Author: Kim du Toit

Never Mind The Vampires

Food & Drink

It all began shortly after I began my career at The Great Big Research Company, when I called on a client for the first time.  Our meeting had been scheduled immediately after lunch, and when I walked into his office and shook hands with him, I was nearly sick.

To say that his breath reeked would be an egregious understatement:  it smelled like he’d just eaten a dozen cloves of garlic.  And it got worse.  As the meeting progressed, he started to perspire (not unusual in midsummer Johannesburg back then, where offices seldom had A/C), and the smell of garlic permeated not only the entire room but even my clothing.

The reason I knew it had stuck to my clothes was when I walked back into the office and my secretary waved her hand in a fanning motion and asked whether I’d had Italian food for lunch.

I’ve hated garlic ever since.

Also, because I saw clients at least once a week, I decided that there was no way I would ever potentially offend them by smelling of garlic;  so I made a conscious effort to avoid garlic-laden foods.  Over time, I actually developed such a strong aversion to the stuff that my long-suffering wives had to take it out of any cooking recipes.

So what had started as a courtesy to clients turned out to be a lifelong aversion.  (I remember watching some cookery show, when the “chef”, in cooking two steaks, crushed five cloves of garlic in their preparation.  I was nearly sick at the very thought of how the meat would taste — and I love steak.)

Feel free to imagine my experiences in Paris and Rome — no doubt a factor in my always choosing to eat outdoors, now that I think of it.

This post was inspired by this article, which extols the virtues of garlic as a cure for just about everything, and by our dinner with the Son&Heir last week, where he and his girlfriend ordered snails as a shared starter.  I could smell the garlic from across the table, but fortunately, it was barely noticeable, even to my garlic-sensitive nostrils.

I know that this little preference (or rather, non-preference) of mine is going to cause outright mirth and shakes of the head, but there it is.  The stuff reeks and I want no part of it, despite all its purported health benefits.

Just Camouflage

Taxes and Theft

You may recall that the loathsome former NYfC Mayor Bloomberg once declared war on super-sized drinks in that poxy city because people were getting too fat from the drinking thereof, or something.  So as an actual ban would essentially be unenforceable, he slapped a consumption tax on them.

How nice:  promote health while raking in the dollars.  (I’m sure the latter had no bearing on his action, of course. [eyecross] )

I was reminded of this when I read that the equally-loathsome British Labourite Wes Streeting has slapped a tax on sugary drinks.  (Okay, he just extended and raised the “temporary” tax on food on this particular category, but the effect is the same.)

The oily little shit then made this nauseating statement:

“This government will not look away as children get unhealthier,” the Health Secretary told the Commons.

Makes you want to give him a swift slap, dunnit?

And as with Bloomberg, the poison is in the details, as the tax may raise as much as £45million a year or more for the Treasury.

What about all those obese children?

Whitehall’s own estimates suggest it will only trim 0.3kcal off the daily intake of 5 to 10 year olds and 0.4kcal off 11 to 18 year olds.

Well, there ya go, then.

What I really love is all the contortions necessary to make all this happen:

The change will affect packaged milkshakes and coffees, but not drinks made in cafes and restaurants.

The exemption for milk-based drinks will be replaced with a ‘lactose allowance’ to account for the natural sugars in the milk component of the drinks.

I’m thinking that HMG could save a lot more than £45million a year by just firing all the goblins involved in implementing and enforcing all these tax minutiae, but no doubt that might be seen as too simplistic.

Whether control freaks like Bloomberg or unctuous figures like Streeting, they’re all just bastards.

Say Wut?

Lifestyle, Real Estate

Seems as though a few areas in the U.S. have seen large growth in real estate values since the Covid thing.  Mostly, it should be said, this is because property in the area was relatively inexpensive — i.e. the growth is off a low base.  Some of the towns, though, are inexplicable.

Top 10 cities and how much the value of their homes has increased since 2019:

  1. Knoxville, TN – +86% — I’d live there
  2. Fayetteville, AR – +84.5% — low base
  3. Charleston, SC – +81.3% — I’d live there
  4. Scranton, PA – +78.4% — inexplicable;  shit hole
  5. Syracuse, NY – +77.6% — inexplicable;  shit hole
  6. Portland, ME – +75.7% — I’d live there
  7. Rochester, NY – +75.2% — inexplicable;  shit hole
  8. New Haven, CT – +73.8% — expensive became more expensive
  9. Charlotte, NC – +73.1% — sorry, nope
  10. Chattanooga, TN – +72.9% — low base, but I’d live there.

See any on the list where you’d care to live?  Your comments are welcome.

Tempting Wheels

Drive Time

Right off the bat, I’m going to say that I was never a fan of the old VW Beetle back in my yoot, even though I did own one briefly #Poverty.  Yes they were cute, but the body shape was ugly and the interior did nothing to excite me.  Best of all was the Beetle’s famed reliability, but that wasn’t enough to get me to keep it.

But I have to say that this one at Hemmings caught my eye:

It’s a 1964 vintage body, fitted with a ’74 1600cc engine.  That engine, for that time and for that company, was quite a beast, most assuredly compared to its predecessors.

And I love that candy-apple red color and those rear wheel covers.  The only thing missing are the flip-out indicators on the door column, then and now a lovely feature of the Beetle — I’m not sure whether they’d been taken off by 1964, though.

The listed price is just under $23,000.  Ask me whether I’d rather drive that than a secondhand “modern” car for the same price…