Advantages: Light, easy to drink, delicious flavour Disadvantages: Can be hard to find in shops
Walking into an off licence these days we are faced with what is often a bewildering array of new drinks all designed to make more pleasurable the ingestion of that old drug, and poison, alcohol. Every year there seems to be an increase in our choice with all manner of outlandish cream or fruit flavoured liqueurs becoming available and wines from countries of which few of us have heard. Sometimes though, if you are lucky, you may chance upon an ancient drink which has been quenching thirst and invigorating soul for many hundreds of years, a drink which has been around for possibly as long as wine and beer.
☼☼☼What is Mead? ☼☼☼
Simply put, mead is just a type of white wine. However, whereas most wine is made from grapes or other fruits, mead is made from honey. The high sugar content of honey ...
Advantages: Quirky, wordy, brainy, zany Disadvantages: Christopher Biggins
13 shows on this three-DVD collection, he certainly fits the bill sartorially.
He comes across as smart in other ways too. When it comes to the style of his 50 or so documentaries, from which these are drawn, he is a self-proclaimed maximalist. He never uses one syllable when four will do. ?More is more,? as he tells Mark Lawson in the 40-minute interview included as an extra on these discs. His verbal style no doubt puts some people off, despite the popularity of his shows.
But myself and other Meadophiles revel in his unapologetic sesquipedalianism. I might not understand everything he says, but it is refreshing not to be patronised. There?s an incentive to watch again, to look things up. If there can be an antidote to Chris Tarrant and Phillip Schofield, this is it.
Which is not to say that Meades is stuffy or pompous. As he tells ...
Advantages: original, well-executed, musically diverse and hugely enjoable! Disadvantages: vocals arent very accomplished ( though they still fit somehow)
Crusader-themed black metal played by a bunch of English blokes that like to pose on their album covers stood in front of ruined castles dressed up in medieval armour and waving swords around... sounds well and truly cringeworthy doesn't it?
Fortunately, The Meads of Asphodel are a hugely talented and entertaining band with a strong sense of humour, and their second full length, "Exhuming the Grave of Yeshua" is a pleasure to listen to from start to finish.
In keeping with the band's image, "Exhuming..." deals with the outbreak of psychological and ideological epidemy that was the crusades, and the brutal violence they involved, as well as the insanity of religious war in general. It highlights the xenophobic and fanaticial perspective of Christian Europe at the time, whilst simultaneusly decrying religious war in general, thus ...
