Martin Fone's Blog, page 218
August 27, 2019
What’s Brewing In Alaska?
One of my hobbies, if you can ascribe it with that name, is to sample as many locally produced beers as I can when I visit a new area. I call it drinking with a purpose. A recent trip to Alaska provided me with ample opportunity to prospect for beers previously unknown to me. And what a treasure trove it proved to be.
Technically, under the laws of the state drinkers can only purchase 36 fluid ounces of beer per day for onsite consumption. I cannot say that I saw this in operation and clearly it could be circumvented by moving from one drinking establishment to another. That said, it may explain why in comparison with British beers those to be found in Alaska are considerably stronger, with Alcohol By Volume (ABV) percentages ranging from 5% to in excess of 8%.
The starting point of my exploration of Alaskan ales was a beer tasting event on board the MS Niuew Amsterdam as we were cruising up to the state, featuring six beers from the Alaskan Brewing Company of Juneau. They have been brewing since December 1986 and today produce beers in a wide range of styles. My particular favourite was their Amber which was deliciously malty and hoppy, rather like a good English bitter, although it was brewed as a German Alt ale. With an ABV of 5.3% it could hardly be described as a session beer but it was a pussy cat compared with my second favourite, Husky. This is an India Pale Ale with a gorgeous golden hue to it and quite citrusy. I found it very refreshing but at 7% ABV it packs quite a punch.
The Alaskan Brewing Company, whose strapline is “we brew the way we brew because of where we brew”, claim that they are the only brewery in the world to use their spent grain as a fuel for their brewery. Naturally, they use local water fresh from the Juneau icefields. When I was in Juneau I did not have time to track down the brewery but I did pop my head into the Red Dog, a tourist trap, if there ever was one, allegedly recreating the atmosphere of a saloon during the prospecting days. Still, the Amber was on fine form and after one drink, I made my excuses and left.
On my visit to Skagway, Jack London’s Skauway, I visited the Skagway Brewing Company. Their signature brew is Spruce Tip Blonde Ale, which, as the name suggests, uses tips from the ubiquitous spruces in the area. Apparently, a hundred grams of spruce tips mixed in water to create a tea creates 50 milligrams of Vitamin C. Captain Cook, when he was sailing around the region in 1794, deployed two of his sailors to create a beer from the spruce tips as a precaution against scurvy. And it seems to work. Looking around my fellow drinkers, I didn’t notice a single case of scurvy. The beer, with an ABV of 5.5% was piney in aroma, light gold in colour and malty and surprisingly sweet in taste.
It was refreshing to see local businesses care about the environment and the quality of the air in their state. The Skagway Brewing Company diverts any Carbon Monoxide produced during the brewing process to their aeroponic indoor garden in which they grow some of the vegetables used in the restaurant and brewing ingredients for their beers. They also convert used fryer oil into bio diesel which then fuels the boiler which produces the steam for the brewing process.
To be continued…
August 26, 2019
The Streets Of London – Part Ninety Three
Kensington Gore, SW7
Kensington Gore is to be found on the southern side of Hyde Park, running either side of the Royal Albert Hall, then running northwards to where it splits eastwards and westwards, imposing itself between the two sections of Kensington Road, now the A315. A gore is a triangular piece of land and so the name is particularly apposite here.
In the mid-seventeenth century the area stretching from where the Albert Hall now is to Ennismore Gardens, some fifty acres in all, formed the estate of Sir Robert Fenn, the Clerk of the Green Cloth to Charles I. His duties included planning the King’s itineraries and administering the royal household. Following the Civil War the estate had several owners but by the early 18th century much of the land was rented by Henry Wise and was incorporated into his vast Brompton Park Nursery which occupied some 100 acres in total. Six acres of Fenn’s original estate were occupied by some market gardeners and several large houses were built on the land adjacent to the road running from Kensington to Knightsbridge.
Of these the principal was Gore House, built in 1750 for Robert Mitchell of Hatton Gardens. William Wilberforce lived there between 1808 and 1821 but its most flamboyant resident was undoubtedly the Count D’Orsay, one of the foremost dandies of the 1830s. In 1849 pressure of debts forced the Count and his wife (at least in name), Lady Blessington, to flee the country for Paris. The sale of their effects at Gore House attracted some twenty thousand visitors to the house.
