. From the first moment we were gripped. Golly-gosh what a rock and roll story like no other. What a band!

There were many moments where I felt like I was watching Napoleon commanding battle or Michaelangelo painting, such is the status of their product and magnificence.

Is he or isn't he?

In the documentary they mentioned Townsendpaedogate and everyone came out to say, "of course he isn't a kiddiefiddler, no way Jose." But you can't just follow what you hear unquestioningly like you are just part of a flock. So this morning, listening to The Who, I asked myself this simple question:

Is the evidence for Townsendpaedogate significant enough to outweigh the facts that everyone thinks he is innocent, including the English legal system and the fact that he is a musical genius.
So in my head I visualized a 3 axis mind-graph, with the axes being Evidence (of paedophilia), Opinion (on evidence), Quality (of Music).


I did some samples based on past paedobrities and found a pattern, a planar continuum of separation within the bounds of the hyper-visualized mind-graph.


The line bisects the cube on the evidence/opinion plane increasing against an increase of 2.4/7.1. So it's quite steep in the opinion bias. (If you are having trouble visualising this you might want to pop into Mathematica and do it in a computer.)




I will call this bisecting plane the JK Discontinuity because Jonathan King sits very close to it in the positive side. Glitter, Jackson , et al are down in the bottom of the cube, below the JKD... but where was Peter Townsend?
I visualised.....

There is no spoon.


Woooooot!!! He was in the top half of the graph!!! A few mind-centimeters from Bill Wyman, in fact!

I didn't need an explanation as to why Pete Townsend joined American Childsex sites, no sir. That question was now not needed. Neuroclustuer, locate. Neurocluster, delete.

Reboot


I am happy, The remaining Who are happy, and the kids, almost certainly, are alright.



Originally on my other blog, salted.net

Monday, 24 March 2008

My thoughts on inappropriate underpants

Today I had the kids at home all day; they are both under six but talking.


It was one of those days when I try to avoid them as much as possible, even though I am their guardian. There is an age old principle in parenting,
if they are crying, they are probably not dying, and this something I adhered to. But come about three I decided it would be good to at least give them one activity that didn't involve asking them to leave my office when there was an advert on whatever TV channel they were watching.



So I decided upon that stalwart, Victoria Park and associated Children's Playing Facilities



They got dressed up as a bunny and a dog, as often they do, and I knew that I needed to get changed.


And for that, I needed underpants.



My domestic assistant does my washing. It's not a sexist thing, it's not a lazy thing. I do my things, she does hers. One of hers is doing my washing. And I must say, apart from the occasional fabric over-softening, She can't be faulted. But today, for the first time since I hired her, I was out of underpants.


There weren't even any available dry "one dayers" that any right minded guy would resort to. It was not a conspiracy, it was a black hole of underpants caused by the collision of various domestic singularities. It was the Perfect Storm (welcome to the first ever use of a storm metaphor to represent a lack of underpants).



I had two impatient kids dressed as super-sized pets standing in the hallway and I has no underpants. But I had options. Until you're strapped to the nuke, you always have options.

  • Go Bareback - I don't really like to do it. I don't know why. Its not just hygiene, there are chafing issues. There is the higher probability of "monkey tears" after the use of a urinal.
  • Go To Marks and Spencers and get some - it's just down the road. But it would probably involve leaving the kids at home.
  • Wear some of my wife's- I don't really have "transsexual" issues about this, I just don't like the idea of my wife wearing panties that I have worn. She is above that, in my mind.
  • Wear Swimming Trunks - There they were, in my drawer. In the drawer sans underpants, a pair of swimming trunks that would make an ideal pair of pants. Bingo!

Off we went. It emerged as an issue in my head, after a quarter of a mile, that my McGivered underpants would, for the rest of the day, be a real-time dual-side scrotal garrotte, with each step.


I tried to persevere, but it was just a few steps later that I realised that each step would also be but a stage in an endless cycle of self-wedgifying.
I had to go bareback. And I had to go bareback fast.


Bear Grills




I got out my ever-handy pocket Swiss Army Knife and cut the right side. I walked a few paces and cut the left side. That was that... I thought.


Even though there was a full collapse of underpant topology and morphology with those two cuts, the underpants would not budge. The fabric, 90% Nylon, 10% Elastic, grips like a goat on a bramble, and so there was not going to be any lateral sheer between my balls and this alien skin. No sir-eeeee, Bob.



I had to go in.


Both hands.


I want you to pause for a moment and imagine a man standing in the middle of a pavement accompanied by two young girls, dressed in a full-on bunny suit and dog suit, tails, ears the works, and this person has both of their hands in their trousers, to the forearms, and is "aggressively fidgeting".



I pulled and pulled the front side was free... then the back... it kind of fell like a flat jellyfish into the seam of my trousers and I thought rather than extract, I would leave... I had achieved my goal.... la liberte du lingeree.


I was done. Free!


My kids by now had run off. I closed my knife away and looked behind me. There, standing watching me, were four workmen working on the road.


There was a hiatus in my head. I raised my hands and shrugged and all I said, with an accompanying (I guess) dumb-looking smile, was , "There's nothing to say!" before I ran off after the two kids.... expecting at any moment to be gunnded down by a Black Ops Paedocopter.... To die a nonce with my makeshift pants slithered down my leg.



Originally posted on my other blog.

Sunday, 2 March 2008

Review, My thoughts on Gaudis, Truro

Four of us went to this well recommended restaurant, and it was great.


The food was really really good, the service, the works.


When the biggest downside of a restaurant is the fact that the dessert you have is too rich, you know the meal is special. The dessert in question was a highly concentrated singularity of pure chocolatey richness. In the end I made a five pound bet with Tarryn that she couldn't complete mine, after her light Lemon Posset... she accepted. She didn't complete... so rich was this confection of delectation.


Before desserts, as with other Cornish restaurants, we were served the main course. We all ate something different... it matters not what... for suffice to say, all were were universally described as the best of foods.

We took a highly accurate Straw Poll and the average was 8.5. However in my dictatorial and editorial capacity I am not counting the 9s. A nine here would be an unrealistic vote; a 9 would be something like The Fat Duck with all your friends and your favourite people from history.... 10 would be God's own chef.


There were some downsides:


  • No Draft Beer. This is one of the ten anti-precepts of modern restauranteering. It is right up there with other atrocities such as underdressed salads and over ebullient front of house who is quite slimy and you don't really trust him, and guess he ain't to fond on you either, so much so that you always order two of everything to reduce the chance, by 50%, of ever eating his bogey etc.
  • Only one one toilet, and that was disabled.


And there was one undecided:

  • The kitchen is right there in the room. With zero partition, you can gaze into the fray. You see it all... the entire kitchen spectacle takes on a show-like quality, sans Ramsey. Its a distraction, maybe a good one. But ultimately it changes the experience, maybe shaves a little slither from the Parmesan of intimacy. Maybe.

Gaudis is an interesting take on a modern restaurant that serves fantastic, significantly locally sourced, food.

Not cheap but great value.

Right now, Its the best restaurant in Truro. And thats official.

Gaudis Truro 01872227380

Wednesday, 27 February 2008

Readers Letters: St Austell Jail

So the Restormel Council leaders do not consider St Austell to be a suitable position for Clear Springs to house prisoners, and are strongly objecting to the Ministry of Justice. Funny that. How strange. I would have thought that a council that has allowed a rehabilitation centre for ex offenders with a drink or drugs habit in the middle of a town regeneration project would not really mind. I hear they are also considering an application for 8 additional bedsits at this site as well. That will be interesting! Wonder what will happen there…

Face facts – St Austell has enough of its own problems without importing more!! Has anyone walked down Truro Road, one of the main routes into the town, lately? Seen the broken glass, the dog mess, and the empty alcohol containers on the granite monument outside Belfield Park? Does St Austell appear more like a town bidding for rehabilitation centres or a town desperate to tempt in big names into a brand new shopping centre? Has a precedent been set?

So why are the council supporting public opinion and objecting now? Quite simply politics. There was unrest at the Belfield Park announcement last year. Now the latest news will affect more residential areas. There could be a huge backlash…and politicians do not like a public backlash. It makes them nervous. Well, certainly not in their back yard anyway…

Dave W

Friday, 22 February 2008

Yadabot: MidCornwall to trial ivnnovative Instant Messenger Bot

This is a world exclusive! OMG this is the equivalent of Windows Ultra Vista 2010 being released as a DVD on the front of The St Austell Voice! For free!!

Yadabot sits on your MSN, Yahoo or Googletalk instant messenger list, just like your friends and workmates....

If you don't need it, its just there... on your PC, Mobile, PDA, anywhere where you have messenger.

When you need it, you can send it messages, and it will send you back a message with a responce. EG


calc 300 kg in stone
french how much is a double room for 3 nights
ebay ipod touch
wiki probus cornwall
russian please don't turn off the gas
news truro uk
calc 2000 euro in indian rupee
imdb raiders of the lost ark
def irony
calc sqrt( 23+7-9*(34/8))+89



To sign up (It's free), just add the relevant messenger buddy to your messenger list:


msn: yadabot@yadabyte.com
yahoo:yadabotyb
gtalk:yadabot@gmail.com




There is much work to be done on tidying and speeding the responses and there are soon to be more active commands, as opposed to reference commands.

We will be adding some funky useful stuff....

email any comments to blog@midcornwall.com

Thanks!



Sunday, 17 February 2008

The Beerpiphany of St Carlsburg, Part Two: Avoidance of the Alcoholocaust

The mega-myriad readers of my blog will know that I have a problem with alcohol. I'm not an alckie, I'm not even a big drinker. But when I drink, whether I end up sober, or so drunk I bone a bollard, my hangovers are evil. Invariably I enter a state I term the alcoholocaust.



In case you didn't know, hangovers are rated on the the H:E ratio (Hangover:Ebola ratio). The relative proportion of the hangover has a psycho-phsyiologiocal equivalent to Stage 3 Ebola. As a point of reference, a 19 year old rugby playing Russian would typically have hangovers with an H:E of 1:480. When you have an average H:E of 2, things get pretty bad. That's basically half an Ebola; an experience that can change you, as a man, deep inside.


Here am I, 36, with an H:E of a 68 year old.


Two weeks ago I went for a casual drink with my wife. I hadn't drunk much, maybe four pints... certainly not six. The next day, for literally about three hours I thought I had at least Marburg, possibly full-on Ebola. I was haemmoraging bile from my nose, which, considering my wife is a vegetarian, isn't very nice. At all. I pretty much puked myself into a mobius strip... inside the latrine. It was hell.
There is a scant dignity remaining in life when four pints can do that to you. This much, now, is clear.....




It gets worse...


In the week I'm out for a drink with my dad and Conan. I was sober, we all were sober, I had max four pints... the next day... gesus fricking cristos.... another bout of full scale gastro-meltdown....


Que pasa?
"Feels like Lassa"

It is 2008. I had to take action. I went into Boots in the wonderful City of Truro. I asked the pharmacist if he could help me out with some sort of pre-emptive hangover cure. Yes, yes he could, he said.... but he couldn't.... he only sold what The Hegemony wanted him to sell... and that was just Resolve.

Resolve is not a cure. It is an insult to the cause. I knew I needed to go deeper...



  • I started researching, learning, understanding. I was becoming a sage of alcohol. But even with the vast power of the internet I found no cure for my kind of alcoholism: high hangover susceptibility.
  • I went far into the neurophysiology of alcohol on synaptic-dysfucntion.
  • I searched for the philosophers stone of beer.
  • I saw, under electron microscopy, how the decompositionals of alcohol by the body's organs effect the same neuro-receptors as those effected in auto-nausaic reactions, ie, the two finger tonsil tango.
  • I fed rats Chocolate Liqueurs for months and watched them get more and more sleepy and podgy.
  • I even went into the matrix and saw the back-end code for drunkenness as sensation and behaviour.


From fermentation
To defecation
And urination
There was no part of the alcohol equation
That was not very much, in my acquaintion








Last night I found the answer.

I didn't find it by luck. This was not muttered to me by some crazy from the crazyhouse...no wiki gave me tell.... this was found... by investigation... meditation.... dedication... and insight....


There comes a time in a quest
When you must do what is best
When you must make, and take, the test
When you must stand beyond the rest

And the answer... this
enlightenment I bring to you.... this extinguishing of the alocoholocauststic anguish.... is summed up in the Four Noble P's which much be practiced before alcohol induced sonoration kicks in. The Four Noble P's, these which I have discovered, are the right and clear path out of Alcoholocaust:

The Four Noble P's
  1. Pint (of water)
  2. Pizza (purchased/prepared previously)
  3. Pint (of water)
  4. Paracetemol.

Perfectimondo.... Sunday morning.... I get up.. I check myself... and ?


Ebola?
"No la!"
Feelin' good?
"I'm feelin' fine?"

What's the time?
"Ten past nine"

AM?

"Amen..."
Having fun?
"Going for a run..."











