Drinking 40 Pints of Woodforde’s Wherry from a Youngs Kit

The wait is finally over. It’s beer o’clock. Or is it?

Step 8 – The Second Wait

Once in the keg, the beer needs to be put somewhere warm for 24 hours to get the secondary fermentation (caused by the sugar) going. After that it’s supposed to be put somewhere colder to settle.

The Sicilies, however, were going on holiday – as I mentioned in the previous installment – so I stuck the keg in the cupboard under the stairs, reckoning this would be both warm AND cool.

The second wait wasn’t so bad, as we went to the North Yorkshire Moors for a week. And a jolly good time we had.

Step 9 – Preliminary Testing

 The instructions stipulated leaving the beer for anywhere between 5 and 14 days, until it was clear. I gave it eight before I tapped off a little bit (pictured) and drank it.

Well, it looked like beer. It smelled like beer.

As regards taste, it’s a little harder to say. I’m not entirely sure what Woodforde’s Wherry is supposed to taste like – bar the gibberish cited on their website quoted earlier.

I found it quite watery, but then (i) I did seemingly use a gallon or so more water than I was supposed to and (ii) Wherry is only a 3% beer, and I tend to drink stronger stuff.

It was certainly bitter, with a metallic, iron taste to it. Perhaps that’s the “delicious citrus aftertaste”...?

To conclude, I’ve tasted worse beer.

Step 10 – The Acid Test

Of course, testing the flavour is only part of the story. I did not intend to drink this in 50ml samples.

That evening, I drank three pints or so of it.

Did I feel drunk? No. But then I wouldn’t really expect to have. More research with greater quantities is required to ascertain the real strength of the beer.

Did I go blind or get a blinding hangover? No. Which would suggest that the process went according to plan without significant contamination.

Did I get that hallmark of homebrew - a raging bout of the shits? No!

I call that a rip-roaring success.

Conclusions

I have two more tins of Wherry to make up once I’ve polished this lot off – plus a gallon of primarily fermented stuff sitting around still (I suppose) fermenting further.

Here’s what I’ll do differently next time:

• Measure the water out properly. I think (i) I used too much water and (ii) it was too hot to begin with, which could have killed off some of my yeast, leading to weakness.
• Be a little more scientific about temperatures. I reckon that I slowed the whole thing down by keeping it too cold for the primary fermentation.
• Sterilise everything before putting it into the wort. Just laziness I’m afraid.

Cheers!

Making 40 Pints of Woodforde’s Wherry with a Youngs Kit – Part 3

Food and drink. Shelter and warmth. Sex. Intoxication. Since the dawn of time, these have been the first things that human beings have sought. Not necessarily in that order.

So my home brewing saga is a retelling of an ancient tale; the latest iteration burped out by the collective unconscious.

We left my five gallons of wort fermenting away happily in the garage. I waited for seven days and seven nights. Then I resumed my endeavours.

Step 6 – The Hydrometer

Before you move to the next step, you have to make sure that primary fermentation is complete – that is, that the yeast has turned enough of the sugar to ethanol for the beer to be the right strength.

Remember – ethanol, good: makes you drunk. Methanol, bad: makes you go blind. You’ve got to have a system.

You do this:

• By seeing if the wort has stopped bubbling – ie stopped producing CO2.
• By testing the specific gravity of what you’ve got.

You do the former with your eyes – the latter with an instrument called a hydrometer. Filling a measuring

tube with beer-like substance, one drops the hydrometer in and the level it floats at tells you (basically) how much thicker than water it is.

I did this once and, well, I didn’t put enough beer in the tube as the hydrometer sank to the bottom. I took this as meaning it wasn’t boozy enough and I left it for another couple of days.

Then I did it again, and it looked to me as though we were at the desired 1.104 level.

Now, I was going on holiday the following day, so I may have resolved in my mind to move to the next stage ANYWAY, but the reading appeared to be in order.

Step 7 - To Keg-a Therion

It was at this point that I realised I should have siphoned the beer out for the hydrometer test, rather than just dunking my tube in it. My measuring tube, I mean. Again, I had imperilled the final product by the risk of contamination.

Regardless, I went on to sterilise (i) my keg, (ii) my siphon and (iii) the pressurised lid. Same process as before although the brass lid had to be done just in hot water rather than steriliser. So it wasn’t so much sterile as “hot”.

I also had cause to delve into Elvira’s mystery cupboards of cosmetics on the hunt for Vaseline. I had been instructed to “liberally grease the o-ring” lest a seal not form properly.

Come on now. This isn’t one of those blogs.

So, having liberally greased my o-ring – that is, the threads on both the brass top and the keg onto which the former screwed – I began to siphon.

