January 2016: SUNSHINE-GLARE---It-s-sensible-to-take-care
The picture is at the Chapel Real Ale Festival in Essex last year
This is a heritage rail museum. Camera IXUS60
Trains were delayed because of the sun in the eyes of the drivers and the guard. I thought the delay because of that reason should not be criticised. Many other delays are ridiculed but the reasons are reasonable and in any case, people support cutting off slack anywhere so there is no way for these issues to be avoided.
The letter was published one day short of the 39th anniversary of that multiple-car crash that I mentioned.
A comment
made to me many years ago observing that there was a money lender in God's temple made me laugh (mortgage broker on the left). This had been a Victorian
stone-built traditional church and it was redeveloped by the church
about 20 years ago. The money lender was there for many years but in
recent years has changed.
Photo taken using a £20 Dummy's guide on
digital photography with Jenoptic point-and-shoot camera kit in about 2010?
In discussion on Facebook
The conversion was carried out led by the then Rev John Banner. He exposed himself to much ridicule in the local newspaper to promote several things; Fly a balloon to save his church I recall for one.
I am told he was an exorcist for the CofE and it was said he had some rather stone-age views on women.
I was reminded of a letter in the Courier not long after Banner took over
likening the dereliction of the site to God's plan for Liverpool in
getting them rid of Banner and inflicting him on Tunbridge Wells.
The group that tried to save the Opera House was chaired by the Rev. They were very well advised but the planning decision was fudged. In any case, the outcome of Weatherspoons seems to be more appreciated than trying for a big lottery grant to put the building back to its original use.
This blog was created using and hosted by Google blogger.com, but this page is
very difficult to edit. That is, blogger does not work well. The formatting is bad on this page, consequently, but leave it a day, and Google has straightened the page up a bit, and I can edit the page some more.
REVIEW BEING CARRIED OUT OF THIS PAGE NOW - APRIL 2025
Anecdotally, humans are suited to a vegan diet and are better off with such a diet, but cooked gilled wild fish is a lot more digestible than red and other meat. Traditionally a Mediterranean diet is considered the best. Evidence that veganism is right for all of us in our teeth, bones and long intestine. In most parts of the world, inland meat intake might be chicken once a year. For a while, there was a theory that some human blood types were better suited to different diets, but that theory, which had been well-researched, has been superseded. However, the study still has interesting coincidental evidence. The study had been widely known but is now superseded by the. This link does not work now; http://www.ion.ac.uk/information/onarchives/eatrightbloodtype
The diseases of the wealthy from eating red meat and red wine such as gout, are now supplemented by diseases of modern processed food as well as the benefits of supply of better quality vegetables to the cities. A mediaeval banquet as seen in the films with beef of old England, game, wine, beer, fruit and perhaps spirit was the food of kings, but they also learnt to eat their fruit and vegetables as a necessary penance or encouraged as natural pleasures. Eating wild berries and fruit is a pleasure that seems to have gone out of fashion, perhaps displaced by sweeties and now smart devices? Sweeties were popular with Mum with her wartime ration, but never interested Dad much, they were a sort of gift to the first world after WW2, but given without the cravat, eat your veg. Parts of the UK live on a lot of animal product's and to even get vegetables on a plate in the Midlands is a difficult request still, and even if your chosen item is a vegetable dish, such as eating out in Birmingham (I was told this, as an old truism before I started contract working near Birmingham and found it still very true).
Southborough Cafe has no set vegan dishes but is careful about vegan requests. So I ask for variations such as avocado salad, roast lunch with mushrooms rather than meat, vegetable pasta, breakfast by omitting the egg, and apple crumble without custard. Yatra Cafe (Indian street food) in Southborough, where I live, has many vegan options in 2025. The Earl Grey usually offers a vegan cake, they discourage laptop plug-in, which is popular with their regulars. The Pig and Porter microbrewery, High Brooms beers are lovely and are all vegan.