The Beerpiphany of St Carlsburg, part one, is on salted.net



Friday, 8 February 2008

Exhibition Review: Of All the People Of The World, Truro Catherdal

I have just come back from the "Of All the People Of The World" exhibition at the Truro Cathedral.

The idea is to use grains of rice to represent individuals and then make heaps of rice that represent various demographic, statistical or trivial facts as piles on the floor.

The biggest pile was for "People with HIV in Sub Saharan Africa". I guess it was about the size of a badger. Then there were smaller piles for things like "Number of people who have walked on the Moon" and the "Number of Visitors in Cornwall in 2007."

It was interesting, but I am not sure really what it was trying to represent as significant, and aesthetically it wasn't very rich.

Sure, there was the suggestion of "global causes, man", and it was a mind-catching portrayal of humanity as quantity, but I left with not much else. Importantly there was no mention of overpopulation as a problem: www.dropthepop.org

As a footnote, it was strangely comforting to know that there are not really THAT many child soldiers (a heap about the size of a ciabatta).






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Thursday, 7 February 2008

Futureblog: How my husband discovered my affair.

Sorry I haven’t been posting for ages, its been a bit of a nightmare:( Last week my husband found out that I had been having an affair for the last two years. The dust hasn't settled and we are in mediation, my mother hates me, my brother called me a "Harlot" and Jeff is devastated. As you know we have no kids, but nonetheless, eight years in its looking all over.


I am angry. Jeff is angry. We are angry with different things.

Readers of this blog will know that four months ago Jeff had a mass noted in his left lung during a routine work medcheck. It was small, about the size of an almond, but there where it shouldn't be. He went for some more tests, all paid for by his private insurance, and they found that is was cancerous. They would need to operate and give him some reparative stem therapy for the damage. We were assured that everything would be OK, and on the cancer front it was. A month later it was gone and the damage close to being repaired.

We both felt very lucky.

The day Jeff got the final all clear he also got a paper letter from his private insurance. It started off talking about the success of his recent treatment, etc etc. Then, on the next paragraph it was stated that:

We have evidence that you have been undertaking in activities that contravene your insurance declaration and, under agreed terms of your policy, we will be investigating this evidence further.

It went on with a load of legal talk and recommendations that seemed helpful and friendly. Jeff and I were shocked and couldn't think what they could be talking about. He called his lawyer, who liaised with the insurance company and, a few days later, gave us the low-down. Once the claim was made the insurance company went into "automated refutation" mode. Bots and engines owned by the company tried all they could to disprove the claim. Its how it is nowadays, I guess.

They found a face that looked 93.3% matched to Jeff in someone’s public Goggle album. It was a picture taken on Cay Caulker two years ago. The lawyer got us a copy of the photo in question. The man in the photo, that they said was Jeff, was hidden away in the background on a trestle table in a dimply lit bar or restaurant. The photo was just in an album of some German holiday makers.

In the photo the man was smoking, like people do from time to time on holiday. That was all they needed. The bot sent out the paper letter and the ball started rolling. It transpired that because the facial match was below the required 98% threshold (stipulated by the insurance company) they needed to do more investigation. Jeff’s lawyer said that even if it was 99% match a digital photo couldn’t be evidence without a locked watermark.

The insurance company needed to prove with close to certainty that Jeff had been smoking within the last 5 years, and they were like a pack of hyenas in pursuit of this. They got subpoenas from wimax providers, google, yahoo, ISPs. Even from his work; things like the cams that overlook the outside foyer. We were pretty sure no humans were involved in this. The various bots and engines sent messages and requests to each other. And as it all rolled out, we were kept constantly updated with emails. Trust me, until you have been involved with this kind of process you have no idea how clever and frenzied it all is.

Jeff was in such a panic. He talked about having to mortgage the house, sell the car, downgrade this and that. All in all it was a time filled with as much, though not the same calibre, tension as the cancer scare.

They must have looked through zillions of images and cams, checked millions of store records for a purchase of cigarettes. They found nothing and the claim remained intact. We were ecstatic and feeling the luckiest people two times in as many months.


A fortnight ago I was watching "Deal or No Deal" on my specs and he came in with a frown like I hadn't seen. He was holding a printout.

"What do you make of this?" he asked, handing me the paper.

I took the specs off and started to read the paper. It was from "Cavendish Detection". I looked at it for a moment, confused. Then I read it. I couldn't believe it. I read it again. I don't have a copy of it but it in essence it said

"Dear Mr Sills, we have found evidence that suggest with a high degree of reliability that a person or persons close to you have been partaking in actions that we feel you would think are dishonest... bla bla bla.... If you would like to see this evidence please contact us....bla bla bla.... and pay $5,000...."

My world melted right then, but, after lying to him for two years, I lied some more and just said something like, "Its spam or 414". I don't know why I lied but it was too late, really.

That night I went to their website, Cavendish Detection. This despicable company is one of the new pre-emptive detective agencies. I didn't really know about them until that point, but, my god, I hate them. So should you!

Employee fraud, adultery, child illegality. These bastards it seems would analyze publicly available information and find "dishonesty" wherever it could be found. They then go to the parties concerned and sell them the evidence they have found. Despicable. You should go read the news on these companies, they should be illegal. I may be an adulterer, and I will carry that guilt with me for ever, but these bastards have no right to cause the trouble they do.

Jeff couldn't sleep and my lie became bigger, day by day. I’m so sorry. For a week he would say thing like "Maybe its Kalvin and the club money?" or whatever. All the while I was pretty sure that it was me and my affair that the bastards had the evidence on. I tried to play it down, and I’m sorry for that too, but after week of sleepless nights, Jeff decided that he would pay. Jeff always equates cost with clothes and for him this was just "a couple of pairs of shoes".

I didn’t know he was going to pay right then, but on this Saturday night, he got out of bed and paid the bastards. They obviously sent him a media file. This was all the evidence he needed. He didn’t wake me, he forwarded me the mail and, when I woke up on the Sunday, he was gone. I’m sorry Jeff.

I didn’t open his mail until lunch time. He wasn’t answering my calls, his GPS and messenger was off. I was in a panic. I opened the media file and went through the professional presentation. I was thinking there might be a photo of Mark and I checking into a hotel, or holding hands as we walked down the street in Prague. It was none of that. No soap opera style revelation.

I met Mark at a my cousins barbecue about two years ago when Jeff was away on business. We clicked though nothing happened for, like, four months. I met him a few more times that summer. We started private messaging each other (Which the bastards couldn’t read) and it grew from that. We were in it for the excitement, for the illicitness. It was that illicit buzz that kept it lasting so long, I guess. (Mark is also married).

Together we took all the precautions we felt we would need to keep our affair secret. But it wasn’t so. Our private messages remained private, but the bastards presented Jeff with a chart of the timings of these messages down to the second. You could see nothing what was said but that so much was said. The same with email timings and access points, did you know they keep all this?

It was shocking the detail they went to. I will never forget there was a gvideo of a cat falling into a sink that was pretty funny, I saw it and private messaged it to Mark. It was there in the bastard’s report, that this video had been watched by both parties within eight minutes.

The evidence never named Mark (I don’t even know if they knew who he was) but they did show that whoever it was wore size 12 shoes, aftershave and liked to watch lez porn vidcasts… and so on.. and on.

As the presentation rolled on and my dignity slipped away there was hope that I could pass this off as an “online fling”. An indiscretion, nothing more. But then there started to be the real world connections, and these were my final damnation.

When we met we always were very cautious not to get caught. We would never share bills, taxis, flights or anything that might leave some kind of evidence that either of our partners might stumble upon. But these precautions didn’t matter to the bastards, they just went around them.

There were three dozen occasions when myself and whoever had the size 12 shoes accessed the net from the same town. A not improbable coincidence. But looking at the map in the presentation, it was pretty clear that these “connection windows” were not coincidences. I’m sorry Jeff.

Even more incriminating; there were sixteen pairs of payments over two years that were from the same vending point in a range places (hotels, restaurants, even swimming pools). These payments were separated by seconds. As a sinister knife in my side, Cavendish Detection even offered Jeff the chance for “further investigation” including the “procurement of supporting video and other evidence”. The bastards. But I guess Jeff didn’t need that. There was more evidence… so much of it, but after half an hour I just turned it off and sobbed till I slept.

Looking back now over this week in hell what I can’t get out of my mind is that all of this was possible because of the insurance claim. Once Jeff's insurance company had "investigated" his smoking all of that data was available under Freedom of Information. Someone has since told me, in another blog, that these pre-emptive detective agencies wait at the sidelines for cases like Jeff’s to be made public, then they start picking through. If those German Holiday makers had taken a picture five minutes later, my marriage would still be intact.

The real gutting thing is that the affair with Mark was a mistake and I knew this way before any of this trouble. In my head and heart Mark and I were over the moment I thought I might lose Jeff to the big C.

I don't know what will happen with Jeff and I. I’m going to go away for a few weeks so won’t be posting. I love Jeff so much, I have been a fool and I have been caught out in ways I didn't imagine possible.

Who was that twentieth century author, she said "Our actions are like ships that we send out to sea, and we don't know when or with what cargo they will return"? She was right here.

I’m sorry Jeff. So sorry.

Draft One (Unproofed)


I originally published this story on my other blog www.salted.net, me hopes you likes.

Wednesday, 6 February 2008

Movie Review: The Nines

What is, or are, The Nines?


I'm fresh from this fantastic freak fest of a film, and I use that term not lightly. This film is a mesmerizing, if at times unpolished, masterpiece that not only intrigues right to the end, but at the end leaves you as if you have just done three Kaiser Sozes, two Matrix trilogies and half a dozen Monkeys.



It’s like one of the best quirky tales from 2000AD but made into a modern, well acted movie with great production. It has an unusually compelling style - and oodles of conceptual layers. But it’s complex and weird and hard to follow in a close to exhilarating way.



We just kept asking... "but?"... "how?" I think one of the brightest aspects of the movie is that it doesn't try to out weird you. So unlike, say, Eraserhead or Jacob’s Ladder (both great films, mind), there is always the chance that everything you see could be normal. And maybe, at the end it is all normal. Even with the revelation (I won’t spoil it by telling you what that is), even if you accepted it as this reality, even then, it could still be normality for all of us.



Q: Is it complex and weird like The Number 23?

A:No, the biggest part of The Number 23 is a number two.



I won’t tell you what The Nines is about, but I will tell you the nearest thing it reminds me of. My wife and I both will testify that my clothes (and of this weekend some soft toys) sometimes duplicate. Literally. As if someone has logged into reality, taken an unusual T-Shirt bought in a "London fashion sample sale" and then made an exact copy of it (except that one now has an oil stain that cannot be removed. I think it’s probably WD-40, so any tips appreciated). An exact copy. The same with a pair of brown trousers that I know, and would testify in a court of natural laws, that I only bought one pair of. No questions. I now have two pairs of them.

I think it also happens with socks, but my wife is sceptical of this.

Sure, the trousers and T shirt spontaneous duplications are mindboggling in the degree to which they render all notions of laundry normality.... abnormal, but it gets worse:

There have also been discoveries of soft toys that there were never, until recently, two of. One of the ontological clones was won five years ago by my dad in a raffle (probably Rotary) and could not possibly be duplicated (OK it’s possible. But I don’t think so). We have debated the possibilities. All of them, with a Doyleian keenness to the causal and material structures of our domestic reality that could allow this. Sure, perhaps the crazy lady across the road saw me wearing the shirt, spent four months on Ebay to get a copy, bought it with Paypal and slipped it in my smalls one spring morning. Maybe so. Maybe my brother in law, when he bought me the shirt, bought two, one for me and, knowing I'm a sharp dresser, one for him. And then at Easter three years ago accidentally left it in my house. Maybe....


It is rare in these days to have even the smallest of epiphanies.



Just as The Nines has lots of "buts", this crazy flux in our existential architectonics makes us have many more "maybes" than simple folk deserve. If you have objects disappear in your house, it can be weird. In English we call this "losing things". But when things don't vanish, rather they are duplicated... that’s mega weird... there is no word in any language for that kinda spooky. No word (ED, how about "isoanatanmorphic?", but that only applies to fruit.?).




These events, along with some before the little people came and took all my liberty away, have made me question the nature of reality at a very fundamental level, or at least, the nature of the material world.. and I guess I mean "material" in both senses here.


I wouldn't wish these kind of metaphysical palpitations on anyone, but luckily for you, you can experience even more weirdness than this by watching The Nines, without any actual weirdness in your clothing inventory. What is more, the weirdness The Nines can massage into your porridge is a kind of meaningful weirdness... a thought pumping weirdness... a metaphysical maelstrom... set conveniently in the Hollywood Film and TV world.



The Nines is in my Top Ten. That’s top ten of all time.



9/10 (duh!)


(Note: If there is a word for a review trying to represent what it describes, then I want that word to apply to this review).

Simultaneously published in on salted.net, my other blog.