You do this as follows:

• Put the keg on a surface lower down than the primary fermenting vessel, so that gravity is on your side.
• Stick one end of the siphon into the wort.
• Suck on the other end.
• Stop your futile sucking and open the tap on the siphon. Suck it again, until the beer reaches your mouth.
• Immediately take the mouth end of the siphon and stick it in the bottom of the keg.

I found this part rather magical. I don’t quite understand the physics behind it, but by that single suck, all the beer transferred itself gradually from one container to the other.

Did I say “all”? Well. In my case, I found myself with about a gallon left over in the PFV once the keg was full. Both were ostensibly five gallon/40 litre containers. I had filled the PFV to the very top, imagining THAT was five gallons, but clearly it wasn’t. Again Youngs, more detail required.

I left the remaining gallon in the PFV, not entirely sure what I was going to do with it. And there it remains.

OK, into the keg went about 100g of brewers sugar. This caused the contents to fizz up and spill over the floor, as the keg was extremely full. I screwed on the brass lid, greasy o-ring to greasy o-ring. And we were done for another week. 

Making 40 Pints of Woodforde’s Wherry with a Youngs Kit – Part 2

Step 5 - The Wait 

To be honest, this was the bit I was dreading more than any other. Waiting is boring. Whenever I have to wait for anything, I feel every second of my life slipping irretrievably away. I sense my chromosomal telomeres getting shorter and shorter. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

Four to six days until fermentation stops. I could get run over by a bus in that time. Funny how rogue buses play such an important role in not only reflections on one’s mortality but also corporate risk management modelling.

So, after putting the vessel into the garage I wait.

A couple of hours later, I go to check on it.

Hmmm... we’ve had some sort of a problem. The lid has been blasted off the airlock and I can smell pub carpet. I clean it up and put everything back.

Over the next 48 hours, this happens several times – on one occasion, propelling the lid of the airlock a good six feet away. Alas, I didn’t see it happen.

Eventually, I get things under control so that the airlock is bubbling away gently without spurting foam out.

Here comes the science bit. And by “science” I mean “what I think happened”.

What I think was happening was that my wort was too hot – meaning that it was fermenting very quickly, belching out big gouts of CO2. These were generating foam on the top of the wort. Instead of the gas escaping the airlock fairly smoothly, foam was building up under pressure until – BLEEERRRRP! – it overwhelmed the friction holding the top part of the airlock on and burst out.

The reason you need an airlock is to let the CO2 - a by-product of fermentation - out without letting air – a vector for microbes, flies, cat hair etc – in. If bad shit like that gets in, it can spoil your beer.

Anyway, by the end of waiting day 2, order had been restored.

A Short Digression While We Wait

What is Woodforde’s Wherry, you may well ask?

It is beer from Norfolk – whence my brother and sister-in-law come, which is why I am making it (it was they who got me the kit). I have drunk it before, but I can’t really remember what it was like.

Woodforde’s chief brewer says it is:

Fresh and zesty with crisp floral flavours. A background of sweet malt and a hoppy 'grapefruit' bitter finish characterises this champion bitter.

Their website says:

Light but full of flavour and with a delicious citrus aftertaste. Great with Norfolk Ham and Turkey or on its own.

To that, I say “hmmm...we’ll see.”

I should also add Woodforde’s home town of Woodbastick to my list of amusing English place names.

Making 40 Pints of Woodforde’s Wherry with a Youngs Kit – Part 1

I like beer. The worst thing about beer is having to pay for it. Therefore, home brew.

In a change to the usual schedule, I will be taking you through the process of making the eponymous 40 pints of Woodforde’s Wherry with a Youngs home brew kit, step by step.

You see, I am trying to make the internet a better place after all.

See here for the story of how this kit came into my sweaty little hands.

Here are the things we’ll be using today.

Step 1 – Sterilisation

This is something I know all about.

So you have to fill the 5 gallon container with hot water and a couple of teaspoons of the steriliser per gallon. 

 I put 10 teaspoons in. It foams up like a bubble bath and smells like swimming pool.

I did this in the bath, knowing that 5 gallons of hot water is quite heavy.

You leave it for 20 minutes. I put the lid and the airlock pieces in as well. I should really have put the spoon in, I realised an hour later...


 Step 2 – Meanwhile downstairs...

The beer mixture (or whatever it’s called) is in two big cans. You are supposed to stand these in hot water for 5 minutes.

At the same time, I boiled up the requisite 3.5 litres of water on the hob.

While this was going on, I went to the garage to fetch Roger Jr’s micro scooter in. Why? Aha.


I went back upstairs, rinsed the primary fermentation vessel (for that is what it is called) out – finding that the lid had bent a little bit in the hot water. It still went on just fine, so I didn’t worry about it.

Step 3 – The Wort

That’s a beer word, ladies and gentlemen. It means the foul stinking liquid that turns into beer

So I opens the tins. I mean, I open the tins. I am not Popeye.