The conventional anthropological view is that humans were descended from apes and that fire and meat-eating distinguished us from our ape ancestors. Furthermore, the theory is that the brain developed from hunting, but I am sure that aggression developed in the humans that left that ideal "Garden of Eden". In the film "2001 A Space Odyssey" - Chapter 1, Dawn of Man, the author Arthur C Clarke was a science fiction (prediction) writer, but this view was more in keeping with the 1960s when it was written and is not wrong, but only part of our anthropology. Plant-eating people live a very easy life in lowland with lush vegetation, and than those living in higher arid land where life is a struggle (From Eden to Ethiopia, Radio 4, 1988). Change occurs in our case is not due to the small population under pressure, but is a consequence of opportunity to exploit, manufacture and produce cheap factory meat and other food for people living in the first world we greatly over produce food. Food that many people eat before World War One was often poor and the conscripts joined in poor health, the pressure lead to popular support for Communism in the UK between the two world wars, when the starving of post great war Europe starved led to the rise of Hitler and WW2. Hence the cold war was initiated very soon after WW2 turning on our great ally the USSR, and crippling it financially eventually 40 years later rather than have the idea Communism spread.
The common thing in the post war period with all the allies was that meat was put on the tables, and although fingers were pointed at what the Soviet Union did not have, they did have meat at every meal just the same as we did, if we and they chose. Russian visitors who spoke in Tunbridge Wells in the 1980s also said they were very supportive of Mrs Thatcher.
The link below states a fairly well-accepted view that humans came from plants and vegetables, plus some insect eating ancestors. It also says the similarities in the stomach and intestine with humans, apes, gorillas and monkeys are very close - Viva (an organisation promoting veganism) goes further in the anatomical comparison. An article in December 2015 on Radio 4 said that monkey, ape, gorilla and human digestive systems are identical if you dissected each you would not know which was which but that there are differences in relative sizes of each part in humans from different parts of the world correlating with there diet as well as with the other common ancestor species. A number of YouTube video documentaries on anthropology, some of our ancestors had larger brains than us, Neanderthals were more passive.
Waitrose promoted this really lovely vegan almond and cherry slice for 50p, then 60p for a number of years, but despite how very nice it was, cheaper than other cakes in their café, it was eventually withdrawn. Tonbridge, Daily Rice, in 2025, I am left pleased with what I had all day, and do not regret it later, which often happens with over-flavour-enhanced far eastern food. There is no apparent vegan menu. The Tonbridge vegan fair is run by The Fat Carrot.
My parents came from comfortably working families, and neither of them were vegan. Mum lived on fruit, root vegetables, lentils and beans in Scotland, although Mum complained they did not have the range of food my father had in Kent, but she was very happy with the diet she had been brought up with, plus milk and a moderate amount of fish and meat. Whereas my father's family lived in South East England, on meat and fish, plus a lot of fruit, vegetables and products from the chickens in the garden. The period after World War 2 was called the post war political consensus where things were given back to the people, Americans had big gas guzzling cars, inch thick steaks filling the plate, they do less of that now but British now have big cars lots of things and by comparison the wealth gap is much greater than it had been until 1980 when the political consensus ended.
Showing a preference for a big steak, cheap burger and chips, and avoiding that lovely Waitrose vegan slice is surely about choosing to be seen consuming what is acceptable rather than what is nice. I did eventually learn to eat meat, and I liked milk, evidently, they were learnt and had become cravings. Fruit juices are bad, whereas fruit is the best food you can eat so do that all the time it is available is very natural. I never liked Coca-Cola, it no doubt triggers the sweet bad water instinctive revulsion, unless conditioned to like it. You never know until you try is so true!
But gorillas eat a lot of grasses, and their digestion is comparable to a cow's in fermenting in an enlarged bowl rather than in a stomach as a cow does. Otherwise, more and more evidence shows that veganism covers everything a human needs, not as super-foods popularly stated, but is just food. The link below expresses an underlying view that is at variance with this view.
There are many Vegan groups, some bring food to share, some meet in vegan cafés such as this one. Fortify café in Maidstone is now closed, unfortunately. The Maidstone and Canterbury groups both run a vegan fair about once a year.
The Skull Bar was vegan (The Rainbow Skull), got very in debt, was going to close, but was renamed, added meat to a reduced menu and is recovering from debt now. Sadly, another aspect was their LGBT policy, which attracted a lot of spiteful fake food reviews, though they now have a Good Food and a good Food Standards award. Some of their beers are vegan, and they are all served in excellent condition.
Indulgence pictured cake also has an ice cream and breakfast, is good value, is vegan, and there are a number of other places with vegan options.
I am told that now, in 2025, eating vegan food out has declined by 30%, although I read that veganism continues to increase. I've always hated bullying, war and unkindness, but observe, in myself being oblivious of it in ways I was brought up and very aware in other ways. For example, as a boy but now accustomed to eating meat, I was told that cows moo for two weeks day and night after their calves are taken from them, but it was significant enough when my mum told me to remember the fact.