911 The Absolute Truth

After much thought and research, sifting through the lies, the fibs, the mistakes and the japery that is so common with the issue of 911 I have come up with a matrix that determines it all. Note that this information uses data from all 911 Truth Movements as well the Debunkers such as popular mechanics and the BBC.



Feel free to print this out and pass it on. At least now we can get on with our lives knowing the truth, the absolute truth, about 911.



(This post originally appeared on my salted.net blog. Inspired by a lack of ideas I have decided to plagiarize myself. )

Monday, 4 February 2008

Review: Sala Thai Truro, Zone 1

Situated in the heart of little Newquay, Sala Thai is an often praised Thai restaurant. On Saturday night myself and my domestic assistant/teutonic re-enactment specialist decided that we would be adventurous.

Intrepid, we would venture far from the art galleries and golden-hued venues of Little Brighton, past even that far flung gem of the The One Eyed Cat, and into Truro's Little Newquay. What lust is for life if life is not for living???!!!!!

We didn't need to book for Sala Thai, which was beneficial because we hadn't.

I would like to admit at this point, that as I walked in, much like when I walk into the Indian takeaway by the railway station in St Austell, I was racist. Readers of this blog will know that I am not that racist, but when I saw the waiters on Saturday night it just couldn't be helped. A gut reaction, I guess, but they were friendly an seemed honest.

Sitting down, the ambiance was very warm and cosy and perhaps, as an incidental, it was ever so slightly too occidental. I love Asian food, but when I go to an Asian restaurant I really want it to have the ambiance - the aesthetic spice and charm - of the food's origins. Sala Thai doesn't have this, a fact which , when coupled with the all white staff, just - to me at least - detracted from the experience.

We ordered tempura vegetables for starters... which were nice but not awesome; the crown to protrusion ratio of the vegetable batons was inappropriate and the bits were too big. But perhaps a bigger gastrocide was..... hold tight dear readers.... the tempura came with... only one... only one kind of dip. It's 2008. We deserve at last 3 dipping sauces (ideally a thick soy, a thick balsamic, and a very spicy sweet chili, but hey, I'm not picky).

For mains, I had a beef green curry which, I stipulated I wanted, "so hot as to make me cry," as I always do when I eat curry (also incidentally, I have never, ever been beaten in a curry challenge. I have beaten the legendary Rupali Curry Hell and the entire population of Sri Lanka).

"Baby blow my mind."

When it came, it wasn't very hot at all. A disappointing flaccidity in the spice and the taste vicinities :(

Mein Sonder Fraulien had tofu curry which was, to quote, "essentially bamboo shoots and f**k all else".

The food is reasonable price and reasonable quality, the staff were very friendly and the service was excellent, but if you're looking for a Thai in Truro, the ever visited Chantek is bamboo shoots ahead.


Kenwyn Street Truro TR1 3DJ Tel: 01872 272363

Sala Thai is in The Truo Map. If you want your business etc on it (for free of course) drop me a mail, blog@midcornwall.com






Thursday, 31 January 2008

National Media Footage from the heart of St Austell

Looking for inspiration for stuff to put on the blog, fresh stuff, I came across this from Metro

Drunk guys in bum-branding foolishness
Boozer's chum brands his bum

(Incidentally, the brandee is a friend of mine)

Make Truro Zone 1 a free WiFi Zone for one and all.



If you sit opposite my house you can use my WiFi for free, anonymously, securely, safely and without impacting on my use in any real way. To do this you need to be either a BT Broadband customer or a member of the Worldwide Fon network.

If you are either, you can travel the world and share in this communal WiFi network, getting free, or close to free, internet access.

I think Truro city centre should partake in this network. it would not cost anyone much at all and it would be a modern and progressive asset.

In order to do this, nobody would need to do much. City centre businesses, bars and the municipals would need to share their internet connection using Fon or BT.

If anyone would like to help me get Truro a WiFi'd up or if you have a business and would like some free advice on it, then drop me an email blog@midcornwall.com.





January 2008 was Worst Month ever for Midcornwall.com Blog.

Its official, unless I rapidly post, like, 5 blog posts today, before the month is out, then this month will be the worst in terms of posting since the now WORLD FAMOUS Midcornwall.com Blog started way back when......

"When?"

"About 13 months ago..."

"OK"


I could provide many reasons why this month has been so lax, but only one of the following is true:


  1. Being a practitioner of Dharma I felt that January 2008 was an auspicious time for quite refection both internally and online. I wanted people to come to the blog, and on seeing it hadn't been updated, pause for thought... and maybe in that moment of mental stasis... become mindful of what Mid Cornwall really means.
  2. I have my Ipod touch, I'm totally in love with it, especially now its jailbroken so that it has these awesome games and apps, its quite a distraction from writing blog posts. I am even writing poems to it.
  3. THE HEGEMONY have decided that my writing and analysis is too penetrative and too dangerous to allow this blog to continue. Thus, by clandestine decree, they have undertaken to silence me using state of the art EM Countermeasures that have rendered my home and much else of Zone 1 Truro really poor for communal WiFi access. (OI! Zaffiros, don't be so tight!! Free WIFI is Free Advertising!!)

Anyways.... excuses over.... I may write some more, and the only reason I'm writing now is because of the comments the the last post which, I must say, little in number though they were, were catalytic to this post :)


So... thanks for reading, I'll try to keep writing...


xxx
Mat




If you do read this or any other blog or website I cannot recomend enough using Google Reader with a free Gmail account. google.com/reader/

Think of it like getting google to build your own online real time newspaper just how you want it, for free, from any web source pretty much. Ace:)

Once signed up just click here to add midcornwall.com to your reader.


Tuesday, 1 January 2008

A Very Happy New Year to Midcornwall

Wishing you a happy 2008 in Midcornwall, or there abouts, or anywhere really.

Peace and Peaches

Mat

Thursday, 20 December 2007

Going to the Opening of Starbucks, Truro Zone 1

Not everybody thinks Starbucks is an Ethically wholesome company. It's image is better than in the 1990's; a campaign of product placement, cool partnerships and store ubiquity has placed Starbucks alongside other tolerated beasts... well.... they might be evil... but so is Coke, and that's the real thing.

So Starbucks continues to grow... and find ways to milk us (
The Undercover Economist is a great book about coffee and consumer economics)... and now the spread of the Colossal Caffeine machine has... as of today... come to the City of Truro.



When I knew there was going to be a "special" opening of the store I knew I had to get a ticket. I went through my little black book, essentially the Who's Who of Truro and found that there was nobody with the right connections to get me on that fricking moccachino list. I racked my brains... didn't such and such way back when have an uncle who ran a Starbucks in Montreal...? But nothing.... luckily for me Truro Starbucks just happened to be sponsoring my daughter's school so I got in on the "dad ticket". Back of the net.

  • When you go to openings of art galleries you need to look arty.
  • Opening of night clubs.... its best to look cool.
  • But for the opening of a coffee shop.... the correct "look"... is slightly tired.

And I was slightly tired... so all was well.

In terms of the Cofeehouse itself, well, its pretty much as expected.

Thursday, 29 November 2007

Last Night, Late Night, Shopping in Truro

Myself and the "others" went out last night for the first night of Christmas shopping in the city.

The last time I went late night shopping in Truro I seem to remember being about 15 and spending the entire time in Games Workshop looking at new "orc friends".

What can I say, even though it's not even December the energy and festivity was pretty thick on the ground. The lights looked fab. People seemed happy. There were real reindeer. Even Father Christmas looked real.

So there we go. Wednesday nights up until Christmas, Truro City Zone One. Bring on the minces! (I might not be so enthusiastic in 2 weeks when, yet again, it dawns on me, about the 17th, that Christmas has been hijacked/subsumed by the corporate whores of the vast hegemony with the soul aim to feed us, the consumers, stuff that we can spend on, so that the big wheel of eternal economic growth keeps turning and we, the serfs of TK Max, with our proud medals of Boots Points and M&S Vouchers, gladly suck on the big yuletide log until Santa unloads his sack down our chimnies once more. Vive La Apathy!)

Tuesday, 20 November 2007

Truro Festival Of Lights, 2007

I have just got back from the festival of lights, a procession of marching sambesque bands. Think Notting Hill with many fewer black people, less police and more drizzle. It was my first Festival of Lights, I wasn't expecting much to be honest. Cold, moribund children with fading torches...



.... but how wrong I was.

It was quite a spectacle musically, visually and just as a happening. The effort that people from as far a field as Probus put in was just... well, everyone should be proud (apart from Idles who were
VERY conspicuous in their unilluminating absence)


Put your hands up for this city.


Monday, 19 November 2007

Diary Review of Boujis Bar, City of Truro, Zone 1

I have been in many bars in my time. Sometimes drinking. Sometimes thinking. Sometimes just passing time.

Friday night I went to Boujis - smack-bang in the middle of Truro - just on the edge of Little Brighton. It's a new bar that has been opened a week. They didn't have an opening night. Which is good, because if they had, and I wasn't invited, this would have been a total bitch-slap of a review. I would have made things up. Lied. Photo-shopped bad images. Just totally tried to take them down using the Internet. I did it with Beta-max, I can do it with them. But, luckily for all concerned, there was no opening party; they just kinda "started up". Last week. Phew. Absentis est Vendolius.

Before I go into the review proper I'd like to take a little diversion and explain the three core types types of licensed destinations:


  • Restaurant: predominately serves food. You would not go to a restaurant if you didn't want to eat.
  • Pub: serves drink and maybe food. You might go to a pub to eat, especially on a Sunday, but most times it would be to consume alcohol.
  • Bar: serves drink and maybe food. You might go to a bar to eat, especially on a weekday lunch , but most times it would be to consume alcohol and maybe feel slightly more better about things than in the aforementioned Pub.

So with those definitions crystal clear, its fair to say that Boujis is 100% Bar.

Right down the line. And that's not a bad thing. Nowadays we have these anamorphic melanges that seem to wander between Bar and Restaurant and Pub, with not a care for thematic or architectonic consistency. You never know where you are in places like this - is social quick sand. To your left a pissed Oirish man, spilling Guinness and telling you about his brother. To your right, a couple dining over something made of aubergines with pine nuts... and yet... on the table.. two pint glasses. You never know where you are, in a place that cant decide. Boujis has decided, and it has decided well. It is a Bar.

And its a very nice bar, so far.

The Downstairs

You walk in. And your walking into an open-plan low-density quasi-high-style seating area. It ain't exactly pumping uberwow but it has and has a big street facing window - good for watching and being watched - if that's your thing. Its nice - this room was quiet on Friday, I image with a bit of a throng it could be ding-a-ling-dong. Moving through... In the back... you enter a bigish domestic hall with a big mirror. To your left stairs that wind up to the ... upstairs rooms - but that is for later. From the hall into the Bar.... and through this is the conservatory and the beer garden... which we shall be visiting shorty....


The Garden

It was dark, I had to investigate the Garden from the conservatory, so my description may not be wholly accurate. Upon the leftmost side of the garden was a vast wall of flowers unlike anything I have ever seen. A cascade in bloom that sprinkled past a rockery with statues mighty and then landed - dewdrops... upon the flattest most pristine lawn. A Sistine lawn... so perfectly put that it would seem a crime against Bacchus not to lay there quaffing ice cold' in Cornwall's summer sun. And then at the back of the Garden, past the lawn... in the dim... I could make out many fountains. Sparkling starlight.


The Bar

The bar did nor compel me to sit and read the paper. This was not a bar-stool-bar. This is a functioning bar. A bar designed - probably by NASA and Phillipe Stark - to serve 4 or 5 rooms, one conservatory and a massive beer-garden containing the world's most comfortable lawn. Drinks seemed pub prices, but who know what stealth taxes an establishment such as this might levee... "Monsignor... I see you have hired the velveteen cushion.."



Upstairs Rooms

The upstairs is pretty big. It consists of 2 or 3 rooms that are all decorated with an eye to stylistic coherence. And the style chosen is what I would call "good sleazy."

Its not that I'm a sucker for sleaze. But I equate warmth and cosy and plush and thrrrrrrrr with that little bit of culture where allowed connects with the not allowed. And that's a good. That's the point where people need to lighten up and take it a bit more easy. Aiiiiii..... This kind of good sleaze is about relaxin'. But its not taking it to far. Its not bean-bag kind of relaxing. This isn't rest. This ain't work. It's that kind of sleazy upstairs. Not Crack Den Sleazy, Opium Den Sleazy - and that's a whole different kind of sleaze.



The Toilets

I didn't need to visit them, so I think they will need a special diary review all their own. Tune in next time to find out all about Boujis urinary in all its finery.