I opens the tins – discovering that despite having every kitchen implement imaginable, we do not have a decent tin opener. I am forced to prise the lids off with a knife. Just a bit.

This is what beer cordial looks like.

I pours it...I pour it into the vessel. You know what I did then? I put the vessel onto the micro-scooter! That is the sort of foresight that lead our ancestors to make fire. I have justified my human status.

I knew full well that attempting to carry a bucket with 5 gallons of wort in it out to the garage – the only place Elvira will allow me to conduct chemistry experiments – would result in considerable sloppage unless I used the power of wheels.

.

So, in goes the 3.5 litres of boiling water, followed by another...erm...20 odd litres of cold water, as prescribed by the highly comprehensive instructions provided.

I stir it until foul sludge stops coming up on the spoon.

My toe is also visible

Now for the magic ingredient. Yeast.

In goes the yeast. Stir it in.

On goes the lid.

A little bit of water in the airlock, so that I can see bubbles of CO2 coming out as it ferments.

I feel obliged to point out that nowhere in the instructions provided is it explained what the hell you are supposed to do with the airlock. I had to look it up on the internet.

Airlock

Step 4 – In Transit

The scooter is a piece of genius. Out we go to the garage – the new fortress of solitude.

Up it goes onto a shelf and I wraps a coat around it to keep it warm. It needs to stay at around 18 to 20 degrees Celsius for 4 to 6 days.

Then I go in and do the washing up, like a good boy.

Conclusion

Well, it took me less than a hour and it all seems to be working – the brew had started to bubble when checked. My assessment:

• One side of instructions for something that you will almost certainly ruin if you don’t do it very carefully is not good enough Youngs.
• I forgot to sterilise the spoon.
• I used too much steriliser on the bucket and now I don’t have enough left to do the pressure barrel when it comes to part 2. I’ll have to go and buy some extra.

Overall: easy, although it may yet all prove to be a complete balls-up.

Space Raiders

I have never bought a pack of Space Raiders, nor do I know anyone who has. I am nevertheless very familiar with the image to the left.

Which led me to wonder – or “got me to thinking” I might say, if this was “Sex and the City” and not “Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind.” – why are there empty packets of this low-price, corn snack in my back garden?

And outside Tancred’s nursery?

And – in fact – every damn place I ever look, why is there a discarded pack of Space Raiders?

They say that in London, you are never more than 6 feet away from a rat. I’m not sure if this is true. It would probably be true if you substituted “a rat” for “a dickhead”.

Well, I would hypothesise that between you and the rat – or dickhead – there is at least one screwed-up, indestructible, radioactive-smelling bag with a picture of an alien on the front of it, which the rat (dickhead) is avoiding.

They’re everywhere. I can feel those over-sized, black, almond-shaped eyes on the back of my neck right now.

I have two theories about this.

The first is sociological.

• Premise 1: Space Raiders are the crisp of preference for the sorts of people who throw empty crisp bags on the floor.
• Premise 2: Space Raiders are cheap.

You may be wondering how, unless I handle these empty crisp bags – which is, to me, only marginally less revolting a prospect than handling discarded underwear – I know this.

Well, I did actually Google Space Raiders this morning. That’s the problem with the internet. You come up with all these ideas about what things might be and why they might be, then you Google it and you find out the truth (or something like the truth).

It is the death of the imagination and of memory, when you can just find out the reasons for something or what something you half-remember was really like with a few keystrokes.

Marcel Proust would have had literally nothing to do with his life if he’d lived in the internet age. He could have just Googled “Madeleine smell” and got four million results.

Anyway, I disgress. I learned from the Space Raiders Wikipedia page that they are:

“A British cheap snack food, intended to fill the same niche market as crisps”

Which seems to the untrained eye an unnecessarily cautious description.

So Space Raiders are cheap and are eaten by people who drop litter. You do not see anywhere near as many discarded packs of, say, Waitrose Hand Cooked Sea Salt crisps.

Get to the point: Space Raiders are prole feed. They are eaten by people for whom a tracksuit is formalwear and whose bin is the great outdoors.

Malevolent little eyes...

OK, that’s theory number one. Coherent? Well-reasoned? Yes, but theory number two is MUCH more ambitious.

Space Raiders packs are not the abandoned containers for low-cost crisp-style corn snacks AT ALL.

They are in fact an invasive species of fungus or algae with astonishing powers of mimicry.

Stay with me. Let’s assess the evidence (you will by now be familiar with what I call "evidence"):

• No one I know or who you know has ever eaten any.
• No one knows how they got where they are.
• No one is willing to touch or remove them to find out once and for all if they are what they appear to be.

