MakemineVanilla

Sounds like a trial of will over your taste-buds, which eventually prevailed. Going for the high can be quite a challenge sometimes, and I think home-brew offers the biggest challenge of them all. Telling yourself it only cost 30p a pint can only take you so far.

But as your proper drinker has often been heard to say, "This beer is so shit, I'll be glad when I've had enough!".

I've heard similar tales about unfaithful husbands and vengeful wives, or to paraphrase Norman Stanley Fletcher, they were given time in solitary!

I have a couple of bottles somewhere, so I guess I will get to find out if it keeps or not, as I've had it for years. I actually think the 8 is better than the 10.

Has anyone ever bought any Trappistes Rochefort 10 in a bar? If you buy them on-line they are £5.29 but I can't even imagine the mark-up for a bar. Luckily, you don't need many because they are 11.3%.

I have long considered Toblerone to be the dentist's friend. I do like Swiss chocolate though, and I've always considered Suchard an ideal gift for one's lover, but perhaps I have been pronouncing it wrong?

A mate of mine was forced to give up the booze and now has a chocolate habit, which seems to consist of mostly Double "bloody" Deckers. I prefer Lindt 99% or the Co-op's 85% dark chocolate and you only need a couple of squares to feel sated. The only chocolate known to help with weight-loss was Ex-Lax but I believe it has been banned.

I don't think you can pick on this particular manager because every time England have looked like they might, they have bottled it, when it mattered. England have a history of failure and I can't see that changing.

If he did, Gareth would be walking funny well into the new year!

I think the biggest danger when it comes to ULEZ schemes is that with so many councils in so much debt, a tory government might be tempted to sell them to private business to enjoy a quick injection of tax, only for the tax-payer to make a long-term loss. Chicago, considered the most corrupt city in the USA, sold their parking-zone schemes for short-term gains and long-term losses. The temptations will be immense.

It was one of those events which confirmed my belief that football is a branch of Greek drama: pride, hubris, anagnorisis, tragedy and redemption. Football even has the groundlings discordantly howling the Greek chorus. The irony that Beckham's redemption was to occur against the Greeks, was killing.

That reminds me of that story John Cleese tells about his mother, who started moaning that she wished she was dead. Cleese said to her that he knew a bloke down the pub who would do the job for a reasonable fee. His mother found it hilarious, and it cheered her up.

I do tend to forget that that is what it's really all about! We all live in hope that a player will suddenly click and be transformed into a world-class player.

I don't think the concept of "middle aged" is merely mathematical, and has a lot more to do with recognisable traits and attitudes. The dad body, sleeping habits and very much the age of the twinge.

He has struggled to deal with crafty old centre-halves. I keep forgetting that he's only 19 and has a lot to learn. I don't think he does tap-ins!

They are definitely over-egging it a bit with their praise of Watkins, especially after he missed that open-goal. Checking out the Australia squad, they don't have a single player playing in a top tier, so you can't get too carried away. Knowing this must have been quite a blow to Jack's ego, but he had a decent game all told. Ollie's goal was the sort he should score more of, as the best strikers are known to do (see old footage of Lineker). You could see Jack was pissed-off but the replay suggested that his shot might have hit the post.

You need a dehumidifier as well, if you wish to avoid condensatio and mold. As Les Dawson used to say, there were that many nappies hanging up to dry, in his house as a kid, that there was a rainbow in the kitchen.

Without doubt, the series of interviews which influenced me the most, were the In the Psychiatrist's Chair series which was on BBC Radio 4, Anthony Clare. It seems that the one which interests modern audiences the most, is the one with Spike Milligan.

I wouldn't argue with that but it didn't stop me from buying the other albums: I just love their punk sensibility. Sadly, I totally failed to notice that they were a vehemently political project.

Ryvita was just a way to convince people that if they ate less bread but kept the big wedge of cheese, they could still claim they were on a diet.

I used to take plain Ryvita to work for my lunch and I was amazed at how it freaked people out - they used to get amazingly annoyed. The petty tyranny of conformity, what?

Some very prescient observations from Chomsky: sex scandals are used to distract from far more serious political shenanigans and that the Internet might be mostly about home marketing.

It was very much the thing that "Mum" would always serve herself last and least in working-class households, in your mother's era, and this was accurately depicted in The Huggetts trilogy of films, with Kathleen Harrison playing the matriarch, who is shown to play the most powerful position in the family. No doubt that this was an idealised depiction but it definitely indicates what was aspired to, at least, in the 1940s.

My own mother was actually christened Maud after her mother, but insisted on being called Margaret but was always called Peggy by her family. She was a fanatical lover of Lurpak and used to put great slices of the stuff on her toast, which she considered a mother's privilege. We didn't have gold top but Mother insisted on having homogenised milk delivered, which was slightly more expensive. She claimed it was the only way she could get her fair share of the cream, which as you know, always floated on top, in the neck of the bottle. Back then, at Sunday high tea, it was considered the privilege of the aunts and matriarchs, to enjoy a monopoly on the best things at the table, such as white chicken meat, butter or fresh cream. It was claimed that men were such rough beasts that they couldn't appreciate the finer things, and lacked the delicate palates of the ladies.