nick_h.

Most recent activity

• Coffee Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 18 hours, 46 minutes

  

  Cafetiere??????? Atrocious. Smash them all. A complete waste of coffee.

• Coffee Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 19 hours, 21 minutes

  

  I had it at a restaurant long ago and it was a revelation to me - no bitterness, no aftertaste, so smooth, with a sweet taste, as if It had sugar in it. I didn't know an espresso could taste like that. Never had anything resembling it since.

• Coffee Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 19 hours, 53 minutes

  

  Can you even buy locally roasted JBM?

  What if I sneakily time his shots...would that tell me anything. and how long should they be?

• Coffee Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 20 hours, 3 minutes

  

  Ir's roasted in Jamaica. (It's the real thing - I checked the labels on the bags.)

  I am becoming friends with him by helping him get on Google Maps. Also said I would write reviews for Tripadvisor and Google Maps. But this was after the first good shot. After the sour shot I'm not so keen. I think I'll send the next bad one back and hope for the best. Maybe the coffee machine rental people will steer him in the right direction?

• Coffee Appreciation

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 20 hours, 25 minutes

  

  Need some advice with a delicate situation. New cafe has opened near me. A one man band so far, but hiring a staff member soon. The guy has real Jamaica Blue Mountain beans and a £4k machine.But I don't think he's had proper training. The first JBM espresso I had was good, the second was sour and horrible. (I drank it, and said it wasn't as good as the first. He didn't say anything.)

  I'd really like the cafe to succeed. Real JBM at an affordable price on my doorstep is quite an asset. Would the sour taste definitely be because it was under extracted, because he didn't adjust the grind to allow for the beans absorbing moisture? And how can I nudge him towards training? Is there a good free training video somewhere? I don't want to give bad advice, and I don't want to give good advice in a patronising manner.

• EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 3 days, 9 hours

  

  You're not English, are you? Snobbery is the biggest factor. Snobbery doesn't prevent conceptual understanding, but it instructs you to ignore it and to stay behind the barriers between you and the ordinary people. The barriers are expensive - living in certain areas, private education for your children, business class on planes, private doctors, private hospitals, au pairs and maids and housekeepers to go to the supermarket for you. That whole package of barriers costs a fortune in London, and there is great peer pressure and parental pressure to make enough money to afford it all. If you can't afford it you share some of your existence with the common herd, which is unforgivable. It forces you to be ruthless and self-serving.

  It's exactly the same mindset of the colonial administrators whose job was to exploit the natives throughout the British Empire. The same schools, the same families. Now they have to find other ways to get to the top of the pyramid.

• EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 3 days, 10 hours

  

  I'm afraid it's much worse than that...this is the majority view of ambitious privately educated men in highly paid jobs. They've been taught to think like this and they don't have a higher than average incidence of personal problems. Boris Johnson is typical of this group.

• EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

  in Miscellaneous and Meaningless • 3 days, 14 hours

  

  He does, but he can't empathise. I'm the one person he knows who used to be rich and is now ill and can't work and lost everything. After the 2008 crash I was homeless and shoplifting for a spell, but I survived, unlike many, and I've raided my meagre pension to buy a 3rd hand Parlee and Lightweight wheels. So now I feel blessed. What a bike...it's a magic carpet. Thank god I never had children. I don't drink/smoke or go to restaurants/cinemas/anywhere, so all my money goes on the bike and the cat.

  But along the way I noticed that the well off people I used to know are very ruthless. I suppose they mostly earn 300-750k a year. Some of them are in a higher bracket...multimillionaires. Maybe you don't get there unless you're ruthless? They are completely uncaring about so many things...refugees drowning in the Med, benefits claimants who are sanctioned and die of hunger...such a long, long list, which I'm sure the typical LFGSS bod is well aware of. In their mind I'm history, a non-person, down there with the Big Issue seller.

  Anyway, I haven't seen him for a year, we're meeting soon, and I just hope we don't fall out over Brexit, all the untreated mental illness, landlords who reject benefit claimants, Tory rape of the NHS, the increase in NI...fuck, I hate this country sometimes.

• The bike shops who only cater to the rich...which ones are hateful?

  @nick_h. started

  • 2 comments
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  @hippy replied
• The bike shops who only cater to the rich...which ones are hateful?

  in General • 3 days, 14 hours

  

  What with cycling being the new golf, and dentists having not just one £15,000 superbike but three, there are a surprising number of excloooosive dealers catering to the rich. Which ones are pleasant to those of us who are not rich, and which ones are cunts? That is my question. In my experience Cyclefit are wonderful and lovely, and B*spoke Cycling are cunts.