I believe that back in the 1980s Space Raiders were a real brand of crisps, featuring cartoon intergalactic pirates and shit like that. Natural selection has favoured members of this invasive species which encourages people to leave it alone – and so they have grown gradually to resemble the most unpleasant kinds of litter, re cheese-stink plastic bags.

They’re an algal bloom, spring from the contaminated earth like a red tide. That alien face is the plant world’s crude attempt to replicate the appearance of a Monster Munch monster – and it has succeeded to the degree that no one wants to look closer as soon as they have established what they think they’re looking at.

Do not touch, or it may release its spores in your face

I find it astonishing that mainstream science has not recognised this. We are all in terrible danger. Space Raiders are coming. 

This could be the last thing you ever read

T-0: It’s the end of the world as we know it, and – so far – I feel fine.

I am keeping an eye out for any Pale Horses, but so far the world still seems more concerned with scatology than eschatology.

Ha ha – that means “poo, not the Last Things” and they rhyme. If any rappers are reading this, feel free to use that one.

Anyway, it looks like this whole Mayan apocalypse thing has been a big hoax, which just goes to show AGAIN that numberology, ancient prophecies and any ideas of destiny are load of old crap.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

If the world does end, you could do worse than repeat those words over in your mind as it happens.

Assuming it doesn’t, this is likely to be the final ODHSNM of 2012, so I thought I’d wrap up a few loose ends.

My Vasectomy - Epilogue

That I write a blog is one of the first things my wife, Elvira of Castille, tells people who she introduces me to.

Without fail, the next thing she tells them is that I wrote all about having a vasectomy on here – which indeed I did, all through July.

I feel it is incumbent upon me then to close this whole story off and tell you what happened next.

You will remember, I was given instructions – and little jars – to come back after three months (and again a month after that). This is because sperms can apparently survive for a very long time in the cosy environment afforded by the human bollock, and it’s only after said periods of time that you can be sure they’re all dead or trapped like a bunch of Chilean miners. 

I shan't bore or appall you with too many details, but I did receive a small insight into the mind of the psychopath on the two occasions when I set off for work carrying a small container of my own jizz to hand over to a complete and unsuspecting stranger.

And I passed the tests. Or failed them. I’m not sure which you'd say. 

Suffice to say, it worked. I "may now consider myself sterile". RESULT!

Moving House

The Sicilies moved house in September. I know I said I’d write about it, but I unwittingly dragged myself into that whole school appeals can of worms – at which point I lost the will to blog at all as I found myself confronted with a situation which required me to do more than just write the first thing that came into my head.

It seems redundant now. I can’t be bothered to write about it three months later. Sorry. Sometimes interesting things happen to me, but they don’t make it onto here (see the one sorry post I did on jury service in 2011 – that was supposed to be a whole series!).

Hell, if I wrote up everything that happened to me on here people I met in person would find me very boring indeed...

...

Errr...

That’s all folks!

So that’s it. If the world DOES end, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these sticky by-products of my brain over the last two and a half years.

If it doesn’t, ODHSNM will be back in 2013 with MORE MORE MORE of the same old shit. 

What's another year?

T-4: I see that many other media outlets are picking up on the Mayan apocalypse pencilled in for this Friday. Well, here at ODHSNM we have been on it for the whole damn year.

“What’s another year?” quoth Johnny Logan in 1980’s Eurovision winner.

Well, Johnny, a “year” is a bloody awkward rough approximation of the duration of the earth's orbit around the sun. And a proper pain in the arse it is too.

("Another year" refers to the second or subsequent instance in a series of years. And that is what another year is.)

I am attempting to plan my evil capitalist schemes for 2013 (it’s best to be prepared, in case we’re still here) and I am faced with the following absurdities:

• A year, in the Gregorian scheme, is 365 97/400 days (5 hours, 49 minutes) – that is the time between vernal equinoxes. Hence we have leap years every four years unless....eeeurgh it’s too hard, read it yourself.
• Quite independently of years, we have weeks comprised of seven days each – five of which we work and two of which we don’t.
• You do not have a whole number of weeks in year whether it’s a normal 365 day year or a leap 366 day year. Months have between 28 and 31 days, or between 18 and 23 working days depending on where the weekends and bank holidays fall.
• This makes it very hard to project ANYTHING month on month or indeed year on year with any degree of accuracy - because you are hardly ever comparing like and like. 

Now, I realise that calendar reform has got in with a bad crowd – it immediately suggests Year Zero and Pol Pot. And I think it’s fair to say that no one really wants to be associated with that.

I recently read “The World Set Free” by HG Wells.

Now, I know what many of you are thinking.

The Ogilvy Theatre

Most of you are thinking “that’s a conference centre in Woking”.

And, yes, it is – but I am talking about the writer, after whom the conference centre is named.

Some of the rest of you are thinking “hold on... apart from all the Good science fiction stuff, wasn’t all of HG Wells’ political and social thought Bad?”