Here is another perspective based on blood group types of recent humans for the past 50,000 years; Some research suggests that vegetable-only eating humans were buried separately in prehistoric times. The variance in this perspective and the out of (the jungles of) Africa plant and insect eater view was more like back and forth migration than what sounds like an organised migration and pressures of colder climates. So the difference in blood helps with different foods, but there are no basic physical differences.
Type O are the hunter's type and is better suited to meat eating.
Type A is suited to vegetable eating.
Type B has adaptations for milk and wheat.
Type AB is a combination of both A and B.
There are plenty of web links on blood types and their correlation with food and the nature of those humans.
Zorba Turkish restaurant. The
Bakery features the use of traditional recipes, so there is no milk
powder, soya, or bread mixes used; a number of breads, one pastry, and
the breakfast pictured has no processed foods. Sankeys offers include banana blossom fish and chips, and Sunday lunch. Charles Angles Kitchen need your financial donations, stock surplus food and the café menu is varied. Tunbridge Wells is my home town has many places, for example, Tunbridge Wells also hasRuby's of London, the third picture, which is a vegan tea and cake café which is popular with vegan and non-vegan public.
It turns out that my blood type is A+, not the Hunter type. I am sensitive to eating meat, and red meat is particularly bad and gives me a very bad headache. After a long abstinence from milk, I find that hay fever, constipation are greatly reduced, and there are other benefits. Having said that, the personal observation may also partly be an adverse reaction to the products of intense farming methods. At a Tunbridge Wells UNA meeting in October 2015, I heard worryingly that the productivity of modern farming is (Barrie Bain, a consultant to the International Fertiliser Industry Association, advising on United Nations affairs).
Chicken is 2 times the input for a given food output. Vegan groups say the same (Animal Aid).
Lamb 4 times, which in the UK mostly roam freely.
Beef 7 times. Animal Aid said this summer (Kent Vegan Fare 2015) that the intensity is not so high and has a figure of 15 times for beef,
Goose meat, 100 times.
The world cannot sustain this level of consumption and has already stopped providing people with grass-fed meat and free-living animals as a food source for nearly all people, progressively producing poorer quality food, such as bland factory chicken with spice and seasoning added rather than naturally very spicy wild jungle fowl*. The world has to be managed sustainably, and consumption must not grow, whether denied or acknowledged, but avoided either way. The modern culture of home-delivered pizza and the couch potato, also leads to less socialising and more information therefore spun by the media. This only, works for us whilst money is created in London plus another income from keeping the world in conflict by war.
UK is now the biggest arms exporter in the world, (Radio 4 in recent years 2025).
*Radio learnt how amazed a returning visitor from South East Asia was to the difference between wild jungle fowl to domestic chicken and turkey in the UK.
Farming rings a considerable amount out of animals, and this motivates people to mistrust at least and be concerned about what we lose in quality and humanity for achieving such productivity. The constant pressure on all production to cut corners without compromising appearance, and the legal paperwork, should be called the human race rather than the cliche rat race.
Personally, I find some meat, and I suspect it is low-standard factory farmed, has a strong stink of urine eye-stinging smell. This type of meat gives much more severe headache if I eat it. Cow's milk has a yuckiness in its taste. I used to refuse to eat meat when I was very young, so Mum and Dad spent a lot of time coaxing me to eat meat. But I am certain that my reaction was right in that case, but suppressed in later childhood, consequently. In adulthood mum told me children know what is right for them, contrary to the still held view when I was a baby that fat babies are therefore more healthy.
Photo of Tonbridge Castle and River Medway, January 2016 - Camera: Canon IXUS60.
In discussions on Facebook;
Books have been written on human anthropology, but a view that fire and eating meat gave humans an advantage so that our stomach size could be reduced. "Catching Fire" by Richard Wrangham. Has been recommended to me.
In the summary of the book, cooking and eating meat gave humans the genetic opportunity to reduce the amount of body mass taken up by chewing and digesting.
Pictures of the Cumbria kitchen,St Leonards-on-Sea, the owner is vegan, lovely not anglicised South American food, with colours, textures and subtle flavours. Lovely cakes such as the Lemon Meringue I had recently. Kassa Café, like many Mediterranean restaurants and kebab take always usually offer good salads, humus, felafel and pitta bread with other vegan items.
