Sunday soundings

It's been a day of TV sport so far, starting off with Match of the Day, then the final round of the end of the European Tour golf season in Dubai, Thistle v Aberdeen, a brief interlude to watch Lewis Hamilton on the podium in Abu Dhabi, having won the Formula One Drivers' Championship, then back to football again - Crystal Palace v Liverpool, now Hull v Spurs.

Whew - haven't had time to read my Sunday Times yet.

I did squeeze in a cycle this morning as well. Well, it was too nice to spend the whole day watching TV. I've made up for that aberration since, however.

Gary and Luca paid a surprise visit this afternoon - partly to show off the new car Gary bought when they were down in Lincolnshire last week:

Very nice - but not sure about the Go Faster stripes and the blitz of headlamps.

Gary goes for his further tests on Wednesday - let's hope he gets the same all-clear as I did.

Yesterday was CAMRA's local AGM, and, as Membership Secretary, I had a duty to attend. It was actually quite an interesting meeting, with a few thought-provoking points raised, including a request that we contact our local breweries to ask if any of them are considering becoming Fairtrade breweries or at least producing an out of the ordinary beer that can be labelled such. Of course, standard beers using local barley, hops etc are, by definition, Fairtrade, but it's the more exotic ones that perhaps use ingredients like ginger, coffee etc that would need to be carefully certified. Apparently there are but 2 breweries in the UK that currently carry Fairtrade certification, one of which is http://www.freeminerbrewery.com/.

I was talking to Jim Strachan at the meeting. He was out in KL for a few years and he was the one that told me about the brewpub there. He's not long back from Oregon and was telling me about a great place he discovered in the Willamette Valley, near Oakridge - http://www.brewersunion.com/pub/. He was also in Northern California near Shasta and recommended http://www.dunsmuirbreweryworks.com/. That's two possible trips for us next year.

Jo took the opportunity to start off the Christmas shopping and drive me in to the CAMRA meeting - and back.

So what does the coming week bring? Tomorrow morning, it's the Optician's for me for my annual routine eye test. If the weather's OK, I hope to get another cycle ride in after this.

Back to work on Tuesday and it's our monthly Board meeting. Then, on Friday, we're off to Edinburgh for the Wine Gang's Christmas Fare.