Well, old Wellsy certainly doesn't make too many bones about how much better his future utopia would be without the poor, the stupid, the uncivilised and the uncultured in it – and he is not in favour of what we in the business world would call “achieving cuts by natural wastage”.

Nevertheless, almost in passing, he suggests that the year should be split in 13 months of four weeks each – with Easter as an annual intercalary day and leap years as specified by Pope Gregory XIII.  

Gregory would have approved. Probably. 

I think this is a tremendous idea and one not necessarily dependent on any kind of genocide or mass slaughter. 

It would make us all marginally younger and it would make the whole maths of time a lot easier. 

Who will join me in my quest for a rational year?

The End is Very Nigh

Give it up for your X Factor finalists

T-11: It’s nearly upon us, apocalypse-watchers. Less than two weeks until the end of the world, according to some dead Mexican astronomers.  

It seems that after a year of nothing very apocalyptic happening, people are finally starting to get their acts together and behave like cattle in a lightning storm.

However, I must admit to you all, that since Christopher Maloney did not win The X Factor last night, my conviction that the world’s doom is imminently upon us has been seriously shaken.

All of a sudden, the arguments put forward by NASA and others against anything out of the ordinary happening next Friday seem fairly convincing.

The Mayans are all dead, and apparently they didn’t know about the extra quarter-day in the solar cycle which makes Leap Years necessary. Taking those into account would mean the world had already ended.  

My Vasectomy – Part 4

So it is done. I have been vasectomised. And it was not as bad as you might think.

Friday night’s alright for shaving

By Friday evening, I was getting a bit anxious about it all. I had not managed to put it out of my mind all day (as my previous post, written that day, possibly indicates) and I was in a bad temper by the time I got home.

Fortunately, that evening, I had the distraction of working out how to shave myself (scrotumnally) to take my mind off the impending operation.

I should really say “the aftermath of the operation”. I’ve had enough local anaesthetics in my time to know that the operation itself was not going to hurt (see below...). What I was worried about was what kind of a state I would be in when the drugs wore off and how I was going to survive the recovery period with two groin-height and fast-moving children careering around the vicinity of my delicacy.

Anyway, back to shaving. I had, as previously mentioned, bought some Veet – and been repeatedly warned of its perils, not least by the estimable Bernard C in a comment on the last post – for which I am very grateful.

To be perfectly honest, I found it no problem. Apart from the peculiar smell – which could have been from the “finishing cream” that came in the pack – it didn’t hurt or even feel uncomfortable at all. Perhaps I have a particularly leathery and unfeeling scrotum, but having prepared for the worst, I was pleasantly surprised.

Some men – I am told – voluntarily shave themselves in this region, ostensibly for aesthetic reasons. I must admit to finding it a very strange interpretation of what is aesthetically pleasing to make any of THAT more rather than less visible.

Palmerston

For those who take an interest in such things, I opted for a style of my own design, which I am calling “The Palmerston”.

Sitting in the waiting room

My appointment was at 10.50am. Elvira drove me down to the surgery and in I went. A receptionist sat behind the desk of the deserted waiting room.

“I have – an appointment – for 10.50,” I said.

I didn’t have to say what for.

“Take a seat please,” she said. I took one.

I tried to lose myself in my book (“The Story of the Malakand Field Force” by Winston Churchill), but Radio 2’s Jon Holmes standing in for Graham Norton kept dragging me back to the moment.

There was a crash from down the corridor.

“I hope he has steadier hands than that,” I said to the receptionist, who smiled wanly. Inside I cringed at the rushed and lazy wording of the joke and tried to return to the Afghan frontier.

“Mr Of Sicily? Will you come through please?”

The nurse didn’t say that. She used my real name. It was the last time I would hear it with intact plums.

What it was like

What do you think it was like? I was lying there, discussing summer holidays and other trivia with the surgeon while my genitalia was operated on through a hole in a sheet. It’s hard to find the positive in the experience itself.

By the way, the surgeon did take the time to congratulate me on the quality of the shaving job I had done. I said I was pretty pleased with my handiwork, for a first attempt.

Look away now if you are squeamish.

What I will say is that the local anaesthetic does the job just fine. You don’t feel a thing when it comes to the cutting and sewing.

There was a degree of “rough handling” prior to the numbing, in order to bring the vas deferens to the surface. This was a forestaste of what was to come.

I was not expecting the extreme discomfort of said tube being pulled out. It was a kind of pain that only a man can understand (sorry ladies – indeed, women seem to have been far more interested in my story so far than men. I cannot understand why...) and it shot all the way up to the pit of my stomach.  It felt...welll...like someone had got hold of the strings my balls are held on with and given them a long, steady tug.