Conclusion de Reviewsion

Ten years ago Truro only had one bar and it only catered for Cornish Speaking jazzmusos. Now we have such a wide range of bars that it could be.... {insert smart-ass meta-metaphor here}. The... um...err... barometer has gone off the scale in this Hamlet-City. We have the really rather fabulous new Bar Qdos. There is Zaffiro's; that some how manages to cram us all in at weekends without it turning into a leary scrum. There is One Eyed cat, Kasbah and there are place so fricking trendy and underground that I ain't going to tell you about them just yet (I will say that the Mohittos at Bar Homo Erectus are... ohhh my god... minty!)

So pretty much, this is a City that pound for pound packs more Bar Based Leisure Credits than any other City on the planet, is there really a space for a "Boujis"?

Yes there flippin' is, and its in a large Victorian town-mansion-house kind of a place; not a spires collapse from the cathedral. This Bar is certainly the city's most opulent bar right now.

But that wall paper is pricey, and those chandeliers don't come from Homebase. And the landscaping on that garden, well, it must have cost more than Eden Project. I thinks ya gets whats I'm sayin'. Will Bijo's it be able to get that constant sufficient critical mass of visitors, especially in its first wintry months of existence? Probably. I mean, why would you not go here if you were going out in the City? There is no reason not to. Sure, if Boujis becomes the "Cornish base" for Argyle football hooligans them you might want to not go there. Or if the drapery becomes drabbery then there could be a reason to avoid. But until that happens, well, who isn't partial to a cold Stella and puff on an opium pipe in a garden that would make Nebukenadezza eat grass.


Friday, 9 November 2007

Review: Andrew Bate, Singing at the Kazbah, Truro

Yon city 'pon the three rivers has renown for many things. The mighty cathedral. Chi-Chi "Little Brighton" and laying on three rivers- even though it only looks like one.

However, it isn't famed for its live music....

Thus, it was with some surprise that when we entered into the hostelry known as the Kazbah last eve' - with nary a Moor in sight - we did meet a vocal song-smith who goes by the name of Andrew Bate. A song-smith not only vocal, but local - in the sense he is from Par.

And his singing was certainly above par, quite far above, in fact. As was much of the singing far above the normal octavian range. For truth be told, oft times his harmonies could have emanated from the silken chords of a Venetian eunuch.

The young man not only wove an audible magic but he did so with a presence and elan that could have sustained the finest halls er faces did smile. But the notion of smile....well....therein... my dear reader... lays the nub of the dub.


Life and love are so very rare, in this universe of ours. And youth so short and old so sick. And all those lives that never had the chance to live, and all those cut so quick. And then those who live long and lonely and lost and loosing...


....that when I see a handsome singer/songwriter/catamite (Mum, I'm not gay!), who looks in good health, clearly has talent, I assume good prospect.... and he seems to have the attentions of an attractive female human...

... I ponder... as I listen... to this melody and it's moribund majesty... why oh why... don't you smile... why do you cry when you sing, but instead of tears you cry words... why... oh why... so glum?





I spoke to him after the gig and he wasn't glum, in fact he seemed quite a happy chappy.



Note to self - the performance is not always the actuality.

Thursday, 8 November 2007

Review: Thursday's Dinner at Manning's, Truro

Thursday nights are normally "watch Tuesday's Dragon's Den on 'video and deploy the tadpole belly creme just before my Domestic Assistant comes in from Yoga" night.


But not tonight.

Tonight we were going for dinner with my domestic assistant's sewing instructor, Norma. Having sampled pretty much all of the City's eateries we deiced to go, on recommendation, to Manning's.


I am not the pleasant %^$£&^

My restaurant rule number seven, as readers of this blog will know, is always eat pheasant if its on the menu unless monkfish is also. Well... Mannings threw me a bit of a curveball, because it had partridge, which is a member of the pheasant family, but, is not actually a pheasant.

What was I to do?

I bent and then followed the rule and ordered the partridge. Other people I was with ordered other stuff which was invariably described as abso-yummilicious. The eldest member the party, who was 63 and had thus eaten many meals proclaimed, and I quote, "One of the nicest meals I have ever had."



All in all... a resounding success.... but what about my partridge?

Partridge?

Look at this for a tasty partridgey meal:






Oh no, not that...


...thats me...

...just showing off

............ trying to trick you for a moment into thinking that was my partridge... it wasn't... no way...it was just part of my partridge.

... this was my partridge:





Now that's what I call a slow roasted partridge served with a rustic sausage and bean cassoulet! Hum-dinger. But as well as be fully sated as we all were, the evening at Mannings also taught me that there really is a "space of taste" between quail and pheasant. Bravo!

Mannings

Currently the Best Restaurant in Truro

Lemon Street, Truro
01872242453

Wednesday, 7 November 2007

Pizza Express is no longer legally compatible with midcorwall.com

I should at this very moment be working on the copy for work's new website. I should have just got back from a meal at Pizza Express with some people I know quite well. But instead I am writing this post.

We went for a meal at Pizza Express in Truro. We arrived just before six, as some of the business consultants I was with were less than 5 years old. We stood for about two minutes, maybe a bit more. Standing like lemons (all be it sexy lemons, apart from the under 5's) we decided we would take a seat at the nearest available table. We sat, nobody came. Tick, tock, went the clock.

I suggested, after about seven minutes, that we should leave, but my social engagement advisor recommended against that "again". After fifteen minutes my "lets bail this pile and get some service" barometer was just about to flip into action when one of the staff came over to us...


You know that look when you break into someone's home, do a full scale multi-bedroom Bobby Sands, then abuse every pet they own and then sit doggy-style-naked in their lounge covered head to toe in THEIR mayonnaise waiting until they come home... well... we got that look here. That exact look. It gave me a fricking flash back to '02, thats for sure. So anyways... the look turned into a question... "Have you reserved this table?"

"Ummm... No... but equally we have been here for fifteen minutes with not a jot of our ontological status being acknowledged..."

"You can't sit here... this table is reserved." (nod to the door).

And then he walked away. Now, I'm paraphrasing the encounter a bit... but that's pretty much how it was. The rest of my party were soon out the door... slightly hungry but dignity still very much intact (apart from the youngest member of the business meeting who was constantly muttering on about everything she could apprehend being "thsthoopid").

I decided to hang back and confront Caesar herself. The manageress had a pleasant smile and manner, not dissimilar to those in charge of other restaurants in the City.... but she had a hollowness to her convictions. I felt I was speaking into the rancid, cavernous heart of the hegemony... and the only echo... was a whimper of the manageress clinging on to what remained of her establishment's consumer integrity.

It's funny, because last year we went there, and were served by the same person who was so rude to us tonight. All was good... and it's fair to say that meal played a bit part in one of the days that tipped us to agree, "let's move to Truro."

I've just done some quick
research on the Pizza Express chain. Last year, it was part of essentially a family business running since the '60s.... but this year... to quote Wikipedia, Pizza Express was "taken private by private equity group Cinven in 2007." I see a pattern.

We are part of a vast and interconnected system of people with human rights and businesses with people's rights (corporations). I am not a lefty-let's-all-live-in-a-Tipi-Village-in-Wales kind of a guy. I'm not even anti-globalism; in order to satisfy our billions we need efficient global business systems and a free market.

But I do appreciate that there is a tension between what's best for us as individuals and what's best for us as consumers in this deep sea of consumption. The crux of the thin-crust is that we always... always... have the right not to consume. And so....


This blog is published under the Creative Commons Share Alike license, which basically means you can do what you want with it so long as you don't claim it to be your own work. But I am, as of this moment adding a new clause:

  • By reading this work I will not eat at Pizza Express.

Note that this is not a moral clause, it's legal. I'm not saying you shouldn't go to Pizza Express, I'm saying legally, if you read this blog you are partaking in the agreement of a license that forbids it.

I digress... we needed another venue for our meeting and headed to that delightful pillar of the
Truro restaurant scene, the One Eyed Cat. What can I say; the food was fantastic as always, as was the service. Interestingly for the evening there was a "moot point" on the bill which the restaurant resolved impeccably.


A final note to fans of Pizza Express, thanks for reading midcornwall.com over the last three decades, enjoy your lives.

Monday, 5 November 2007

I have just been to the Truro City Firework display and I wrote a poem my phone.



The display starts Napleolataen
Mint blooms.
Chinese gallows inline hangs.
A dozen red against the dark.
Cylons scream in spirals.
Sky striping. Bursts High altitude
But not that high in amplitude
Or fortitude or attitude.
Or bulk.
Rapid incandescence.
Aerial Catherin wheels, fantastic!
Purple rain and purple haze.
Flames twist the sky.
Rat a tat tat trajectories.
Nebulous embers and then the sound...
Acoustic like Aphex
Crackling flame fountains
Spiders.
Ghostly smoking sea flowed with increasing entropy.
Glitter glitter... a pause mocks until Cylons return
Firing squad... Pyrotechnic pointalism.
Projectile Pixels haphazardous placed.
And I think of the futility...
In fireworks there is no utility.
The cost in time.
The man in the mine.
To process. The refine.
I saw many Picassos not a week go.
There is none of that here.
This is not an aesthetic aesthetic.
This is all of the gut
and of the eyes
and in my ears.
Pure experience without the raw feel.
Irrational and REAL. HUMAN.
20 mins and done. What fun.




Sunday, 4 November 2007

Last Night We Went To Pippas because...

it was a party for my domestic assistant's birthday.

The meal was good... well the meal would have been good... apart from the fact th the fajitas had way way too much rosemary. This isn't winging, there was more herbs on those babies than in a Bob Marly '74. A herbaceous onslaught, that, were it not for the fact that there is no fajitas in "Wine Women and Song", would have ruined the night, and perhaps the next year.


After the savory sacrilege we left the restaurant and ascended to the D>I>S>C>O where, with not a whippersnapper in sight, we danced. Luckily for the ladies present, I stumbled upon a dance floor lay line that increased my funk by 17%.


After Pippas we scored some prime class A's from a 16 year old on a stolen bike. Then we went to a squat party in Carn Brea with some polish strippers, warm Vodka Orange mix (with extra washback) in a plastic bottle and ended up in a shared K hole of some considerable beauty. The bitter taste of Rosemary a thread of disappointment. (Note, this paragraph might not have happened)

Friday, 12 October 2007

Tap Dogs Tickets Competition Closed: The Winner is Called Martin

Thanks for your pictures, I would put them all up but it would bring down the internet in much of western Europe if I did.

The winning picture, was sent in by Martin B. Its punchy, controversial and yet has that "champions aesthetic" which pushed it to the top of the Judge's list:


Martin has won two free tickets to see Tap Dogs.

Well done!

Tuesday, 9 October 2007

Win two Free Tickets For Tap Dogs In Truro Only On the Midcornwall blog

So, someone at Tap Dogs heard about my last blog post and have offered two free tickets to anyone at the show during it's Truro stay.

So I guess I Need a competition!

In order to win two free tickets to Tap Dogs at Hall For Cornwall, please send me a photograph of either a tap or a dog, or ideally both.

Email tap and/or dog pictures to blog@midcornwall.com


Monday, 8 October 2007

These Cats Know How to Be Dogs

I'm sorry about that title, it was meant to be "Tap Dogs Play Truro" but I felt that a bit, uneasy, with the sub text.

So yes, the Tap Dogs, are playing in Hall for Cornwall all this week, and I really recommend them. I saw them a few years ago in Saddlers Wells


Its quite hard to explain what they do, other than that its a whole lot of visual and auditory energy, mainly powered by tab dancing uber althetes and musicians.

Its a bit like the Russian State Cirucs only with less bears and more pazzzaz.

Read a much better preview here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cornwall/content/articles/2007/09/07/theatre_tapdogs_feature.shtml



Tuesday, 18 September 2007

Curses! The Guardian (Not Cornish) is the New St Austell Voice

In this blog's long and illustrious lifespan there have been a number of very accurate and unquestionable revelations about the often ludicrous reporting of the now obsolete St Austell Voice newspaper.

Since the St Austell Voice's demise, I have felt that it was safe to re-enter the medium of paper news media with a sense of trust and coherence. Sadly, the infectious virus of falsehood has blossomed out of the Duchy's domain and now permeates into the Guardian (not Cornish - but still about Mid Cornwall, else it wouldn't get a mention on this blog).



In this Saturday's Guardian (not Cornish), Truro got a full page in the magazine as the week's "Let's move to..." section.


How exciting... Capital City getting a write-up in the country's most prestigious broadsheet... or so I thought.
The problem with the article was that the journo who wrote this, Tom Dyckhoff, went to the same school of journalism as everyone who worked at the erstwhile St Austell Voice.

There is a joke in that name

My ire has nothing to do with his account the fair city. Nor does it take its seed from the possible inaccuracies in the facts and aspects and quotes as presented.
The journalistic blasphemy in question is a beating heart of falsehood in one small section of the article:



Um?
Huh?

Hang on?

That really does say:
"Hang out at... Saffron, for that Rick Stein-esque, hand-dived kinda vibe"



Saffron isn't a bad restaurant. It's a bit dull but the food is good. We reviewed it here and the conclusion was positive (especially if your first meal in life was paid for with ration coupons).