Pictured: Hastings, Di Pola ice cream. The Bullet Cafes have lovely cakes and flans. First in Last Out, the microbrewery's own beers are vegan. Mama Geny's is 100% vegan, menu or buffet, and their desserts are lovely. Vegan Sunday lunch at the Royal Standard and many other places. Corner House vegan, and I believe also operates a non-vegan café nearby, so I think a mixed group of food wishes could use any of the tables. Water Falls, Trinity Foods Co-Operative shop.
Bathing Hut café, West St Leonards pictured has a wonderful, calming
view of the sea with busy Hastings far away, their banana blossom fish
and chips and everything they serve is particularly nice. Sunflower
Café Ore Community Centre, one of my bicycles a Universal is poorly
made with badly fitting cheap parts but is a good bike of its type, once those things were fixed, but the cafes
food is varied and lovely.
There are so many nice places to eat around Hastings.
The blood group type article would coincide with that more recent history case. Humans moving into colder climates, such as the Inuit, for example, who traditionally lived hard but short lives. Having said that, there is a path for us back to the Garden of Eden (with tablet computers and mobile phones) or at least the diet that goes with it, but there is no other path on offer that involves the continuation of the amount of pain, consumption and exploration humans cause now. I found my Blood donor's card turns out that I am A rh D+, whatever that means, but I think it means that I am of the vegan blood group. But I am not convinced, and neither are many others, it is like most people I have lived with, feeling unwell but not knowing anything else, problems with consuming, animal and wheat. The problem is compounded by the intensity of production and the greater availability of poorer foods don’t just harm me, but harm everyone and everything.
Fruit, Vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds are optimal foods for humans seems clear. I have been working on tuning my senses to my body's needs. Something my dad coached me on is to learn to like what is right and to not like what is poisonous, for example sweet smell of paint. But I’d say the skull bars vegan food and beer is bad, but unusually very nice, hence their food awards.
Another book recommended was Grain Brain. It apparently says our brains developed with the use of grains. That makes sense the group B or AB blood type being more recent than the hunter blood group O.
A friend also recalled some information about uric acid in meat ... due to the stress of modern killing methods ... meat eaters are, in effect, eating urine. I can confirm that I do, and I can smell it (cooking meat can make my eyes sting depending on the quality of the meat). As that friend can also. And I agree with her that, " But frankly, given the delicious beans and grains and veg", I have cut the quote.
Hawkwood College, Stroud, Gloucestershire, venue of past VegiVentures Christmas holidays. VegiVentures has retired and closed.
Many of the vegan food places have reduced their range or closed since I wrote this blog. My savings in more ethical unit trusts have been reducing in value, no doubt against warfare investment in recent years. Such a bad trend, good things are being talked down, and the BBC is pressing the Labour government to spend badly and unethically. For so long, Conservative or Labour governments only do good things if they don’t get detected. The only time this was not so was after World War 2, when people had been billeted together, isolated from the media, but talking to each other about welfare and an NHS (my father explained).
Having good vegan food, such as I have with VegiVentures I always come away wondering why anyone would want anything else? Also true of making my own, but I agree that it takes a while to learn, but there are a lot of people who have, and if you join in with a vegan meet-up, you may experience such food. The kitchen management is a model for any business creating Michelin 5* food with a mixture of people on holiday and paid staff.
When people find vegan food does not seem to suit them;
My experience of being vegan or being mostly vegan is feel very good about it, the more strict I am about it, lethargy after a meat meal does not happen. But in the discussion, some people have said they honestly tried, and they have problems. There are junk food vegans who will expose themselves to the risk of scurvy as much as any meat-eater can. If you want to live like royalty, you still have to eat your fruit and veg, and the veg be lightly cooked or raw like royalty do. As I said above. It is important to change slowly, introducing vegan things and reducing animal products, but giving your body time to adjust.
Brighton has vegan pubs, restaurants, cafes and supermarkets like this one called Kindly. Brighton has always led in veganism. Vegan Sunday lunch in The Good Grub, Eastbourne. The Lewis pound protects local work. Picture Cafe Veg vegan, Lewis.
Some mothers do not produce milk for their babies or use another mother's milk. Formula cow's milk is not necessary and can be plain bad with lactose intolerance. Nut milks risk scurvy, but apparently, Soya Milk seems to be good. There are a lot of things like this that will concern people, but the old myth or truism to eat your fruit and veg but not processed and factory food is generally good, and not eating meat is better. I add water and raw or lightly cooked, unsalted and not sugared salad, veg, and fruit is essential as everyone knows, but often they choose to miss out.
