Plastic wine bottles

I was in Noz, buying wine for my sister, and came across these plastic, screw-top bottles of  californian wine. 

I've got to hand it to the americans.   If something can be made less classy.....

Grubby mitts

Our local Lidl sells baked goods that you can eat for lunch or a snack - croissants, bits of pizza, focaccia bread with things on, and so on.   They have this neat system that means you can serve yourself but can't get your grubby mitts on the product until you have fished it out of its container onto an accessible platform.  Neat, eh?

Beer

La Bierre is a song by Jaques Brel, that I am trying to learn on the accordion.   It's not easy.   By happy coincidence, I am also trying to brew some beer, that will likely lead to more satisfactory results, and quicker too.

I'm using a beer kit that I bought in England.  For a modest outlay in hardware you can get all the equipment, and the ingredients you can buy in a tin.   The quality of the result is entirley down to how well one follows the instructions.

I have to admit that mine took a bit longer to finish fermenting than the instructions led me to believe, but that might have something to do with the fact that I didn't actually open the tin until a couple of weeks past its "best by" date.  Mea culpa.

Given that the resulting beer doesn't cost much as these things go, (Pie and a pint for 15 quid??) I'm sure it won't be long before the government starts taxing the ingredients on health or some other grounds.

And talking of governments, I see the first chipping away at the use of burning wood for heating has started.   Strictly controlled in some areas of France, plus a news item on TF1 explaining how wood smoke increases risks of cancer.   Can't have the plebs getting cheap energy now, can we?   And did you know that growing your vegetables contributes to global warming, according to the Wonderfully Egotistical F**kers?

Art forms

They call them BDs in France, it stands for bandes déssinées.  In English they're called comic books, which seems a bit derogatory to me.   Graphic novels is probably better.

Browsing in a bookshop the other day, I happened upon a BD on the subject of Led Zeppelin, a group I have admired since I was young, that is to say, for a long time.  So I bought it, and am enjoying reading it.

It works on the well-tried presentation principle: "tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em; then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you've told 'em".   Each chapter starts with a short text explaining the theme of the chapter.  This is followed by several pages of BD,  and the chapter ends with two pages of fuller, textual explanantion of what has been shown.  Different artists are used for the BD sections of each chapter.

I like the format, and note with pleasure that the series includes books on several other well-loved artists: David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and others.   I will buy more.   I see that Amazon UK sell what I presume to be English versions; the one I have is in French.