The celebrated French chef, Alexis Soyer, had the bright idea to transform Gore House into a restaurant, up-market of course, to cash in on the demand caused by the 1851 Great Exhibition for a superior dining experience. The grandiloquently named The Gastronomic Symposium of All Nations consisted of the house, now garishly decorated, and a Baronial Banqueting Hall and a four-hundred-foot long Pavilion of All Nations in the grounds. The total cost of the refurbishment was £28,000. Proving that the restaurant trade was no easier then than it is today, Soyer only took in £21,000 and his enterprise collapsed under a pile of debts. The house was demolished in 1857 after it had been purchased by the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 and used as a school.
The other principal house to be built on what was Fenn’s estate was Grove House, built around 1749 and occupied initially by the surgeon, Caesar Hawkins. Horace Walpole wrote disparagingly of the house, describing it as “a vile guinguette that has nothing but verdure, and prospect, and a parcel of wild trees that have never been cut into any shape, and as awkward as if they had been transplanted out of Paradise”. Its last occupant, John Aldridge, sold the house in 1852 to the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 who used it as an office before demolishing it in 1857.
[image error] Photograph of the Royal Albert Hall’s North Entrance taken from Kensington Gore
Why were the Commissioners buying up property in the area and demolishing it? It was all to do with Prince Albert’s masterplan to capitalise on the success of the Exhibition and develop a scientific and cultural quarter known as Albertopolis. Albert died in 1861 before he could see his vision completed but it was decided that a hall be built in his memory on the very spot once occupied by Grove House. When laying the red foundation stone, now to be found under seat 87 of row 11 in stall K, on May 20, 1867 Victoria declared “it is my wish that this Hall should bear his name to whom it will have owed its existence and called the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences”. Her wish was their command and four years later she returned to open it.
August 25, 2019
Toilet Of The Week (23)
In an era where it is increasingly difficult to find public toilets in Britain (https://wp.me/p2EWYd-36f), let alone ones which work, it is pleasing to learn that the Town Council of Porthcawl, a coastal resort 25 miles to the west of Cardiff, is planning to replace its existing bogs in Griffin Park with new loos at a projected cost of £170,000.
The toilets will self-clean, I’m told. But they also come with additional feature which may just be a sign of the times.
They will come with weight-sensitive floors and sensors designed to detect violent movements. Once triggered, fine jets of water will squirt over the occupants, the doors will automatically open and a high-pitched alarm will sound. The Council say that this is designed to dissuade two or more people using the cubicle to engage in sexual activity.
It seems to me, though, to be fraught with difficulties. What if you are a tad on the large side or accompanying your child or, heaven forbid, struggling with a bad case of constipation?
It gets worse, though. The toilets come with a timer which will restrict the time you spend inside the cubicle. If you are outstaying your welcome, you will be greeted with an audible warning and then the lights and heating will go off.
The only bright spot is that the walls and floors will be made of graffiti-resistant materials.
These proposals are still at the planning stage and, although I don’t know the types of people who use the public toilets in Porthcawl, I suspect they will be toned down.
Still, the good news is that a new block of public toilets is to be built, bucking the national trend.
August 24, 2019
Pizza Of The Week (2)
If you are looking for a meal in a hurry, perhaps you should pop into Domino’s gaff in Fratton in Portsmouth. For the third year on the trot one of their staff, Zagros Jaff, has walked off with the title of Domino’s European Fastest Pizza Marker.
This year’s competition was held in Holland and contestants were required to make three 13-inch pizzas using 40 pepperoni slices, tomato pizza sauce, 142g of mushrooms, and 198g of diced cheese. Meeting the judges’ exacting standards isn’t a piece of cake, competitors being awarded 15 second time penalties if, for example, a pepperoni slice is placed in the wrong spot or the dough is not stretched to the right length.
Jaff won by recording the astonishing time of 27 seconds, or the equivalent of making 133 pizzas a n hour. In recognition of his astonishing feat, or should it be hands, Jaff was awarded a trophy bearing a cast of his hands in gold. When I visit Fratton Park later in the football season, I might just pop in and take a look at it.
I can’t help thinking, though, that a pay rise might have been more useful.