But it was over quickly. I walked out of the operating theatre 15 or so after going in. I was the 8^th bloke the surgeon had seen to that day, and it still wasn’t even lunchtime.

The aftermath

Only once was I unable to walk, and that was a couple of hours after the operation – presumably after the first flush of cocodamol was out of my system (it has been ever-present every since up to the time of writing). Since then, I have recovered much quicker than I thought I would.

The boys have been very good at staying off me. Only once did Tancred hit me in the nuts, when I was drying his hair last night. And I think he knew he had erred.

Lord Palmerston appears to have been the victim of a serious mugging. Gentlemen, if you have never seen your huevos go black and double in size, I suggest you prepare yourself.

Tight pants are a must. Unexpected rapid movement is not pleasant. Lie flat on your back in bed. It took me about ten minutes to walk from the station to my office this morning – that’s usually more like four. Riding the scooter was ok, but I definitely do not want to make any emergency stops.

So what now? Well, apparently the vehicle continues to run on fumes – and that can last for three months. I have to supply “samples” in October and November to see if this has worked, or if my Wolverine-like powers of healing have restored my testicular functioning in the meantime. So I don’t know if it worked or not.

My face, Saturday afternoon

However, I do not regret it. People may ask me, “why on earth did you do it if you can’t even be sure it will work?”

To which my answer is and will remain, “I’d rather go through that than have any more children!”

I love my kids, of course, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

And that, dear friends, concludes July’s gonad-centric entries. I hope it has made you laugh and made you cry. It has certainly brought tears to my eyes on occasion. 

Scott - One hundred years on...

Last week saw a strange coincidence. Firstly, I finished reading "Scott’s Last Expedition" – the diary of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who died on the way back from being the second person to reach to South Pole.

Secondly, I watched Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton’s attempt to become the first person to reach the South Pole on a bicycle. For charity. 

Now, I call it a strange coincidence but it’s not really that strange. It is now almost exactly a hundred years since Scott himself died of starvation and cold, eleven miles away from a supply depot. Right now, we are somewhere between the centenary of Captain Oates going outside to his death (pictured above, as imagined by JC Dollman) and the remaining three members of the South Party (Scott, Wilson and Bowers) dying a couple of weeks later.  As such, the country is full of Scott exhibitions, memorabilia and whatnot.

Naturally, I will blissfully ignorant of any of this until I started reading the diary. Indeed, it was this very blog which led me to do – as in December I said that there were no British explorers whose memoirs were free off of the internet, in defence of my reading Norwegian hard-case Fridtjof Nansen’s account of not actually reaching the North Pole in the 1890s.

Having made this categorical statement, I checked the facts of the matter some weeks later – and found that Scott’s Last Expedition is indeed free on t’internet. Don’t worry about it being “Volume 1” – Volume 2 is just all their scientific findings, and dating as they do from a hundred years ago they are all probably completely (and, to our eyes, insanely) wrong.

So, as I said before, I’ve just finished reading it. The main conclusion I reached is that I have now wasted quite enough of my life reading diaries of historic Polar expeditions.

Nansen at least had the decency to go through typically Scandinavian moping bouts of theatrical depression, which he kindly set down in print.

Conversely, the consistent tone of Scott’s diary is one of primly-stiffened upper lip. “The horses have all died. It is probably for the best” – that sort of thing.

Ah yes. The horses.

Now, I am far from an expert in such things, but as both an ENGLISHMAN and a BLOGGER I’ll be DAMNED if I will let that stand in the way of me reaching conclusions I cannot be swayed from that are based purely on my own opinions.

Many people have suggested that Scott’s decision to rely on horse transport was a fatal error. Firstly, it gave the race to the South Pole to Amundsen by making it necessary to start much later that he did (going by dog sled). Secondly, it slowed them down on the way, what with carrying all the necessary hay and other horse food, picking them out of crevasses and getting naughty horse Christopher into his harness every day.

Apparently, Oates himself (the resident horse expert of the expedition) thought that the particular horses they had were dreadful – begging the question, precisely what kind of horse should one expect to be good at climbing over sea ice in a blizzard.

Also, it is in respect of the horses that Scott comes closest (not close, but closest) to admitting that perhaps his preparations were not 100% perfect – when he mentions that they only had one pair of horse snow shoes for the whole party and that they hadn’t actually practised making the horse walk while wearing them. 

Despite, I should add, having had NOTHING TO DO for the preceding six months.

From my own experience, I have noted that horses always look bloody miserable in snow - while dogs absolutely love it. Sadly, nobody asked for my advice, even though it could have saved them. 

I don’t blame the horses for Scott’s failure. Indeed, they were all dead and eaten long before then. But they are indicative of Scott’s attitude – which brings me back to Nansen.