But t
here is no sense, in any sense of any word, that it would be considered a restaurant to get excited about. Especially not when we have the myriad other great eateries and drinkeries in the city of Truro.

And as for Saffron having a "Rick Stein-esque, hand-dived kinda vibe"... I just have no idea what this means, but I know that whatever it means, it isn't true of Saffron. In any possible world (note that I do actually know what it means, and I am just saying that I don't for dramatic effect, either way it is a nonsense).


When Descartes proposed his method of hyperbolic doubt that led, via some of the most beautiful reasoning in the history of thought, he started with the simple premise that if something deceives you once, you must always assume it could deceive you again.

Guardian (not Cornish), you have deceived us.


Badly.


I felt when I read this article that I had been drugged and mockingly sodmised by a trusted freind. How could you do this to me Guardian (not Cornish)? How could you lie and mislead me after I had taken your word as verbatim for so many years?

We become more alone in news-media with every day that passes it seems. Who is left to betray us... is it really just Chanel 4 and the BBC?

God have mercy on our scallops.




Tuesday, 11 September 2007

Cathedral Shafted by the Book

In order to raise some money for God (or whatever Cathedrals need money for), Truro Cathedral decided to sell of some of its antiquarian library. It sold some books for just under 40k last year - the price being based on a valuation paid for by the Diocese in 2002, plus a lil' extra for the years.

Thats all good, until it transpires that the Books get sold recently for half a million at Sotheby's

God is not happy.


Nor is the Dioceses, understandably so.

Monday, 10 September 2007

Thank frick for that....

http://www.builderandengineer.co.uk/news/regeneration/st-austell-demolition-starts-710.html

A lot of people in positions of power should be ashamed of what they have let languish.

Monday, 20 August 2007

Newquay Hotel Fire - A Personal Account


Yesterday I got this email from my friend Chris, (printed with permission):


alright dude hows things?

u seen the news?

that fire was directly opposite where i live we have all been evacuated out while the investigations and demolitions go on.

it was fucking savage the fire was so bad, i ran outside when i first realised a fire had started only to see a man smash through a window on the top floor of the hotel and jump out, i ran over to save his ass, and ended up in the gulleys of the hotel whilst things were bloody exploding above me saving this dude until the ambulances arrived, then when i thought i could get out of there i had to stay and help this guy with the ambulance man, all the while police put riot sheilds above my head to help protect me and the paramedic, at this point i did notice everyone had helmets on but me...i couldnt help but feel a little left out. was not a fun time!
anyhows back on my computer and internet now.

hope all is good

chris


Bonkers. And big big respect to Chris.

Thursday, 9 August 2007

Interview With A Cornish Nationalist

I have been trying to get an objective view of Cornish nationalism and history and I have found it is quite a mire. I have read most of the authoritative Mebyon Kernow and Cornish Nationalism book as well as spent way too much time on-line and in the Wikis.

Where I ended up was talking to very hard core (though non-political) Cornish nationalist, Jim Pengelly. Jim maintains the KernowTGG website which seems to be an Alexandrian library of Cornish nationalist information. Its huge in scope and often hard to wind your way through the content but Jim has agreed to help.

We were initially going to do a single transcribed interview but it ended up evolving over a number of weeks as the following Q and A.

I'm not at all nationalistic and Jim is very nationalistic so together the idea was we would be able to get some "bullet point" summaries of what Cornish Nationalists believe, and why.

For the record, Jim has had full editorial control on this article and I all facts stated are without many dispute I could find - let me know if Jim or I are wrong.

I guess I should also say that there are different versions of Cornish Nationalism, and Jim's is perhaps the most nationalistic.

Q) Is Cornwall a Separate Country from England?

This is the paradox that fuels all the arguments over what Cornwall is, or is not. Following a time-line from a Cornish legal and historical perspective, Cornwall is both distinct from England, and the Crown. The paradox arises from the fact that we have all been tutored to believe that Cornwall is no different to an English county, and, as a consequence, in England.




Q) So Cornwall is historically distinct from England but not officially or constitutionally recognised?

That is Correct. Cornwall is legally a Royal Duchy not an English county, although it would contain within it, an equivalent civil administration.
Royal Duchies were created as semi autonomous States within the State. Cornwall (Duke as Heir to the Throne) and Lancaster (the reigning Monarch) are the only Royal Duchies within the United Kingdom. The 'official' promotion of the Duchy of Cornwall as "a Private Estate and nothing to do with Cornwall", is not legally correct.


Q) How did we get to the point where people in England, and Cornwall, accept (or acquiesce) to a de facto status of Cornwall as an English county?

Over the years the English government has surreptitiously included Cornwall in its borders. There has been no conquest or agreement or law defining that Cornwall is a part of England.


It has been a subtle change over time because the Duchy (and the former Earldom) of Cornwall, when there has been no Duke (or Earl) is held 'in trust' by the Crown as a 'Territorial Honor' - Terra de Cornubia. During such occasions, the Honor is held as the Comitatus (Earldom), which translates as County.


Also, the civil government termed as the vicecomitatus also translates as 'county' and it is this latter definition, which has passed into general modern usage and fossilised perceptions. Most people identify with paying tax and, if they are lucky, land/property ownership. This is the normal focus for relating to civil government etc.

Most people, therefore, have accepted the lack of distinction because they have been made unaware that there is a genuine distinction.

Q) Doing my research its pretty clear that there is lots of evidence for both sides.

That is very true, but where would you place the moral obligation, when the obvious contradictions show that the suppressed history and constitution of a distinct people have knowingly deprived that people of their rights. It is only the Cornish peoples awareness of themselves that have endured and fuelled the cultural, political and intellectual renaissance.

It is very easy to throw-up 'evidence' in an attempt to negate the Cornish argument or to imply that there is 'no distinction'. The following examples are some of the pitfalls to be avoided, or taken into account, when doing so:

  • whether or not there was a Duke (or Earl) 'in full possession',
  • whether the issue in question was at that time a matter of dispute,
  • whether it is simply an issue of tax/land/property,
  • whether it relates to an instance of Royal Jurisdiction,
  • whether the context is England (the Kingdom) or England (the country)
  • whether there is a Dis-annexing Act to sever the civil government of Cornwall from the Duchy of Cornwall.
Conclusion This is the condensed version of the "ping pong" Jim and I have been having over the weeks - if you want to go into heavy details then I recommend Jim's website and the wikipedia as good starting points. When I started looking into this, I had scant knowledge of the arguments for Cornish nationalism. I am now pretty convinced that, if you had the cash, time and power you could put down a far more certain case that Cornwall is distinct from England than that it is a part of England.

What is clear is that there are many people believe that Cornwall is a separate country that has been subsumed into England, but there is nobody who can claim that Cornwall is an undisputed territory of England.

(The forum is at Cornwall24 is very good for debate with "Cornish Nationalists" as well as people just interested in Cornwall and its wellbeing...)



Wednesday, 8 August 2007

Review: Truro Tea and Cofee Co

If you like proper coffee then Truro has a little gem hidden away in the Pannier Market; The Truro Tea and Coffee Co.

If your looking for a buy one get one free deal then this ain't the place - that would be Tesco's etc. But of your looking for coffee that is genuinely in a different league this really is the place.

Coffee ground while you wait. Coffee served by an expert who, as he grinds imparts all manner of info for the connoisseur or the curious.

I like ground coffee. I'm just about to make me a caffetiere of "Monsoon Maillibar" which is about 50% more pricey but twice as nicey than anything you can get in a superstore.

Thursday, 2 August 2007

The Best Resturant In Truro Awards July 2007

Thanks for voting in the August 07 Best Restaurant In Truro Award, the results are in. The first in the list is the best and the last is the objectively worst resturant in Truro.

  1. Bustopher Jones
  2. One Eyed Cat
  3. Chantek
  4. Pippa's
  5. Manning's
  6. Katmandu Palace
  7. Carbonara
  8. Kazbah
  9. Yes Pizza
  10. Stingi Lulu's
  11. Saffron
  12. Ganges
  13. Truro Coffee House
  14. Pizza Express
  15. The Norway Inn
  16. Burger King
  17. Gatto Nero
  18. Three Rivers Cafe

Many more votes this month, thank you:)

So... lets have a look at the scores on the doors. I was delighted to see Chantek moving up there, after last month's anomalous blip in the matrix. In contrast, quite a dip in the Ganges, although it did get more votes than in June.

We had to re-code a large part of the calculation heuristic engine when we started getting votes for the "outsiders" like Burger King, but at the end of the day Bayes won through. Its clear that we also need to restate the facts:

  • If it sells food that can be consumed on the premises whilst in a seating position, it is, as far as Midcornwall.com are concerned, a restaurant.
  • Tresillian is NOT in Truro. Furthermore, no matter how much vote-spam you send, it will NEVER be in Truro. You know who you are, we know who you are. You're wasting our time and you are wasting your own time. Grow up.
  • The Brit awards are not about opinions, they are about reality. The state of affairs. The totality of facts. Please just send the marks out of ten, as in "The Wheel Inn, 6/10".

To vote in August's awards email your votes, however you want, to thebritawards@midcornwall.com
(All votes will be counted using mathematics and computers.)



Monday, 30 July 2007

Newsflash: Cornwall has dropped to being only slightly less lethargic than Devon

Last week saw two comparative failures for Cornwall. Firstly there was the failure of the spirit of democracy in England, about Cornwall. Secondly there was Cornwall sliding down the rankings of regional lethargy.

Cornwall, normally low on the lethargy charts crept up, past the West Midlands to sit just below Devon, a position it hasn't held since 1984 and the Cornwall Coliseum's crucial role in Live Aid.

"Cornish non-lethargy is generally world class, at least for Western Europe," said CLA spokesman Wendle K Montezuma. "Devon has had a slight drop in lethargy thanks to that new shopping mall in Plymouth, but that shouldn't explain this dip. This is off the scale."

In related news, William Hill have just announced 4:15.9 against Cornwall beating Brighton and Hove.

Wednesday, 18 July 2007

Cornish Neo-Nationalists Slam The Simpsons 2 Movie


The Simpsons movie hasn't been released and already there is trouble in the Duchy regarding the sequal - The Simpsons 2.

The details of the protest are hard to fathom, but apparently hard-core Cornish neo-nationalists are complaining about the second Homers.


Sorry.

It seemed like a good gag in my head.

I'll get my coat.

Friday, 13 July 2007

Review: Kasbah Seafood Platter, Truro


I get a lot of people asking me, every single day: "Whats the best thing about writing the The MidCornwall Blog?" Sure, it's great to have chicks on tap, as many as I want, 24/7. It's great to have an endless stream of cash, drugs and free pasties. Its great to know that 90% of people in Cornwall only have a computer because of MidCornwall.com. But most of all, I'm in it for the platters.

You can take away my liberty and my dignity, but provide me with an oversized plate covered with a selection of various tasty morsels and frankly, I'm anyone's.


The Seafood Platter at the Kasbah is just a rock and roll fishy excuse to eat. Loads of different fish and shellfish, some fresh, some marinated... all really good. Could do with some olives or what have you, as it's pretty much all fish. But if you like fish, and you like platters, well, how wrong can you go with such a good seafood platter? And it only costs seven squid, which is not bad considering you can get a sandwich nearby costing £4.50.

Truro Coffee, House my other platter review

Thursday, 12 July 2007

The Truth About This Island Cornwall

I remember, as a boy, camping on one of the moors with the scouts and the scoutmaster saying, as he nonchalantly brushed off cuckoo-spit from his pantaloons, "There are only four miles of land that separate Cornwall from England." I always believed that what the scoutmaster said was the truth.... and last night in the pub this point reemerged...

Is it true?
If it is true what does it mean?
If its not true why would he lie to me?



This morning I decided to mount an expedition to the source of the River Tamar to see if it was true.

  • Hiking Books: Check.
  • Waterproof coat: Check
  • Compas: Check
  • Shirt: Check/ Plaid
  • Kendal Mint Cake: Check
  • Google Earth: Check.
And what I found was that... yes... the river Tamar goes up to a point 4.3 miles from the north coast, as you can see in this expedition map I have painstakingly prepared:


Only four miles of land. The scoutmaster was right about this fact. Other facts he mentioned such as the need for "one on one woggle polishisng" I am still finding a tad on the moot side.



Monday, 9 July 2007

What Jack Bolitho should be arguing:

I just saw Jack Bolitho on the BBC being interviewed. He comes over better than I would have thought - I met him a couple of months ago busking in Truro. Ahhh... the fresh arrogance of youth. I have asked him a couple of times to be interviewed for the blog but he clearly has better things to do. Meh....

The issue about "second homes in Cornwall" is clearly pertinent and significant locally. But there is only one solution, and it is not anything to do with nationalism or prohibition, it is to do with taxation.


I propose that the council introduces a term-of-residency based taxation system: If you have lived in Cornwall X amount of years you will pay less council tax, relatively, than someone who has lived here a shorter length of time.