August 23, 2019
What Is The Origin Of (245)?…
The $64,000 question
Although I normally eschew from considering phrases which are obviously American in origin, this particular phrase illustrates the impact of inflation, the influence of American culture on its British counterpart and how catchphrases or hooks become to be used figuratively. In everyday parlance it has come to mean the most difficult question or the crucial or essential point to be determined. By today’s standards the monetary amount is not eye-wateringly large but it is worth remembering in the early 1940s it was just shy of a million dollars. But the original pot was even smaller.
In 1940 CBS, in association with pen and razor manufacturers, Eversharp, launched a radio programme called Take It or Leave It, described at the time as “a half-hour of fun and laughs as contestants hope for success on the sixty-four dollar questions”. Whether it lived up to its billing in the mirth stakes is anybody’s guess but it did run until 1947, when it transferred to NBC for a further three years.
The number sixty-four is, at first blush an odd and strangely precise amount for a prize, but there is method in the organisers’ madness. The mathematicians amongst you will know that it is the smallest number with precisely seven divisors. And that was its attraction. It was possible to devise a quiz of seven rounds with the value of the pot doubling each round. If the contestant answered a question incorrectly, they lost the pot. They had the opportunity to declare themselves out at any stage, taking whatever amount they had accumulated at the time. The final question, the correct answer to which scooped the jackpot, was valued at $64.
The jackpot question was soon seized upon by marketeers clued into the zeitgeist. An advert for Potosi’s Pure Malt Beer in 1941 ran, “what’s the beer with old-time body and flavour? Why Potosi pure malt beer. There is the sixty-four dollar question on any Quiz Show”. The pedants among us may say that it was the answer but you get the drift.
Journalists, not averse to a bit of harmless hyperbole, soon realised that $64 was a rather paltry sum and applied their own multiplier. The Pittsburgh Press on June 15, 1943 ran a report on the aftermath of a fight involving Jake LaMotta. “Sixty-four thousand dollar question:”, it ran, “What do you think Jake LaMotta was doing in his dressing room immediately after his skirmish with Fritzie Zavic?” The mind boggles, particularly as before revealing the answer, the paper informed the reader that the pugilist was clad only in his shorts and had his eyes closed. Fortunately, the answer was that he was shadow boxing for all he was worth.
It took twelve years for the broadcasters to catch up the press, CBS launching a television show on June 7, 1955 called the $64,000 Question. This was picked up by Associated Television (ATV) over here in Britain the following year. Their show, first transmitted on May 19, 1956 was called, rather bizarrely, The 64,000 Question, all reference to the American currency being quietly dropped.
Contemporary reports reveal the extraordinary lengths the producers went to in order to preserve the integrity of their programme. A former Scotland Yard detective, one Detective Superintendent Fabian was deployed to mount guard and the questions (and presumably the answers) were locked in a safe, to which Fabian alone had access to its combination number. The veracity of the answers was assured by reference to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The main problem the producers had to find an answer to was the complexity presented by the British system of currency. They hit upon the ingenious idea of using the sixpence (2.5p in decimal currency) as their base unit and so the jackpot was 64,000 sixpences or £1,600 (about £33,500 at today’s value). By answering the opening question correctly, the contestant won 64 sixpences or £1 12s.
The show ran for three series, the last edition of which was shown on January 18, 1958, by which time the jackpot had doubled, the base unit now being a shilling rather than the old tanner. The first prize of £3,200, after adjustment for inflation, was the largest monetary prize available on British TV until the Independent Television Commission lifted the prize cap in 1993, paving the way for Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The Sixty Four Thousand Question was revived in 1990 with Bob Monkhouse as host and ran for four thirteen part episodes until September 4, 1993, using £1 as its base unit. It is worth noting that Who Wants to be a Millionaire, hosted by Chris Tarrant, used the mathematical properties of the number 64 in the early rounds as the pot built up. Ah, the power of sixty-four.
As in America, the show was seized upon by earnest copywriters in a figurative sense. An edition of the Birmingham Post and Birmingham Gazette from December 1956 ran an advert for J Law (Automobiles) Ltd which asked, “the 64,000 question – what is it that no business can afford to be without?” The answer, surprising to modern eyes at least, was “The Austin A35 Van, of course”.
