Posts by Gareth
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It's also about the accommodation.
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It's all about the location : moored up for the night in the middle of Golden Bay, Feb 15th.
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I suspect the mushroom of choice in Andorra would be the saffron milk cap/Lactarius deliciosus - it's incredibly popular in Catalonia and Northern Spain, where it's called niscalos or rovellon (amongst many other names). It's bright apricot orange, weeps greenish "milk" (hence Lactarius), and is deliciously nutty, a little peppery and very mushroomy.
It has been introduced to NZ, and there's a company growing it commercially on pines in Gisborne, but I believe all production goes to Japan. ChCh residents can occasionally find a Plant & Food Research scientist (hi Alexis!) selling them outside Canterbury Cheesemongers on Saturdays during the season - which will start as soon as Canterbury gets some decent rain.
It's much more common in Australia, where it's called the pine mushroom.
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Thanks Grant - a nice tribute. My "first Cohen" was a little earlier than yours, as you might expect - Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye, which was one of the tracks on the 1968 CBS UK sampler Rock Machine I Love You. I can still sing most of the words. And then at university his stuff (and Cat Stevens!) provided the soundtrack to some of my favourite formative experiences...
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Hard News: Be careful what you wish for, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Well, to an extent me too - but the bigger point that China will relish a US led by Trump stands, because the two countries are (more or less) inextricably linked. As the Brexiteers are finding out for the UK and EU...
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Hard News: Be careful what you wish for, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
The U.S. debt to China is $1.185 trillion, as of August 2016
That's we call a hell of a bargaining chip.
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The Paris Agreement should survive, because by the time Trump rescinds the US ratification (which requires 12 months notice), enough other countries should have signed up to stay over the 55% of global emissions threshold required by the PA despite the loss of the US's 15%(ish). But it's early days on that...
But the geopolitics is going to be fascinating on all sorts of levels. If Trump does go full on protectionist on trade, what price China stepping in to act as the centrepiece of future multilateral trade agreements? And what will Putin do, now he has a puppet in the White House?
Just thinking about it makes:
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I've just finished a 9-day bike tour of Burgundy and Beaujolais, and while I did it purely on leg power, about half of the party were using e-bikes - Bosch e-drives were the commonest. For the less fit and/or older members of our group they were a godsend, especially on hills. At the very least, they extend both the range of things you can do on a bike, and how long you can do them.
They can also help the unaided on hills: our tour leader, the estimable Barbara Grieve, carried a selection of old inner tubes. You loop two together then hook them over the seat post of an e-bike and the handlebar mount of a leg bike, and off the pair of you go uphill with great élan. Not that I did, of course. But in 10 years time I might...
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More Blue Monday on unusual instruments. Here's a music box/mandolin version by Hannah Peel (who has a fine voice):
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Beatles'…, in reply to linger,
Oops!