As for the details as to how much less, well I guess that should be left to democracy to decide.....

I expect this to be in action within one year,

Thanks in advance,

Mat

Cornwall Skin Cancer Cases Rising

Rubber up kids:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/6284330.stm

Thursday, 5 July 2007

The BRIT Awards June 2007

Thanks for voting in the first Best Resturant In Truro Award, the results are in. The first in the list is the best and the last is the objectively worst resturant in Truro.

  1. Katmandu Palace
  2. Stingi Lulu's
  3. Pippa's
  4. Manning's
  5. Chantek
  6. Carbonara
  7. Ganges
  8. Pizza Express
  9. One Eyed Cat
  10. The Norway Inn

Quite a few surprises this month then. I'm surprised at the One Eyed Cat coming second last because its always been a classy yummalicious resturant from my experience. Its also quite interesting that 3 out of the top 4 have apostrophies. So stay tuned next month and we can see what has happened. To vote email thebritawards@midcornwall.com as described here:

The BRIT Awards: Vote for The Best Resturant In Truro Every Month On Midcornwall.com







Wednesday, 4 July 2007

Review: Pocket Players Playing at Zaffiros, Truro


If you have been on the Cornish live music scene for any amount of time you will have heard of The Pocket Players. I haven't been on the scene at all, and so when I heard they were playing, I was like "...who?".

When I heard they were playing at Zafiros in Truro Zone One I had serious concerns; as we all know, Zafiros has the worst WiFi in the city.

I took a risk and I went.

With my domestic assistant away, I needed a Belle to take to the ball, so I took a friend.

J'ai arrive....
Ding dong, there was a throng.


Zafiros turned out to be a good venue for live music. The big window was a back-drop to the stage and the venue's substantial length and perfect girth gave it a nice flow. One severe downside to the evening was the fact that had I had my laptop on me, I would have been forced to use a flaky and over priced WiFi; with a shudder, I put this dismal thought behind me. I needed to prepare for the band both emotionally, and perhaps, in a little way, unemotionally.





Om Shanti Zafiros Om


Before I enter the review, I should say that this is my first ever live music review. I once started to write a review of an album but gave up. I have no idea what you're meant to write but I'm pretty sure it's a different kind of writing to reviewing a resturant. So here goes.

We gonna put a jiiihad on yo' ears


The Pocket Players are a concept art-punk/rock ensemble who fuse post-Oasisian masculinity against the neo-Pinkian aspects of the band's singer; in this sense they are cohere to an atypicial Myspaceian antithesis. This is a band that knows what it deserves but doesn't expect that trying not to get what it needs isn't going to allow them to let the fans not get exactly what the fans want.


And another core aspect of the band is that yeah, they are good musicians. I mean, I don't know how you really capture that in a "music review".... But lets just say that when you watch them they do their stuff and they do it well. And the stuff is all their own stuff (I think) and its good stuff, you know, like catchy or energetic or this and that and a little bit of.... ska (more on that later). They were better than Holly Golightly who graced this great city a couple of weeks ago. They were to Holly Golightly what R Kelly is to Gary Glitter.


If I had to sum them up in one word it would be..... alive and human.
They layed down the funk and the rock and the pop and the smooth like they were plastering the Sistene Chapel of the Cornish Musosphere.( wooooooaaa slow down there boy, there is only so much room for pretension on the internet. Ed.) I didn't really listen to the lyrics that much but they seemed to contain references to culture and relationships. Definitely post-911.

HiFi Good WiFi Bad


The lead singer is kooky/sexy in that Bjork/Cerys Matthews/Susanne Vega/ Paris Hilton kind of a focal-flambee. The rest of the band reminded me of a troupe of young savant troubadours who had lost their way many times but now felt, musically at least, that they were translating the same Rosetta stone of rock. (ibid.Ed)

The Cornish Band Aid?

I have had a number of moments at live music venues over the years where, propelled by enthusiasm, drink and drugs and the lust of a buxom filly, I have proclaimed that band X is the best live band ever seen and sure to be the next big thing. I am wiser now. This is the reality, there is no way on Earth that in one years time The Pocket Players are going to be filling Wembley. But give them three years, a couple of huge publishing deals, front-panel on i-tunes for every song from their 2 million advance album deal and well, they could easy end up at Wembley.


Kannot Konnect 2 Server


Stadium Supergroup or real-deal local super-stars, The Pocket Players are a good good live band. But..... there is one gripe I have, other than the WiFi. During the set, there were unwelcome descents into Ska which made me feel that this band were more pallid-pastiche than musically-chic. Dire Dire Dire Die Pocket Players don't you ever play in the City again. Only joking, the decent into Ska wasn't bad, I just find it makes me feel like bleaching perfectly good denim.



Conclusion: It's all good dawg.


I'm not going to tell you to sell all your possessions and become a Pocket Players's groupie. I would recommend pirating their album, but that would be wrong of me. Here is how rock and roll I am, I find reviewing pub roasts much easier than music. Hey I know, rather than read my review see for yourself on their myspace page:



Tuesday, 26 June 2007

Review Duke Street Sandwich Bar and Deli Truro

Its forty past midday, you're in Zone One, you're hungry. But at One O'Clock you have that meeting about the orphanage fundraiser. Options. You need options:

  • You could go to the Co-op and get a sandwich, but if you did that you would be being mean to yourself.
  • You could go to The Truro Coffee house and get some of their yummy food, but can you risk the wait? If you miss that meeting... orphans will die.
  • Or you could go to one of the sandwich shops.....
So put your Snickers and pack of Discos back on the shelf, walk out of the Co-op and into the heart of the city's trendiest quarter. Lo! There, 'pon a trice of thoroughfares 'midst the shadows of spires be the Duke Street Sandwhich Bar and Deli. Rejoice, for ye hath found thine luncheon salvation.



Unlike the Co-op, you don't get much for a quid fifty in the Duke Street Deli, maybe a can of drink and a Tide Table. But if you can up the ante, if you can show momma who's really greasing the skillet, say, to between two pounds fifty and four pounds fifty, then my dear reader, you have found what you are looking for.

Anyways, rather than waffle on... I'll stop showing off in front of my friends and lay down the low down on why the this one wins the show-down:


The Food


The ingredients... yea, yea, whatever... they are all locally sourced and organic and fair trade and all that green razzmatazzZ that we expect nowadays. I'm not dissing that, but as well as being green ingredients, they are great ingredients. Stuff you haven't heard of. Stuff you haven't thought of. Stuff you haven't considered with other stuff. Stuff you have heard of but thought it was something else - I always thought alfalfa was a metaphor for agrarian poverty.

Goats cheese and cow cheese and this and that and crab or salmon and that and.... alfalfa . You can have bread with bits and relishes to relish. Its all good and seems so good for you. Fresh and rich like......
IP Issues


My Only Concern with this place is that they casually imply you can combine their ingredients within a "make your own" framework. That's fine. But these guys have a lot of ingredients in their arsenal, raising the question:

What happens if you stumble upon a groundbreaking sandwich combination? Who owns the rights to that combination? You or the deli?

I would love to have the chance to come up with the next brie and cranberry, but not until the establishment that I use as my "lab" adheres to this creative commons license. When it comes to free-form sandwich experimentation, if you're going to play at the perimiter, you had better play fair.









Enough on The Food, How's the Mood?


You know how when you see alcoholics queueing for free beer? Well that's what this place can get like at lunch time. Storming the Baguette Bastille. As good as their food is, I never go in there then.

"Do you want butter on that?"


And then there are the quiet times. When you can sit in the big frosted window, drink coffee and just chill as Truro Z1 drifts by outside. Read a free paper on the chunky oak stool-counter and listen to the melodious hum of the chiller cabinet, intercepted only occasionally by the star-chime ping of a grill timer.




Conclusion

I have been taking notes in my head for this review for nigh on three months, as well as eating lunch in or from other places, and I can say, categorically, that the Duke Street Sandwhich Shop is the best sandwhich shop in Truro. In the pecking order, its the Alfalfa Meal (ED - Thats a really crap gag. delete?)

Am I biased? Probably, but I'm only biased because I'm right: If you can find a better deli/sandwich bar/shop-what-have-you, in Truro in 2007, then I'll wear an alfalfa and Cornish bacon ball-gown to the high-school prom. Chase me!

Duke Street Sandwich Bar and Deli
10 Duke Street
City of Truro
TR1 2QE
Tel: 01872 320025












Tuesday, 19 June 2007

Mid Cornwall Stores Sell World's Nicest Lolly

Many stores in Mid Cornwall (ADSA, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Iceland...) are now selling the world's best lolly, the amazingly tasty Del Monte Iced Smoothie. Imagine making love to a beautiful woman all weekend, only to find out she is an android who you can "date" almost any time. And when you don't need her you can keep her in the freezer, no problem. That's the Del Monte Fruit Smoothie.




But not only do these babies taste so great, they are also mainly fruit, nigh on no fat and only 96 calories - for reference an atypical Magnum has close to 4000 calories. It's the lolly version of having your cake and eating it, but the cake makes you live longer, have a better complexion, ward off cancer and prevents liver disease. In terms of sex toys, they may not last long but they have just the right amount of stickiness to Blu-tack the Polaroid to the back of the shed door.
.



Only Available In Mid Cornwall

Sunday, 17 June 2007

Review, Cuckoo Truro, Saturday Night

It wasn't long ago that Betty reviewed the lunches at Cuckoo and gave it a mild but apparently justified criticism.


Went last night to see
Holly Golightly - who is the 38th most famous person ever to grace Truro (Not counting Brian May's infamous 2003 "Drive Through" on the way to Flambards). The plan was to spend some time in Cuckoo and afterwards to nash on down to Pippa's. Well. No need. The night was great. Packed out with atmosphere, fun, friendly people and just a little smidgen of self-referential irony from the band. All in all, a great combo.

I might have ruined a fair few friends' evening by being a
dropthepop.org bore but hey, its only the single most important issue to face us as a planet.

Anyways, Cuckoo, when it passes the required population threshold, is an ace venue for this ace city's all night/late night funkentastic melange of memorable moments.


In terms of its design ergonomics and the underlying architechonic principles its also much better than one would expect as a music venue. Bonus.




I have one regret about going to Cuckoo. Just the one. Regrets are something you should try not to have even though, like a vile cancer that eats away at your perception of the things you have done, they are often unavoidable. Kebabs, the shame of Saturdays.

Wednesday, 13 June 2007

Midcornwall.com Statement on Jamie Oliver Terrorism Threats

Midcornwall.com is totally impartial in all matters about everything.

Irrespective of the Terrorist threats made by the CNLA , I do think that Jamie "Oli" Oliver should be made to pay for his "Flavor Shaker", which is crap. I have two, one I bought in Trago for £11.99 and one I got for an Xmass pressie. It came out about about 25 squid! Its just a crap idea.

  • Its hard to clean.
  • It will make about as much "stuff" as to feed post Burger King anorexic on speed. Rubbish.
  • The E2E (effort to effect) ratio is on the same level a Remington Fuzz Away.


Monday, 11 June 2007

The BRIT Awards: Vote for The Best Resturant In Truro Every Month On Midcornwall.com

Midcornwall.com Reviews are fantastic, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning winning explorations into the unknown areas of the area's restaurants and bars.

But we feel that the City needs a way to determine which are the Best Restaurants In Truro, and so, dear readers, we provide.

Every Month we will be listing the Best Resturants in Truro, and, logically, the worst.


To vote for a restaurant or restaurants just send a list of the restaurant name with marks out of ten on the same line to thebritawards@midcornwall.com.

Like this:

La Menza D'Pradre 4/10
Barry's Bistro 9/10


Send as few or as many as you want and we will do all the collating, normalizing and indexing to calculate a list from objectively best to objectively worst restaurant.


Please note that the techniques, algorithms and technologies that we will use for this computation will be on a par, both conceptually, computationally and scientifically with Google, SETI,CERN, MIT and County Hall.... combined.


What this will guarantee is 100% certainty in the fact that this list will be as close to objective as is logically possible when dealing with the subjective.


To vote in any months The BRIT Awards just send all votes to
thebritawards@midcornwall.com.
by midnight on the last day of the month.

We will then have our guest presenter, Live on youtube from LA or maybe Probus.

Review: Il Crappo Nero, Italian Resturant, Truro

Put your hands up for Truro.
I love this city.
It provides much in many ways.

Food: From Nepal to England via Thailand, Italy and the cores of fusion.



On Saturday we made a choice to try the City's newest (3 weeks) restaurant, Il Crappo Nero. An Italian in the trendiest part of town. Its not called that really but I don't want people to Google it and end up at the very crap review it is about to get, deservedly.

Much like Truth and Reconsiliation this review is about moving forwards, using the mistakes of the past to forge a new and brighter future. Only instead of apartheid, here we are talking pasta etc.