But the absence of a unit of currency to accompany the number made the phrase jar on the sensibilities of the English ear. For want of something better and reflecting the encroachment of American culture on our country, the unit of American currency slipped into the phrase on this side of the pond.
A shame really but, frankly, what is wrong with just saying the key or essential question?
August 22, 2019
Gin O’Clock – Part Seventy Three
You can say one thing for the ginaissance, topers are spoilt for choice. Gins now come in a variety of colours and a wide range of flavours. The choice is bewildering and for me, at least, some of the mixes of botanicals are so bizarre as to make me want to run a mile from them. I have nailed my colours to my mast and declared on innumerable occasions that a juniper heavy gin is what floats my boat. But occasionally I see something which is so intriguing that I want to try it.
Wrecking Coast Clotted Cream Gin certainly comes into this category. My bottle came courtesy of Drinkfinder’s wonderful online store, the digital manifestation of that treasure house of gins that is Constantine Stores down in Cornwall, which I will soon be revisiting.
And what a wonderfully designed bottle it is, a clear, oblong lump of heavy glass. The label is a work of art, literally, being designed by a local Cornish artist, John Blight and depicts a sailing ship being tossed around by the heavy seas. Not for nothing was the coastline around Tintagel on Cornwall’s northern side known as the wrecking coast. Many a ship fell foul of the combination of high waves and strong currents and were sent to Davy Jones’ locker after dashing against the rocks. Others were lured to their destruction by the locals, anxious to get their hands on the cargo.
A must for any visitor to the county is a clotted cream scone tea. Delicious but I had never considered clotted cream as a vital constituent for a gin. That’s probably why Avian Sandercock, Craig Penn, Steve Wharton, and Daniel Claughton are in business and I’m just a gin drinker. But turning a lumpy, baked cream into something that would enhance a gin proved rather tricky. Heating it separates the crust from the cream and ruins the flavour. The quartet had to develop their own hand blown, glass vacuum still to ensure that the essence of the taste of clotted cream survived being mixed with neutral spirit and the whole distillation process. Because of the complexity of the process they can only produce their particular take on gin in small batches. My bottle came from batch number 51.
There are nine other botanicals – is clotted cream really a botanical? – in the mix; juniper(yes, it is there), vanilla, stone fruit, coriander seed, camomile flower, cinnamon, cassia bark, grains of Paradise, and liquorice. I had in my mind that this gin would be on the sweet side but on removing the artificial cork stopper attached to a gold cap, intended to signify the colours of the cream, I was surprised to find that the predominant notes which assaulted my nostrils were of spice.
To the taste, the initial sensation was that of sweetness but the juniper soon came into play, followed by more spicier notes. And there is a bit of a kick at the end when the peppers make their presence known. It is a complex gin and I found that after recovering from the shock that the taste wasn’t quite what I had expected, I grew to appreciate its subtlety and complexity. I found adding a tonic, it does louche slightly, gave the chance to see another side of the gin, the more subtler flavours overpowered, perhaps, by the big guns, when tasted neat, having the freedom to stretch out a tad.
At 44% ABV it is on the more powerful side of the gin strength spectrum. It is not an unpleasant gin but the distillers seem to have gone to a heck of a lot of trouble just to get a marketing edge. I think I prefer my clotted cream on my scones.
Until the next time, cheers!
August 21, 2019
Book Corner – August 2019 (3)
The Law and the Lady – Wilkie Collins
Published in 1875 this is not one of Collins’ finest works, it seems a bit rushed and unpolished, but there is enough in it to keep the reader interested. The plot is full of twists and turns, although some of the key clues are rather disappointingly signposted before the author reveals their significance and, as is the way with the genre of sensation novels, there are a host of improbable coincidences to keep the plot moving.
The plot turns on a peculiarity of Scottish law, the verdict of Not Proven, which means that the jury is not satisfied that there is enough evidence to convict or acquit, leaving a stain of doubt hanging over the accused. In this case the accused is Eustace Macallan who was tried for the murder of his wife, Sarah, by plying her with arsenic. Inventing a new identity to avoid the scandal, Eustace, now Woodville, marries the heroine of the novel, Valeria who, astonishingly, is unaware of her husband’s past. When she does, after bumping into her mother-in-law who had studiously boycotted the wedding, Eustace deserts her, leaving Valeria to try to prove her husband’s innocence and win him back.