Here is a guide which personally I can not endorse as I do not experience the slightest problem anyway with eating vegan, but it looks good; In any case, I do eat no salt, and raw and lightly cooked foods because they are very nice.
I do eat too much, but unlike my father, it is not always fruit. Dad would keep eating any fruit until someone made him stop, like anyone does when we see wild berries. He did it as a boy all through life because he enjoyed it. My mum, who was also born before World War 2, is Scottish and has a reasonable appetite for root vegetables; consequently and tells me that if she were hungry as a child, she would take a potato, rub the dirt off and eat it.
What we choose to eat probably overrides our natural instincts. When I was not too bothered about what I eat, that was up until about 1985, I still found Coca-Cola and McDonald's very horrible, but then I have never conformed and went vegetarian when I left home.
With everything, there is the warning of The Military Industrial Complex, an industry grown so powerful that it promotes war and is corrupting. This can be applied to most things, good science and theoretical science, building theory on theory rather than theoretical science, and developing theory to explain observations. And very much in food, fortunately UK has the NHS, which tends to moderate bad medicine by comparison with the USA, which is something's should never be largely or solely privately run.
Sherlock Holmes - wartime propaganda promising, like many films of that time, better things after the war. In this case, the rich may tear up the title to land so that ordinary people can live without fear of losing their homes.
My parents would spend a lot of time getting me as a small boy to eat the meat, I did not like red meat. Ordinary people had lots of British vegetables which are now forgotten and discard as weeds see the video below.
British Vegetables were abundant but are not recognised now but treated as weeds.
In Conclusion, it is not companies doing bad things, though some do, but that people and the media could instead cultivate better. No wars, arms sales, kindness to each other, the environment and in our food. But I observe the BBC will cover everything but spend much time on promoting the negative during their most popular viewing times.
Carl Sagan cosmologist, spent a considerable amount of time explaining the science and how understanding was developed from astronomy. He explains to us and to the US Congress the problems of expanding human consumption and, therefore, climate change. He co-authored one of the significant studies called TAPPS in the 1980s, some of which using evidence from space exploration of other planets.
Carl Sagan's TV 1980s series Cosmos is very good and has stood the test of time particularly well because he uses more certain explanations and observations. That is not to say Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago may be wrong or that biblical creation of the Universe is correct but that is different it is man created faith rather than evidence based but having faith in peace and kindness is a good strategy.
Since then, we have learnt the biomass is greater in the sea and that the sea has been absorbing 25% more CO2 than it had been, at the cost to shell and coral life among so many other things. Humans have gone beyond breaking point, but Gaia systems have absorbed more than anticipated and kept us alive but with much broken and lost!
Wind and solar power now supply greatly more than could have been anticipated. In 2025, 90% of new energy production are by renewables. These use a combination of simple rules for placing and assembling, and high technology in their development and savings due to mass production. Plus, storage using heated bricks is an established technology for storing energy where traditional hydroelectric storage won't meet the needs and demand management which the power supplies have not had traditionally.
Kindness towards each other, the environment, such as for wild flowers to return to the fields like they used to be in 1961, when I was 2 or 3. Our culture and the way it works is steered by manipulators who affect enough of us, and our stated view of war is usually that it is bad, but of a specific war, Britain sells arms to is good. Meat and excessive consumption were good given post World War 2, but have not been treated as enemies consistently, but the government is pressed by the BBC to promote growth, and war, rather than better equality and living within our means.
Life on earth has developed symbiotic and co-operative relationship so much so that our bodies are mostly not human of other microbes working cooperatively. Warnings are shared between animal species, plants share warning to anticipate and prevention infection via micro fungal filaments. Humans still act as 19th century belief in red in tooth and claw but do much worse by using poisons, machines that kill the systems we rely on. These thing I say though they are all understood and ignored cliche, so I say them again.
V-brunch, a vegan sandwich bar in Sevenoaks.
Others that have vegan options or can make a vegan variation include: Kake and Kocktail, Life on High, and Malabar.
Tunbridge clock tower. The building opposite was very nicely rebuilt in 1992 with the Royal Victoria Place from the former Army & Navy, then finally Chessman's department store. Only to be spoilt in 2015 by the bold bright blue red and white Metro bank.
Panoramic photo taken in January 2016 - I am surprised how it came out considering people and traffic were moving between each photo. But the Chessman's building shows a fault in the photo stitching, and a double roof join can be seen. Camera; Cannon IXUS 60.