Clearly Scott had read “Farthest North” - he mentions it somewhere. OK, the Arctic isn’t exactly the same as the Antarctic (fewer penguins, more polar bears for starters), but Scott seems completely wilful in his disregard of the lessons on “how not to die while travelling across Polar wastes” that Nansen had released some 20 years earlier.

Did Scott and his party die because of British chauvinism?

Ah yes, I have found the angle for my Guardian column! Certainly, there are a lot of references to the virtues of tea throughout the book.  

Firstly, the Terra Nova expedition took about 40 dogs to pull sledges, but sent them back fairly early in the attempt on the Pole because Scott didn’t believe they would do any good. On what basis, the diary does not mention.

Guess how Roald Amundsen got to the South Pole before him? Guess how Nansen got back from Farthest North? Dogs. Not horses. Or walking.

Secondly, Scott seems to regard skiing as a bit of a novelty – something he could do, but which he didn’t regard it as essential for all the members of his party to be any good at. As far as I can tell, Henry Bowers didn’t ski at all and walked the whole way. 

Thirdly, Nansen went on about how they were far too hot in their fur gear (“wolfskin capes” to be precise). What were Scott and co wearing? Seemingly stuff they’d bought from Milletts. I might also add that as you can see NONE OF THEM had the sense to GROW A BLOODY BIG BEARD as a means of warding off frostbite of the facial areas.

And yet, all those lessons had been available for almost 20 years. Amundsen followed them and he got to the South Pole first, and he got back alive - here he is, feeling the benefit. Scott didn’t follow them. 

Was this the product of the belief that while things like riding on dog sleds, wearing fur, having an inner life etc might be alright for silly foreigners, it was quite unnecessary for British people to do anything quite so dramatic, and that a combination blind optimism and good old amateurism would see them through just fine?

And it’s not just Scott. Let the record also show that Lawrence Oates – who plenty of people right now would canonise – did not regard having had his thigh bone shattered in the Boer War some ten years earlier and one leg shorter than the other as likely to represent any kind of an impediment.

I don’t know. The last section of the book is genuinely moving, particularly the account of Oates’ death.

Should this be found I want these facts recorded. Oates' last thoughts were of his Mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his death. We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not—would not--give up hope to the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning--yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, 'I am just going outside and may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.

So, some 48 hours after having read this, to see Helen Skelton refusing to kite surf on her way to the South Pole because it was too easy and insisting on riding a bicycle instead made me realise just how much the world has changed in a hundred years.

Again, the strange coincidence of the opening paragraph is perhaps not so strange. She was raising money for Sport Relief, and of course, as the sun begins to show its face for more than a few minutes before and after work, the season of aggressive charity fund-raising is upon us. And I expect she probably chose this particular challenge not entirely without reference to the Scott centenary.

Had Scott taken her route to the South Pole, I think he’d almost certainly have succeeded. Seemingly it was completely flat and the weather was lovely.

That’s not to denigrate Helen Skelton’s achievement. Well done to her indeed. But – and here my Guardian piece turns into a Daily Telegraph piece – doesn’t the world seem a lot smaller when the unconquered wilderness that made heroes out of those who died trying to tame it is now a tourist attraction where people go for an “experience”?

I will say it again. After setting the world record for the fastest 100km kite surf, Helen threw away her kite and decided to carry on by bike – because kite surfing wasn’t hard enough.  

That must have been one hell of a hundred years. 

Mayan Apocalypse Liveblog

T-350: According to the Mayans, the world is going to end later this year. Specifically, on December 21 – so we will at least get to watch the Olympics first.

And so, as this final year progresses, I will be the first to you know about all the portents of doom as they happen, right up until the big moment when the planet is destroyed. At that point, I will hand over to the aliens, evolved dolphins or whatever that humanity will be passing the baton on to.

Either that, or I will turn to any remaining Mayans at that time and describe to you the look of intense embarrassment on their faces when it turns out that the conclusion of a 5,125 calendar year cycle since the date of their creation myth means nothing at all.

And when that happens, I will have very little to tell you – because there aren’t any Mayans to speak of and haven’t been for some hundreds of years, they having notably failed to predict the collapse of their own civilisation in the 10^th century.

Still, that major omission notwithstanding, I plan on taking the idea that the earth will crash into an as-yet completely undetected planet called “Nibiru” on a specific date later this year – despite the entire balance of astronomical evidence being against this hypothesis – 100 per cent seriously, and I will keep you updated accordingly. Only 350 days to go!

Discovery? It's what I do for a living really...

I am still using Spotify's free service, in spite of all their efforts to make it so unbearable that everyone who does gives up and starts paying.

Recent "innovations" of this sort that they have introduced include taking away any indication anywhere of how much listening time you've got left – meaning that it could cut out at any moment.

However, by far the most caustic of the irritants applied has been the spiralling number of adverts played. Not that I mind adverts in general – I'm quite happy to listen to them in exchange for free music.