The book is in the first person and narrated by Valeria. So, the reader sees events as they unfold through her eyes and their knowledge is limited by her’s. That said, a regular reader of detective fiction should guess what the answer to the problem is well before Valeria gets there. What is ground-breaking about Collins’ portrayal of Valeria is that she, a woman, is his sleuth, possibly the first female detective in English literature. Although nowadays, forensic techniques such as ploughing through court records, cross-examination and carrying out thorough searches of the scene of the crime are clichés, Collins was a pioneer in formulating what has become the bread and butter of this genre. There are red herrings galore, misdirections and foreshadowing of discoveries and mirrors, all used to good effect.
Although Collins’ heroine carries the story through to its conclusion, I won’t spoil the story, through a display of doggedness and grim determination, characteristics that you wouldn’t have expected from a woman who seems demure and weak, his really memorable creation is Miserrimus Dexter. His physical deformities and disabilities, he was born without legs, hence his unusual first name, are presented in a way to create a sense of shock and horror in the reader. At one point he is described as “the new Centaur, half man, half chair”. Without sensitive handling, Collins’ character could easily become the embodiment of every stereotype about people with disabilities.
But Collins is more sympathetic in his handling of Dexter. He highlights Dexter’s tremendous upper body strength and his ability to transcend his physical deformities. Dexter is a performer, vain, a storyteller, someone who is in touch with his feminine side and he has an important part to play in the development of the plot. He conspires against Valeria, trying to throw her off the scent and to take over the running of the investigation. Collins’ depiction of Dexter allows the reader to see beyond the simple depiction of a man labouring under cruel disabilities, a remarkable achievement for someone living in the Victorian age. I have mentioned elsewhere that Collins is fascinated with characters who have some form of disability and in Dexter he educates the reader about what it is like to be disabled.
By comparison, Eustace is a pale shadow and the author spends little time in developing his character. There is enough, though, to make the reader wonder why Valeria hadn’t just counted her lucky blessings and let the wet blanket leave her. But then there wouldn’t have been a story.
It is a book worth reading just to meet the superb Miserrimus Dexter.
August 20, 2019
It’s The Way I Tell ‘Em (38)
Some of the better jokes from the Edinburgh Fringe 2019
My mate came second in a Winston Churchill lookalike competition. He was close, but no cigar – Goose
The problem with the Spider-Man French adaptation is the character is called Peter Parkour, and they immediately guess he is Spider-Man – Alex Kealy.
If you are wondering how I got disabled, it’s because I didn’t forward that chain email to 10 of my closest friends when I was younger – Lost Voice Guy.
I’ve got an Eton themed advent calendar, where all the doors are opened for me by my dad’s contacts – Ivo Graham.
With enough revs and determination any restaurant is a drive-thru – Tom Taylor.
I’m addicted to smoking jackets – I’m on 20 a day – I’ve tried the patches but, if anything, they just make them more fashionable – Olaf Falafel.
I suppose lesbian sex is a bit like cricket, in that it goes on forever and there’s a lot of men watching it at home, alone, on the internet – Catherine Bohart.
A cowboy asked me if I could help him round up 18 cows. I said, “Yes, of course, that’s 20 cows.” – Jack Lambert
I’m an openly 30 man, and it’s hard to come out as 30… my friends were supportive, my boyfriend was supportive but my mum actually tried to kick me out of the house – Eli Matthewson.
True crime documentaries are the only place the entertainment industry will take a chance on an unknown female lead – Jena Friedman.
Sauvignon Blanc is French for “Text Your Ex” – Steff Todd.
I’m from a competitive family. I remember as a kid my brother and I used to do that thing where you’d see who can hold their breath underwater for the longest… I really miss him – Daniel Audritt.
August 19, 2019
You’re Having A Laugh – Part Twenty Five
Mark Twain and the Empire Street Massacre of 1863
The problem with being a satirist who is adept at his work is that it can backfire on you as Mark Twain found out with what he thought was a clever attempt to expose the evils of financial fraud. Investors put their faith in the business acumen and financial integrity of the stewards of the companies in which they invest. Sometimes this faith can be misplaced.
