The Afterword

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My Breakfast With An Air Fryer

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I went to visit my three year old grand-daughter for breakfast. We had bacon, sausage, scrambled egg and toast. The meat was cooked in a matter of minutes. The sausages were moist and a perfect, even brown. They were delicious, simply bunged in an air fryer, left unsupervised and done. Absolute magic. No grill to burn fingers on, no fires from spurting fat, no turning required and no chance of emerging dry as a crisp. Apparently, you can cook loads of other things in it, too.

With climate change, we should avoid gas and ovens use a load of electricity just to warm up. Microwaves and air fryers are the way forward. I know I’m fifteen years behind the curve (aren’t we all?) but perhaps the younger, more with-it members of the blog could enlighten me further on the benefits of an air fryer before I take the plunge and buy one?

Thanking you in advance with a track by a young chap called Streets.

Electric cars?

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Battery life seems to be the main problem. Why don’t they make the car roof out of a solar panel? You would need to charge less often.

I imagine the playlist will be more sedate. I don’t picture the wind in my hair driving an electric car. I’m bald for a start. Gary Numan regarded machines as friends. Are ‘Friends’ Electric? is about the right pace.

Are You Changing Your Carbon Footprint?

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Davos depressed me. Too little, too late. But, on reflection, I’ve managed to find a glimmer of hope.

Most millenials I know are environmentally savvy. As consumers, they seem to be moving away from high carbon products to low. If more consumers follow suit, businesses will have to follow. In addition, as employees they are looking to avoid companies who contribute more to climate change. In America, Microsoft have announced itself as a green company that will pay back all the carbon it has generated since coming into being. Investors are also beginning to make a stand. BlackRock, also a U.S. firm, manages $7.4 trillion of funds and it is saying it will move away from ‘high sustainability risk’. Some businesses are at risk of future regulation or the introduction of a carbon tax, others because of extremes in the weather. BlackRock is divesting companies whose revenues are more than 25% dependent on coal. Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steve Munchin, might have called on Greta Thunberg to take lessons in economics, but it looks increasingly as though he’s the one behind the curve. If I was a businessman, I’d be looking Green. Things might be beginning to move in the » Continue Reading.

A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing?

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During my annual summer binge on Bob Marley and the Wailers, I had cause to listen to Exodus in the car. It’s a beautiful album that confirmed Bob Marley’s status as a global superstar, shifting truckloads all over the world.

When it was released in 1977, I felt a little let down by it. After the radical militancy of his previous albums, Exodus sounded embarrassingly commercial to my less-than-tolerant teenage ears. It wasn’t reggae as I recognised it. I felt certain that the people of Jamaica thought so too. It was a shiny album with rhythms that purr like a finely tuned Bentley, produced by Bob himself, full of soppy love songs. In the year of peak Punk, Bob Marley and the Wailers had become a frivolous Pop group.

Of course, these days I view it differently. Yes, Exodus is packed with infectious, bouncy tunes designed to brighten day-time mainstream radio, but side one is as subversive a collection of songs as any Bob has written. Side One is a manifesto for insurrection. Natural Mystic sets the scene of a world in turmoil that is still relevant today. The sequence of So Much Things To Say/Guiltiness/Heathen eviscerates those in power » Continue Reading.