The Pear Tree

You join me in The Pear Tree which opened as a pub in 1982. Customers are mostly fu’ng stu’ens and it gets its name from the ( about ) 100 year old jargonelle  (wtf?  Ed ) pear tree on the western frontage.

It looks like it is on fire but this is only a reflection from the giant screen in the courtyard.

Jargonelle: Could be a French women who speaks in gibberish? But it means an early flowering variety.

I start with a pint of Barney’s Volcano IPA at 5%. Barney’s brewery is a couple of hundred yards South in what was the Royal Dick Veterinary College, which I must admit I always thought was a bit of a cock up of a name your majesty.

Hares.    Now I know you are probably singing ” a partridge in a pear tree  and checking out four calling birds three French etc–and going ok Tam I don’t recall Hares.

Just a happy writer’s coincidence for development. ( he means writer’s happy –Ed) – Although both could apply if I have another pint!

About 25, 000 were culled across 90 Scottish estates from 2006-2007 according to a Scottish Natural Heritage survey. Research suggests that numbers have declined by 43% since 1995 and The Wildlife and Natural Environment Act of 2012 introduced a closed season to protect hares at vulnerable times of the year. The Scottish Gamekeepers Association however, want to be able to kill hares throughout the year to “enable newly planted trees to get established”  Well I am all in favour of more trees especially if there is a diverse mix. Can we not plant them with a protective sleeve? I’ve seen that done in many places. A conifer condom?

The head of national operations for SNH : “We are asking estates for restraint on large scale culls of mountain hares”

How fucking naive is that?  Yet another genuflection to money and power. What a combination they are!

The gin queen and I spent last weekend at friends near Hawick. When we arrived a fox hunt was just finishing. It is now illegal to allow the hounds to tear the fox to bits once it goes to ground. The beasts have now to be shot. If it is necessary to control fox numbers why don’t we just shoot them?  Is it really necessary to chase and terrify the shit out of them?  Unnecessary cruelty physical or mental to man or beast just makes me so sad and angry. We really should be above that. But of course we’re no’

Never mind eh, good news for beavers in Scotland. Just in time too because they are European beavers. Well maybe not as in the Scotsrag today one guy says that we will have to cull them soon enough. No problem SNH will surely help.

Still on gun fun:

Gun violence and terrorism- the US spends more than a trillion  ( how much is that? Ed ) dollars defending itself against terrorism which kills a tiny fraction of people compared to those killed by ordinary ( not my choice of adjective! ) gun crime. US government sources state that on average 11,385 died in firearm incidents in US between 2001-2011. This c.w. annual average of 31 for terrorism. Now the pacifist in me has to hold his hands up and say that that is when you take out the numbers from 9/11 which, if like me you couldn’t say for sure what year it was that the towers came down, it was 2001. And before Charlton Heston’s ghost comes gunning for me, no amount of rifles and / or handguns would have stopped that atrocity.

Out of bullets, but lastly, comparing countries which might consider themselves fairly civilised. Percentage of murders involving firearms:

UK 10%

Australia 18.2%

Canada 31%

USA    60%

Trillions etc:  Check out the numbers. When the baby boomers were growing up a billion was a million million. Not any more!  In the UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson accepted how US usage was dominating and that was the start of bi and tri being corrupted so that most of us now know that, whether short or long scale, a billion is quite a lot and trillion is also quite a lot but more so.

A musician friend alerts me to a Tom Russell song which has a certain relevance at the moment. Although it was in fact written before that event. It’s called  “Who’s gonna build your wall?

I tried to copy just the link but the above came out!

Gog: Why is it that American audiences have to fucking hoop and holler?

And a pint of Sharp’s Red IPA at 4.9% completes my visit. No food available, the manager’s voice box does not have an off switch and the music here is not for vegetarians either because it is absolute mince.  Shortly they are going to knock the wall through to the adjacent Blind Poet, which I have featured, ( one of the reasons it’s so easy to have a pub crawl in Edinburgh! ) If I can be mean in whatever use of the word then both are average.

 

Phil O’ Sofar awakes from his slumber and leaves you with this:

Are you a beer glass half full or half empty sort of person?

Who cares, as long as it’s not empty.