Meenzer

Don't worry, Noelie used to stream 15-year-old Boy Seamen so it must be OK.

Harsh on CT, but fair

"Reading"

My excuse is I nicked that from Twitter. (And I'm sticking with it.)

http://www.tvm.com.mt/en/news/maltese-visit-less-porn-sites-during-eurovision-but-watch-more-porn-on-election-day/

I've certainly never felt particularly at home there or wanted to stay for any longer, but then I'm very much a northern type when it comes to Germany too. So I'm sure there is fun to be had in Munich, I just find it quite... artificial, I suppose? As for the esteemed Ayatollah's questions: There's loads of smaller but less appallingly busy beer halls around, you won't have to look too hard - every local brewery seems to have one or two, and there are tons of local breweries, so just look for a Biergarten sign outside. And! Most of them will do exactly the kind of authentic Bavarian scran you're after too, so no need to venture any further afield. Plus the one advantage of it being a touristy city is they all have menus in English... (For what it's worth, from my very loose memory I've been to the Augustiner Bräustuben, the Augustiner Keller and Paulaner am Nockherberg before, but they're all much of a muchness in terms of what they do - surely the only reason for my vague recollections - so I can't really recommend any one over the others. ) And get yourself to the Viktualienmarkt for lunch/daytime food, it's a foodie market with lots of stalls selling stuff from the vaguely posh to the "slabs of pig in a bun" type of thing you'll be needing to mop up a brutal hangover. And obviously they'll happily provide you with the hair of the dog too.

It's nothing out of this world, just a nice homely local-run place that does decent-quality café stuff well, so I'd say it's probably only worth going out of your way for if the sun is shining and the weather's canny enough to have a stroll along the adjacent beach afterwards. Worth a stop en route to points northward too, but not a destination in itself. My reputation already lags well behind me, so I'm not too concerned.

I was going to say the Drift Café at Cresswell but that's, erm, not as close to Alnwick as I thought. I've been away too long.

Make sure you oil up his armchair first.

Any more of this filth and I'll be forced to merge it with this thread

And even that's contingent on the landlords not hiking the rent, but they're an older couple who've been burned by dubious tenants in the past so I think they're happy to have us. Hopefully.

Our days in London are numbered too. No chance of ever buying down here (at least anywhere I'd want to live, either property- or location-wise), and it'd be ridiculous money even if we could afford it. Our tenancy is on a two-year cycle and it's up in a couple of months, so we're renewing one more time and will be using the intervening time for him to scope out jobs elsewhere and for us to figure out where in the north we want to end up (I admit I'll be trying to steer us NE-wards if possible ). Nearly decided to jack it in this time round, but we've got friends and a bit of an actual community around here now (I know, in London and everything) and a bit more planning is probably wise - the next move ideally wants to be for settling down properly, I can't be fussed with upping sticks with renter-like frequency, so this gives us time to look around properly. I've never been to Manchester without being accosted by a randomer on the street acting abusively or threateningly at some point. (Not the same randomer each time, as far as I can tell.) Doesn't endear the place to me as somewhere to live, but I realise I should probably base my opinion on something more concrete than that.

Planning a tandoori chicken and vegetable pancake bake for tonight, anyway. Might as well subvert the art completely. (Couple of pancakes with lemon and sugar for afters, obviously.)

Longreads just recommended this to me, as it happens: https://newrepublic.com/article/122959/sorry-blue-apron-joys-cooking-cant-fit-box?src=longreads

Coming over here, eating healthily

My delivery guy is Polish. I should check he's not skimming a courgette or two off the top.

Still get the regular veg boxes from them, still very happy with them. Helps working from home though, there's basically double the number of (potential) meals to make so nothing gets wasted.

I use turkey mince but aye, you'd never pick turkey as your roast of choice outside of Christmas. As for pancakes, I'll have them very occasionally during the year but I agree they're a bit crêpe.

It's the only language I speak. Check my CV if you don't believe me. (It's just below "Toontastic Moderator".)

Tempted to try and recreate this monstrosity tonight.