During 1863 the newspapers in San Francisco were beginning to unearth a major financial scandal in the mining sector. Unscrupulous directors of the Daney Silver mine had declared a false dividend by cooking the books, thereby increasing the value of their shares, which they sold at an inflated price, just before the inevitable collapse of the company. The remaining hapless investors lost their money. It was a scandal and one which merited all the attention that the might of the press could bring to bear on it.
However, the very same upholders of financial prudence, the San Francisco press, were running adverts and editorials encouraging investors to get rid of their shares in the Nevada silver mines and plough their money into reputedly safe and sound shares such as those of the Spring Valley Water Company. Unfortunately, it was discovered that the Water Company too had cooked their books, inflating their balance sheet strength. For Twain these sharp financial practices, compounded by the hypocrisy of the local press, had to be exposed.
The newspaper Twain was working on, the Territorial Enterprise, ran an astonishing and truly shocking story, brought to it by one Abram Curry from Carson, in their edition of October 28, 1863. It told of a bloody massacre that had been committed in Ormsby County by Philip Hopkins, an investor in a San Francisco utility company. On learning that his investment had gone sour and that he had lost his money, Hopkins went beserk. At around 10 o’clock in the evening he made a dramatic entrance into Carson on horseback, “with his throat cut from ear to ear, and bearing in his hand a reeking scalp, from which the warm, smoking blood was still dripping, and fell in a dying condition in front of the Magnolia saloon”.
Five minutes later, the report continued, he had died without uttering a word. A posse led by Sheriff Gasherie, rode to Hopkins’ house, a dressed-stone mansion in the heart of a forest, where they encountered a scene of absolute carnage. As well as the scalpless body of Mrs Hopkins, they found six dead children, “their brains evidently dashed out with a club”. Two other children, Julia and Emma, fourteen and seventeen respectively, were found alive but badly injured.
Curry’s report tried to provide an explanation for this senseless slaughter. Hopkins, the paper reported, had invested in some of the best mines in Virginia and Gold Hill. When the San Francisco newspapers started to expose fears of companies cooking their books, he bailed out of these seemingly safe shares and, on the advice of an editor on the San Francisco Bulletin, invested in Spring Valley Water Company shares. But when the shares crashed, Hopkins lost his money, a disaster which drove him mad. Twain signed the article off with this bit of moralising; “The newspapers of San Francisco permitted this water company to go on borrowing money and cooking dividends, under cover of which the cunning financiers crept out of the tottering concern, leaving the crash to come upon poor and unsuspecting stockholders, without offering to expose the villainy at work. We hope the fearful massacre detailed above may prove the saddest result of their silence”.
The response to the story was astonishing. It was reproduced widely in the press and despite its grotesque nature, hardly anyone smelt a rat. Twain had carefully laid some obvious giveaways in Curry’s account- Hopkins was well known in the area to be a bachelor; he was supposed to live in a dressed-stone- mansion in the heart of a forest but, in truth, there was nary a tree in a fifteen mile radius of the spot and there was no dressed-stone mansion in the whole of Nevada; Hopkins’ injuries were such that they would have killed him outright rather than after a four mile ride into Carson City to make a dramatic entrance and a theatrical end. But no one seemed to notice these clues, sucked in by the adroitness of Twain’s storytelling.
When the truth emerged that it was all a hoax, Twain nearly lost his job on the paper. Writing in Sketches New and Old twelve years later in a piece entitled My Bloody Massacre, Twain reflected “it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived”. After metaphorically patting himself on the back, he reflected on the lesson learned; “I found out then, and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory surroundings of marvellously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and be happy”.
An observation that is as true today as it was then.
If you enjoyed this, why not try Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
August 18, 2019
Sting Of The Week (3)
Police in the German town of Oldenburg have arrested a 32-year-old man.
Nothing unusual in that in itself but the man tried to avoid arrest by jumping from a balcony. Unfortunately, he landed on a wasps’ nest and the angry insects set about him, forcing him to run down the street. Rather like a scene from a cartoon the man was being pursued by wasps and the police who, in turn, also found themselves on the wrong end of the wasps’ stingers.
Eventually the man was forced to jump into an inflatable pool where he finally shook off the insects but not the police. With all those sharp objects about it probably wasn’t the smartest place to hide anyway.
For the police it probably brightened up an otherwise dull day.
