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 perhaps starting from 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). An anecdote on Facebook of parents and
grandparents live mostly on meat in the Midlands.
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
has Ruby'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.
The UK
is now the biggest arms exporter in the world (Radio 4, in recent
years, 2025).
*Radio
interview with a British person who had been amazed on a visit to
South East Asia how different their wild jungle fowl to British
domestic chicken and turkey.
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 healthier.
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 takeaways, usually offer good
salads, humus, falafel 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. Trinity Foods Co-Operative shop (takeaway only).
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. What I have said are
all understood and ignored cliche, so I have chosen to 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.
