Oddities
The ultimate cheese toastie?
Earlier this week, Bristol City Council’s licensing committee voted to ban the sale of toasted cheese sandwiches in a north Bristol park due to concerns about anti-social behaviour (posts passim).
Whilst doing background research for that post, your correspondent discovered what must count as the world’s ultimate cheese toastie, particularly if the main metrological criterion for the snack’s assessment is its cholesterol content.
Enjoy! π
Cheese toastie shocker
Yesterday’s online version of the Bristol Post (now renamed Bristol Live. Ed.) carried a shocking item about a hitherto unknown catalyst for violence: the toasted cheese sandwich.
According to the Post, this humble snack may not be served at a proposed catering concession in Monk’s Park in Bristol’s Southmead district “amid fears a proposed hot food van could attract booze-fuelled anti-social behaviour and motorbike gangs“.
The Post continues:
Councillors have agreed to grant a provisional licence for cold food, such as ice cream, and tea and coffee in Monk’s Park, Biddestone Road.
But the vendor would be barred from selling hot snacks following dozens of objections from residents, a ward councillor and the headteacher of a nearby secondary school.

A provoker of violence, accompanied by not quite so provocative tomato soup. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
However, the fear of violent behaviour was not the only concern for banning hot food: councillors on the city councilβs public safety and protection committee also feared children from the next-door school would be tempted to skip lessons due to the lure of grilled fermented curd.
Following the committee’s decision the concession will now be put out to tender.
However, the story does not end there. When your correspondent posted about the article on Twitter, one person to respond was local artist Dru Marland, whose response about fermented curd addiction was hilarious.
For a more complete understanding of the violence-inducing properties of cheese, I should have asked the committee about their opinions of more exotic varieties of fermented curd, such as Roquefort or Graviera, but pressure of time dictated otherwise. π
Update: Not forty-eight hours after Bristol was opened to national and international ridicule over this affair, Bristol Live reports that residents of Bristol’s Cotham district have branded a hot food catering van an “appalling idea“. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
The thoughts of Michael Gove
Today’s Graunaid reports on the establishment of a new Tory think tank, erroneously called “Onward“.
However, it is firmly denied that this anodyne moniker is meant in any way to be an echo of “En Marche!“, the movement that propelled the right-of-centre Emmanuel Macron to power in France (and Andorra; he’s also the ex-officio co-prince of the Pyrenean principality. Ed.).
Those at the centre of the launch in the Gruaniad’s eyes are Scottish Tory leader Ruth “tractor quotas” Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, and Michael Gove, the man with the most punchable face in British politics and alleged to be the UK’s current Secretary of State For Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
Leaving aside the sordid details of the think tank’s launch, which were given far too much attention for my mind by the Gruaniad, what struck your ‘umble scribe was the following phrase relating to the boy Michael:
Gove, the environment secretary, who has long been one of the partyβs most influential thinkers,…
The plain truth is that thinking doesn’t come naturally to Michael. In a previous incarnation as Secretary of State for Education, he’s on record as not understanding what an average is or how it works in this oral reply to the House of Commons Education Committee in 2012:
…we expect schools not only to be judged on the level of raw attainment but also in terms of making sure that children are on track and are not falling back-and, indeed, do better than the average.
Meanwhile in his present post, he has in the past had difficulty in remembering which country he’s in, singing the praises of Welsh lamb in a press release for a visit to Northern Ireland (posts passim).
Furthermore, there are also times when Michael Gove doesn’t think at all. He didn’t think of his son when he and his wife thought it acceptable to leave the 11 year-old at a hotel to go to a party.
Thinking is a skill that can be taught and acquired, but your correspondent has yet to see that Gove has gained sufficient quantities thereof in his education at public school and thereafter at Oxford University.
Then again, lack of talent has never been an obstacle to achieving high office for the Blue Team…
What about the pictures?
Read the screenshot below and do so carefully.
After reading the actual story, I found no mention of pictures being thrown into the River Severn in Ironbridge by vandals.
Did it actually happen? Or did the dread ambiguity that plagues so much modern journalism strike again?
When I was learning/being taught to write so many decades ago, we were always advised to steer clear of anything that could be misconstrued.
That concept is now obviously regarded as old-fashioned and no longer worthwhile by those who write today’s media (sometimes with the digital equivalent of a crayon. Ed. π )