Lidl Interior

Outside it looks delightful. Traditional shop frontage turned into a panorama that spans the entirety of Warrens Pasty shop. Inside the decor has a cheapness and lack of effort to it. As if rather than thinking about the interior design and the feel of the place they painted the walls in orange and then..... ummm... um... stuck up a few bits of mirror offcuts. It is bland and so very uninspired when compared to pretty much every other restaurant in the city.
Time flows ever onwards

We arrived at quarter to eight. We were seated. An order of drinks and food food taken. So far so good. The drinks didn't come and I had to do a retake on the order. ("Can I get a reeeewind") Apart from the decor, this was the first seed. The seed of what would turn into a shambolic restaurant rollercoaster into the heart of dining darkness. Time rolls ever onwards. Its direction immutable. Its rate of change a constant. We waited some more.
Sub-Standard-Sub-Zero Beef

When my carpacio eventually came the beef was frozen. As in, ice crystals. Crunch. This told me two things:
  1. The Beef was Not Fresh
  2. The Beef Was Not Thored
I had beef with the waiter about my savory sorbet. He took it to the chef and on his return was at a loss for an explanation other than "Its a fair cop guv'". Rumbled.
Try Harder Tri Colour

My domestic assistant had ordered Salad Tri Color. You know how when you buy avocados and they are not ripe and you keep feeling them to see if they are ripe. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow". And then tomorrow comes. Eventually you give into temptation and cut it open, only to be saddened by the persisting hardness.The same thing happened here, a hard avocado. But not only hard... small... and not the full fruit and meager offerings of mozzarella and tomato.




Ohhh Lordy - this is a disaster up there with the Hindenburg!

We took stock of the situation. The bad service, the slow service, the frozen meat, the criminally small Salad Tri Colour with the hard unripe avocado and decided, rightly so, that we didn't want to continue this experience.



We spoke to the manageress. This is what she should have said: "I am so sorry, we are new and these are teething troubles and even though we have scuppered your nice evenings beginnings with our shoddy service and food I would like you to come back in a few weeks and have a complementary bottle of wine. Really very very sorry. And of course you don't have to pay for the two drinks you ordered tonight."
The Rubicon

That didn't happen. No apology. Even with me informing her "I do not think we should pay for these drinks as the dining experience has been ruined" the management decided to charge for the drinks.

People make mistakes, of course we do. But if your going to run a posh restaurant you need to deal with the mistakes in the right manner. That so didn't happen here and frankly, in my mind, thats when they went from being a potentially great restaurant with teething troubles to a bad restaurant I cannot ever see myself going to again.



We were still hungry and went down to the One Eyed Cat, met some freinds, sat in the super converted church on the yummy-funky seating and ate a totally delicious Rocket pizza and drank ice cold Japaneses beer. I love this city.

Mid Cornwall Images: Roach Rock

Thanks to Chris Leather for this fantastic photo
of what is one of the most interesting places.
Cornwall Guide.

Friday, 8 June 2007

Bullet Points on the New Big Brother Racism Thing on Salted.net

Link to post my other blog, salted.net

Wednesday, 6 June 2007

Review: Lunch at Cuckoo, Truro

The question everyone seems to be asking about Cuckoo is, why isn't it more popular? With its funky decor, DJs, live bands and fantastic beer garden, it should be packed every night.

Now that it's started doing lunches, it ought to be packed during the day too.

So what gives?
I went there to investigate today.

The first thing you notice about Cuckoo (aside from the fact it's invariably quiet) is the cool interior design in shades of green and grey, based around the cuckoo clock next to the DJ booth- allegedly purchased from Ebay. The young bar staff are friendly and attentive and the service is quick.



However if, like the Queen and myself, you never carry cash, you'll find you have to key in your PIN at the far end of the bar. This could be a pain if the place ever does get packed out.
The new food menu is simple, traditional pub fare. There are snacks like chips at £1.50, garlic bread at £3.25 and soup of the day, £3.95, as well as baps, all priced around £5, with fillings like cheese and chutney, or slamon and cream cheese. So far, there are only six mains, of which one was vegetarian. So guess what I had. In fairness, the ratatouille with cheese was fresh and herby, and accompanied by a good chunk of crusty bread, so I shouldn't complain. But complain I will: come on! One veggie option? Just one? And the one thing even I can manage at home without having to call the fire brigade? Shame on you.

My carnivorous dining partner opted for the burger and fries at £5.95 over the cod and chips (£7.25), lasagne (£6.95) and the rest. She was impressed by the quality and texture of the burger which was clearly freshly prepared from scratch, but wondered if a little seasoning wouldn't have gone amiss. The 'fries' were in fact oven chips- a shame when real potatoes would have chimed much better with the retro theme- and the salad was undressed and straight from a bag.



We swigged a couple of glasses of rather tasty merlot with the meal, and both agreed that the wine list was pretty good.
I left Cuckoo wondering whether I hadn't got to the crux of the issue as regards its lack of patrons: I think it's down to spice, or lack of it. Take a tip from your interior designer and apply it to your food: blandness is the enemy of style.



Mid Cornwall Pic: Truro Cathedral


Fee free to send my any pics for putting on the blog.

Cornwall has the Cleanest Beaches In Europe!

We should all be celebrating. Hoorah! Cornwall has the cleanest beaches in Europe.

Now we just need to wait for global warming to ramp the sea temp, and for the opening some beach cafes that sell damp baguettes for eight quid, and we really will be able to compete with the Med'.

Make mine a '99!

Sunday, 3 June 2007

Resturant Review Saffron Resturant, Truro

Aside from the pleasure of their company, there are precious few advantages to dining out with small children. So it was with some trepidation that I set out with two under fives as well as a grown up dining companion to 'enjoy' an afternoon drink followed by dinner.

It all started badly. Frankly I'm amazed that Zafiros failed to ban the little rugrats for their behaviour. By the time we arrived at Saffron my nerves were shot. Luckily the service, food and atmosphere in that tucked away little gem were enough soothe us all. And the benefits of eating at tea-time, rather than dinner time, became readily apparent on inspection of the "Early Diners' Menu" (available to order between 5 and 7pm): only £9.95 for two courses, £12.95 for three, with a glass of wine included in the price. Bargain!



The service in Saffron was top notch. Within seconds of arriving the little ones were given books and crayons, leaving us to choose from the a la carte, children's or set menu. The kids chose scrambled egg and garlic toast, priced at a very reasonable £2.95, and fish and chips at £4.50, which arrived promptly and were declared "licious!". My grown up companion had the duck rillet to start, and I had the asparagus soup.

All of the dishes were prepared from fresh, locally grown ingredients, including the children's, and the excellent flavour of each reflected this. We followed the starters with a rich and creamy chicken risotto and a goats' cheese linguini, again delicious. The portions were a little small for a hungry man- you'd easily have room for the dessert if you fancied one- which is, arguably, ideal for an early meal. We accompanied the food with a decent glass of red each, and also tried a couple of bottles of 'Heligan Honey', an excellent local ale from the extensive beer menu.



The bill came to only £37, a serious bargain when kids' meals and drinks often represent quite a strain on the pocket.

Saffron is by no means a trendy establishment: the average age of the diners, even taking into account my own party of whippersnappers, was approaching pensionable age. The decor is bright and fresh but not 'sexy'. It's not the kind of place I'd want to go to on a hot date. Having said that, it is exactly the sort of place I'd recommend for the beginning of a longer night out with friends who enjoy award-winning locally sourced cuisine. Including those too young to read the menu.

Saffron Restaurant
5 Quay St,
(Next door to Kazbar),
Truro

01872 263771



Location on
The Truro Map

Saturday, 2 June 2007

Truro and the The Real Veal Meal

For the last decade Veal, the pale flesh of a young cow, has been shunned, and for good reason:


  • Calves are taken from their mothers at one week old and grown in dark plastic cages for the first three months of their lives.
  • Then they spend another month in "down time" where the veal farmers try to keep the cattle in an emotional state somewhere between "solemn" and "in malaise" for as long as possible. The more depression the calves experience the more tender the meat, it's that simple.
  • The veal Calves are then sent from all over Europe, via a very crammed cattle wagons, on a drive-by tour of Nazi concentration camps and then on to the slaughter house for a very long, prolonged and upsetting death.



Hence it surprised me this morning as I took my normal Saturday sojourn through Truro's fair meandering alleyways and streets and, of course, its wonderful weekly farmer's market. For there, midst the vegetables and smoked cheese hawkers was a stall blatantly purveying this flesh blessed by Beelzebub himself.

The Mengele of Moo offered me a parchment and I began to read.....

A few moments later....


"Is that good for burgers?" I asked, at this point bathing in the realization that this veal wasn't the bad veal, this was the good veal. This was the veal that was essentially the cow version of lamb. This was the veal that was vealized using bull cows from a dairy herd that would have been killed anyways, at birth. BAM. Bolt Through The Head.

Ive had a bit of an issue with meat of late. I know I should be vegetarian. We all should be: eating meat is very bad for the planet in so many ways. But some meat is so good. And Truro is so good for meat that it's bad. The South African stall in the market that sells biltong far cheaper than eBay.... the smart-ass-yummie-delies with their perfect combinations of meat with healthy stuff like alfalfa.

And now this man who sells a veal that I have a moral imperative to eat because if I don't I am practically firing the bolt through the head of a five second old baby bull!!! I thought perhaps the credentials of the veal's moral status might actually turn my domestic assistant away from her near two decades of vegetarianism. But no, or at least, not yet.


Myself and the farmer-merchant conversed some more about his veal and I purchased 500 grams of veal mince for £1.75 because, frankly, I'm not paying eight quid, for something that might actually taste rank.
One Way Veal Burgers

  1. Take enough veal mince for your burger.
  2. Season with Maggi sauce and chilli.
  3. Cook only one side until the middle of the top is cooked to your satisfaction. This will result in an isotropic thermal gradient within the burger and thus a stratification between chargrilled and moist/tender.
  4. During cooking apply vertical pressure along the burger's Y axis with a soft utensil. This will squeeze out juice and fat which you must move away from the burger using the utensil a la tende.
  5. When cooked remove from heat and bisect the burger along the X axis, flipping one half fully along its z axis.
  6. Place rejoined burger on a glazed blueberry raft.
  7. Drizzle with Schadenfreude (If you cant get this try Teriaki marinade from Tesco)
  8. Finish with a bouffant of grated Parmesan





And this is the result:























Veal has the potential to turn a normal One Way Burger into a One Way Veal Burger, and you don't have to be Heston Blumenthal to know that its the only meat like this, in this regard.

I don't know if Bocaddon Farm will be selling their ethically wholesome veal in Truro again. I don't know if they did If I would buy some. I don't know if it tastes , in burger form at least, much much better than beef or if it really does taste like chicken. But I do know this: man, newt or bovine, everything that lives must one day die.


Police issue new warning about the "Truro Switch"

Truro police today issued a second warning to drinkers in Truro about the new underground practice amongst bar staff, the "Truro Switch". Chief Inspector Leslie Grantham warned that "though not a health risk per se, the Truro Switch is irresponsible and against the 1968 Trades Description Act."

The Truro Switch is based upon the "Cowboy Switch", popular in the GoGo bars of Bangkok and Manila during the Vietnam war. American vets on R&R would be surreptitiously given the switch in order to make them more amiable to the limitless immoral promiscuity that was on offer.

Truro may lack the hookers and the battle-mashed amputees but it seems it has its own version, and reports are that the craze is sweeping through the area's bar-staff fraternity. It is somewhere between an epidemic and a local pandemic.





If you have been on the bad end of a Truro Switich let us know, email blog at midcornwall dot com

Sunday, 27 May 2007

National Franchise Rebukes St Austell Town's Offer of Peppercorn Lease

Another blow to the festering commercial anus of St Austell Town was delivered today by major national retail franchise, Poundland. In March Restormel Council offered Poundland a "significantly small" peppercorn lease on a "substantial" retail premises in the town center. The details of the offer were very shielded, and still are. However I have found out that it was the smallest lease price on any property in the Town for three decades, and that it was also offered to a well known local insurance company.

So I kept on snooping and investigating and yet again, I have come up trumps. Last week I wrote a letter to Poundland's CEO, Quidsley Montogmery, asking about the potential to get a Poundland in St Austell, and specifically the council's peppercorn offer. Today I received a short but informative email reply from Mr Montogomery:


"Dear Mr Chesterton,

Thank you for your correspondence.

It was hard decision for the board to make, but we feel that on the whole the credibility and image of Poundland has to be our prime directive. We feel that St Austell is not on a vector that is compatible with ours, both in terms of aesthetics and ethos. Also we are worried about shoplifting".


Best wishes

....

"

Quidsley Montgomery

CEO Poundland

CEO Quidsley Montgomery, known by the moniker "Monty" since he started Poundland in 1975


As soon as I had this confirmation I moved my journalistic sniper sights onto the councilor responsible for the initial offer. I can't reveal her identity but I can publish here, without prejudice, the response she emailed me back not three hours ago:

"Dear Charles,

Thank you for your correspondence regarding the redevelopment of St Austell Town Centre, specifically the issue of Poundland not being established in St Austell; a fact I can today confirm.