Indeed, the number of adverts played is only mitigated by the fact that they are surely some of the WORST ADVERTS EVER, which I cannot imagine would ever persuade a listener to do anything other than boycott all the products and services of that brand in perpetuity out of sheer embarrassment.

But right now, there is one advert which is absolutely killing me with laughter every time it comes on – and lest you are not fellow Spotify Don't-Give-A-Shit-About-You-Lot-Anymore users, I have transcribed it for your enjoyment.

Imagine this in the voice of a condescending Radio Four grand-dame:

Discovery? It's what I do for a living really. Silicon chips, dark matter, the Higgs Boson. 

But recently, I made another discovery: punctuality, legroom, a crisp glass of Chanteloup-Touraine. 

All from £49 with Lufthansa. Now that's a wonder of the universe!

Pardon me, I have just vomited all over myself. Oh, where to begin...

Well, how about this? Whoever you are supposed to be: NO ONE has discovered the Higgs Boson.

Moreover, it's unlikely that – were evidence for its actual existence beyond inference from the Standard Model to be found – that someone working in the field of electronics (where you "discovered" the silicon chip) would be the one to find it.

Finally, it would be a tragedy akin to the neglect suffered by Tesla thanks to Edison if – after such an illustrious career – you were reduced to travelling by budget airline, whatever kind of mini-bottles of wine they serve.

I'm afraid that I will never now be able to travel on a Lufthansa flight. Because if I got sat next to someone who said "Discovery? It's what I do for a living really..." to me I'm afraid I would have to murder them. 

Summer has set in with its usual severity

There's only one thing worse than an otherwise-healthy person complaining about back pain, and that's an otherwise-healthy person complaining about hay fever as well.

For me, the joy that the passing of winter and the onset of spring bring is short lived.

Much like the people of Leeds, who take the first glimpse of the sun a trumpet call ordering them to go out wearing as little as possible – within days of the annual six months of guaranteed gloom coming to an end, every plant in the UK is belching out its filthy spores.

And every year, I forget this fact during the winter and long for the days when the only time I spend outdoors (going to and from work) will not be conducted under cover of darkness.

As soon as they arrive, I am incapacitated by a host of respiratory problems that would put an inbred bulldog with the flu to shame.  

Apparently 12 million people in this country suffer from hay fever, and conventional wisdom seems to be that this figure is constantly rising. Certainly, year after year more of my friends and family who had never experienced hay fever before say that they've got it now.

Maybe that's just to shut me up and rebuff my demands for sympathy. I don't know.

I've had it since I was about seven years old when a friend and I hacked a rotten tree stump to pieces (that was how children entertained themselves in early 1980s Suffolk – incredible, innit?). My eyes blew up to the size and colour of tennis balls, I was rushed to hospital, issued with eye drops and nasal spray and I haven't looked back.

So I know what I'm talking about.

For once.

Still, predictable as its appearance is, hay fever never ceases to surprise me with its innovations.

In the last couple of years, I have started to come out in a rash on my legs if I walk through long grass in shorts. At this rate, by the time I'm 50, I won't be able to think about plants without my throat caving in and suffocating me from anaphylactic shock.

I realise that my previous excursions into palaeobiology have been somewhat controversial, but surely the only threats posed to our primitive ancestors from the vegetable kingdom were:

• Trees falling on them
• Falling out of trees
• Things and people falling out of trees onto them
• Assault by hostile plant-based life forms from other planets (eg triffids, pod people, Audrey 2 etc)

Grass, flowers and shrubs, then, have always been justly regarded as Mostly Harmless.

Unless - as the underlying implication in most commentary on the matter seems to be - people are just getting more feeble over time, it is reasonable to assume that people have suffered with hay fever throughout history.

However, the only instance I can find (from five minutes of Googling, which is what passes for research here at ODHSNM) of hay fever playing any significant role in historical events is as follows.

In 1925, Werner Heisenberg had a really bad bout and he went to Heligoland by the sea to recover.

Getting away from quantum pain-in-the-arse Niels Bohr for a few weeks gave him the opportunity to write "Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen" – which set the foundations for matrix mechanics and gave us the Uncertainty Principle. Which is something to do with science.

That's it. And he could have been planning on going on holiday anyway.

So, this is by way of an appeal. Let's uncover the hidden history of allergies and prove that we're not just modern weaklings. I want to know that Henry V sneezed his way through Agincourt; that Christopher Columbus came out in a nasty rash within hours of setting foot in the Americas; and that Julius Caesar didn't see Brutus coming because he was rubbing his itching eyes like a crazy person.    

Any takers? Meanwhile, here's the...

Postscript: I was going to call this article "Summertime and the living is sneezy" but Google returns 54,500 results for this particular pun.