Although the PWAB* method of redevelopment has had a good national track record around the country over the years, we feel that seeing as St Austell already has the WAB, losing Poundland isn't as critical as it could have been.


I agree that it is not ideal, but it's not as much of a setback as you are implying in your email - it is certainly not the "disaster of old testament proportions" you describe.


Also, and for the record, there are two points I am obliged to make:


1) The terms of lease agreed were in keeping with the projected lease value of the premises and we do not consider them to be "peppercorn" or "nigh on free".

2) If you send me a photograph like that again, even it was to "illustrate your point", I will sue you for harassment.


Sincerely,


....

"





*Poundland>Woolworths>Argos>Boots.

The Thatcher government paid billions to the Rand corporation to come up with the ideal way to regenerate town centres after the collapse of industry. The PWAB method was developed using highly advanced concepts from population maths and economic psychology. If you're interested, "Game Theory and The Primart Dilemma" is a great introduction to modern conurbation architectonics.


Thursday, 24 May 2007

Review: Chantek Thai Fusion Resturant, Truro

When you eat out, do you um and ahh as you read the menu, change your mind about five times and only make up your mind what to eat when the waiter arrives? Or do you scan it efficiently and stick to your decision, the menu closed on the table when all around you dither? If you fall into the latter camp, you are either a ruthlessly efficient restaurant robot or, like me, a vegetarian.

Vegetarians seldom have the opportunity to vacillate, there being only one or two options available to them. Often, it’s veggie lasagne or starve, and don’t get me started about places that think vegetarians eat fish. So when I spotted the innumerate little ‘V’s all over the extensive menu at Chantek on Truro’s trendy New Bridge Street, I came over all a flutter. To my joy and amazement, they can cook nearly all of their main courses with tofu as an alternative to meat or fish, and boy! Can they cook them well!


Price-wise, Chantek offers good value all round, with beautifully presented starters from £5 , including soups, salads and other sundries. My dining companions opted for the mixed starter to share at £10.50, which included funky little steamed chicken parcels wrapped in banana leaves, king prawns and a range of deep fried delights they declared delicious. I had the vegetable tempura, crisp and succulent with a sweet and tangy chilli dip, all for £6.50.


In the mood for heat, we all opted for curries, mine a spicy jungle one. It wasn’t nearly as hot as I’d have liked, but contained a good range of well cooked vegetables and the sauce was sticky and delicious, as was the jasmine rice I had to accompany it. One of the people eating with us asked for "the hottest curry the chef had ever made" and it came in at a disapointing mildness.... but a great taste.

We enjoyed a bottle of chilly dry white with our meal, but opted out of dessert, having already eaten way too much. We were delighted to find the bill totalling just over £60 for the three of us

Chantek offers good value dining in a cool and atmospheric venue, with good service and an authentic range of dishes from the pacific rim which is close to representing the holy grail of vegetarian eating. It's cheaper, better more stylish and less snooty than Truro's other fusion restaurant, Snooty Lu Lus.

For chilli and choice in the heart of Truro, try Chantek.

Bettyxx

Chantek Asian Fusion Restaurant.
15 New Bridge Street
Truro
TR1 2AA
Tel: 01872 225071

Chantek is featured in The Truro Map

Thursday, 17 May 2007

Find out who would win in a fight between Cornwall and Plymouth on the Midcornwall.com Forum.

Midcornwall.com has just had a forum added. Its free and totally anonymous (Use a gmail or hotmail etc if you are bothered) and has been made because of the comments to this post: the big battle between racists and lefties.

Use it, Abuse it, Don't use it.

The forum is here:

http://www.midcornwall.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5

Sunday, 6 May 2007

18% of St Austell Voters Voted for the BNP:(

Nearly one in five in St Austell Voted for The British Nazi Party.

Democracy is a wonderful thing.
Every silver lining has its tarnished ring.
And freedom of speech is sacred,
And haters mustn't be hated.
But it makes me sad, that him or his dad,
Or your neighbor or lover or friend or mother,
Voted this way, to have their say:
That they are haters too.
I just hope it wasn’t you.

(Link to BNP News Story)

[ED- The BNP story is mistaken BNP propaganda. Thanks to Jame's in comments who has pointed out that they didn't get anywhere near 18%. Its a good thing this is a blog and not the World Service:P]



Saturday, 5 May 2007

Investigating The Strawbriges - the Complete PDF

After the Investigating Mebyon Kernow Artciles changed forever the face of the Cornish Internet, it is with great pride that I unleash upon the readers of The Midcornwall Blog the complete and unabridged Investigating the Strawbridges.

It is hard hitting and controversial and threatens to shake the very framework of Cornish Investigative Journalism. And at the end it has an aspect that wasn't planned, it has to be said.


Print or Download from here

Saturday, 28 April 2007

Cornwall Factoids: Truro Cathedral

  • One of these factoids is wrong.
  • Buy one Cathedral and get a Free Church! Truro Cathedral is built on the site of the 16th century St Mary's Church. But rather than demolish it, they included it in the design and it can be seen - both outside and in. It's the only cathedral in the country like this. Nifty!
  • Amazing! - Truro Cathedral's pillars are made of Bath Stone which, as everyone knows, in 1980 cost £8 per cubic foot! Pricey!
  • A Stain in the Glass - In the days before GOD TV people used to have to watch God in church windows. Without screensavers, many of these images have been "burnt"or "stained" onto the glass. Truro has the Biggest Stained Glass of anywhere in the world!
  • Avant Guard, kinda -It was the first Cathedral to be built in England in hundreds of years - how many years depends on who you listen to. For example, Answers.com says 600 years. CornwallGuide says 800 years etc
  • No Way! Truro Was a city before the cathedral was built. Yes way!
  • Copy Cat - Much like Nine Inch Nails recently releasing music direct to bittorent, Truro Cathedral is a part of a Gothic Revival.
  • Numerological Mystery - The combined height of the three spires is 198 meters. In feet this is 649.606 feet. It doesn't take a maths teacher to see that 649.606 is only a 49 and a .0 away from the number of the beast! Omen Oh Man!


Postscript, 3 days after posting: I have just been inside the cathedral for the first time in over a decade. You forget what a wonderful structure and place it is.

Wave goodbye to green surfers.

Now only does Cornwall have the biggest Biome farm we now are going to have the biggest wave farm. Wave hub, which will cost 21 million squiod, will be built of St Ives and will supply energy, powered by waves, to some homes and other places.





But Surfers are not happy and, after defeating sewage, they are probably now going to start on wave farms:





Cornwall's surfers up in arms at plans to harvest wave energy - Independent Online Edition







Powered by ScribeFire.

Thursday, 26 April 2007

Investigating Mebyon Kernow - the Complete PDF

I get thousands of emails a day "PLEASE! can you release your Investigating Mebyon Kernow as a single PDF file I can download and read in a linear manner as opposed to the inverted chronology of the blog posting structure!!!"


Yes my pretties, yes I can. Here it is:

http://www.midcornwall.com/Investigating%20Mebyon%20Kernow.pdf

Wednesday, 25 April 2007

MK mine a baby sham.

I have just been out for a beer with a man from Mebyon Kernow.
The catalyst for this meeting was my spoof Investigating Mebyon Kernow series.
Since leaving the house, I am now a paid up member of Mebyon Kernow and tomorrow I am leafleting for them.

Its a funny old world
:)

Sunday, 22 April 2007

A call to An Gof for interview.


If you are in An Gof, I would like to interview you for this blog. Privacy, anonyminity and impartiality absolutely assured. Contact me using this email form. Thanks, a Citizen of Cornwall, England and the World, but not Devon:)

Saturday, 21 April 2007

Investigating The Strawbridges Part Seven: The Problem with Dick


For reasons of cross pollination and weird Internet feng shui stuff I don't understand, Part 6 of Investigating The Strawbridges is published on The Truro Blog. Its not as lighthearted as the rest of the series.

Investigating The Strawbridges Part Seven: The Problem with Dick on The Truro Blog



Thursday, 19 April 2007

Investigating The Strawbridges Part Six: James -The Sins of the Son



Student James Strawbridge takes after his father in many ways. He studies Marine History at the University of East Anglia, and is described by his fellows as “a great bloke” and “greener than algae”.

He writes poetry. Most of his oeuvre is highly personal, appearing to arise from the Lacanian mirror phase of his development, in post-structural psychoanalytic terms, of course. He explores the interstices between the ego and the ego-ideal with sensitivity and panache, clearly influenced in this sense by Coleridge’s opium induced self explorations. James Strawbridge’s free verse, unbound from the shackles of the traditional stanza, swoops and flies in a manner resonant of the Ted Hughes’ early work; while the elasticity of the metre is comparable to the great metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century.

Since his family has moved back to Cornwall James’ poetry has taken on a more environmental flavor. Bold pieces that challenge and alert within the same well wrought couplets. For a man in his early twenties it is mature and very well considered verse. The following Poem from the UEA Union Poetry magazine captures his muse beautifully:


But like his father, there is a hidden darkness.

James has an addiction, kept secret from his parents. An addiction with one of the worst environmental payloads of any. James steals on average five traffic cones a week from the streets of Norwich. These he takes back to his “digs” where he and his mates laugh at their ever growing hoard. Perhaps we could look at this tomfoolery and give a knowing shrug; “students, eh? Crazy.” But a man must be judged on how his actions shadow his words, and I am afraid in this case, we cannot brush over this so easily.

To make one Traffic cone produces three tones of CO2. To deploy a traffic cone on an urban UK road junction releases another half a ton of Carbon. To replace a stolen cone on a UK road means anther half ton of CO2. All in all, that’s 4 tons of carbon for every pilfered traffic calming device.

It doesn’t take a brain doctor to work out that since, on last count, he had stolen 124 cones, James “Greener Than Algae” Strawbridge has a carbon footprint bigger than a family of yetis. Yes James; “We must take care of our home”.

Tuesday, 17 April 2007

Tribute is a Winner - Because beer isn't just for drinking

Congratulations to The St Austell Brewery, their Tribute bitter has won the South West's most prestigious prize, for beer. Tribute is my favorite bitter, but its not a beer to get drunk on as it leaves a residual sluggishness on the corners of one's evening. Unlike premium expert/export larger such as Stella or Kroni which imbues one with an energy and clarity of drunkenness not available to bitter drinkers. I have more to say on beer here.


Well done Tribute. We Salute You

Monday, 16 April 2007

Investigating The Strawbridges Part Five: Straining Dick’s Greens

When they make a TV show they film much more footage than they use in the show, and Scrap Heap Challenge is no different. If you have the contacts you can get access to this “backroom” and “greenroom” footage. I got this access and from the digital cutting room floor from the 2003 Series I found the Rosetta stone; an informal off (but on) camera chat between Lisa “3-2-1” Rodgers and Dick Strawbridge. We have transcribed the pertinent aspects or you can watch the entire footage on YouTube:


Watch Footage on YouTube

LR: So, what will you do if you leave the show?

DS: Ah divvent knaa. Mebeez I’ll get mesel’ some kind o’ show like that gadgie from Eastenders, like. Ye knaa, deein’ gangs or summick, like. With me military trainin an’ that, Ah should be canny good for it, like.

LR: Yeah, not a bad idea. He gets a packet for that show, and all the travel as well.

DS: Aye, pet, travellin’s always a bonus, like. Aah’ve been aall ower, me: Aisa, America, even New Zealand, like.

LR: I saw a show on Five where they filmed recruits for the SAS or something…he looked really hard.

DS: Whey aye, pet. Ye have to be hard and tough, like. Aah didn’t knaa there was already a show like that, mind. Bit of a shitta yes’ve dropped on us.

LR: It’s hard to find new formats, Dick. That’s the game, innit. And even when you have a new format, you’ve got the uphill slog of persuading people to make it.

DS: Aye, yer not wrang there, pet.

LR: I’ll tell you what’s getting a lot of interest at the moment. Shows about the environment, sustainability and stuff.

DS: Aboot what, pet?

LR: Environmental issues.

DS: Aye aye, Aah knaa. Whales and dolphins and aall that shite like?

LR: Well yeah, kind of I guess.

8DS: Champion! Cheers for the tip, bonny lass! Aah’ll be havin’ some o’ that mesell. Belter!

LR: Gotta go Dick, Richard just texted.

DS: Aye, nee sweat. Had on though: is it reet there’s an aald diff forra jeep in the tip, like?

LR: Dicky, if there was one in Pile F you know I wouldn’t tell you….

And there it is: irrefutable evidence of the moment Dick became green, caught forever, without question. It’s not easy being green, but it’s a lot harder befriending the gangs of Sao Paulo and being treated as kin and kindred while the bullets and the screams of the dying fill the air.