A QUIET BEER

It’s a brewer’s dream to have his beer named the best in the world. That is unless you happen to be one of the 26 Cistercian monks who live by a vow of silence behind the walls of the Westvletern monastery of Saint Sixtus, located near the hop-producing town of Popering in the Flemish region of Belgium.

The Trappist monks at Saint Sixtus have been brewing beer for more than 160 years: a rich, dark-brown beer renowned for its exceptional flavour and strength. It’s not a big production: just 4,500 hectalitres a year, brewed over a period of 70 to 75 days. And they intend to keep it that way, despite winning the 'best beer' accolade.

While Belgium has more than 100 breweries and exports many of its "abbey" beers, only a few have links to religious orders. And apart from the amber nectar from Saint Sixtus, there are only five true Trappist beers brewed by monks, the others coming from Westmalle, Achel, Chimay, Rochefort and Orval.

Westvleteren is the rarest because it has not been distributed commercially for 64 years and can be bought only at Saint Sixtus where, even in times of plenty, customers are rationed to five cases of 24 bottles. You can get a taste of Saint Sixtus beers at the Café de Vrede, just across from the monastery gates – it’s the one place Westvleteren is still available, visitors may buy only six 33cl bottles.

Saint Sixtus monastery may not be commercial, but it does have a Beer Phone telephone number for international beer lovers: it’s + 32 57 40 10 57. Wait a minute: if the Cistercians abide by a vow of silence, who answers the phone?

PIGS FROM OUTER SPACE

This is no hogwash -- sweet and sour pork may have a different taste in your local Chinese restaurant in the future, following news from the Chongqing Academy of Animal Husbandry that China's next manned space flight will carry capsules of pedigree pig sperm in an experiment that scientists (and butchers?) hope will ultimately produce better quality pork.

On its second mission, due in early October, the Shenzhou VI spacecraft will carry half an ounce of pig sperm to where no pig sperm has ever been before. Scientists will then study whether exposure to outer space alters its genetic make-up – with high hopes of bringing home the bacon.

Imagine the following conversation at the Peking Dragon in the not-too-distant-future:

“We’ll go for the sweet and sour pork, please.”

“You want number 10 or number 15?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Number 10 is regular pork, number 15 is pig from outer space. Comes from near Uranus.”

Beam me up, Miss Piggy.

PUNCH VERSUS SADDAM AND OSAMA

‘In my opinion it is one of those extravagant reliefs from the realities of life, which would lose its hold upon the people if it were made moral and instructive. I regard it as quite harmless in its influence and as an outrageous joke which no one in existence would think of regarding as an incentive to any kind of action or as a model for any kind of conduct.’

The words of Charles Dickens in defending Punch and Judy shows when they were attacked as being ‘amoral’ in Victorian times.

The world has moved on since then. Or has it?

An English seaside entertainer who used Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden puppets to wrestle with Mr Punch for his sausages has been ordered to remove them from his show or face eviction from his pitch. He reluctantly agreed. Is this one up for Islamic militants?

In a well-established tradition, Professor Brent de Witt has always used topical figures as villains in his Punch and Judy show on the beach in Broadstairs, Kent . He said that using Saddam and bin Laden was topical and fun "but a few people did not care for it and instead of telling me they went straight to the local council".

In his show Bin Laden was cast as the devil and received the time-honoured treatment from Mr Punch, who bashed both villains over the head with his stick.

For the record, Punch and Judy has been entertaining English audiences since the late 1700s, but the earliest shows date back to the wandering Commedia dell' Arte troupes of 14th century Italy. Pulcinella, a hook-nosed, cowardly buffoon, was a popular character in the comic plays of these actors.

The Broadstairs’ broadside against Mr Punch was not the first time county councils in England have put Punch and Judy under fire. Way back in 1947 (wonderful how you can Google up these facts) the Middlesex County Council said "No more Punch and Judy shows at school treats: the show is brutal and totally unfit for the innocent eyes and ears of children" or words to that effect.

A poem published in The Law Times had as its final verse:

If you fall for Punch and Judy you become morose and broody

And ev'ry decent sentiment is barred;

Your faculties precocious crave what's horrid and ferocious

In the manner of the late Marquis de Sade.

Your story makes its deadline when you hit some tabloid headline

With the murder that your twisted mind has planned;

It's too late to plead repentance when the Judge pronounces sentence

And that's why Punch and Judy must be banned.

The Broadstairs saga makes me wonder if complaints would have been made if Professor de Witt had used Tony Blair and George Bush as characters rather than Saddam and bin Laden. Probably not, which shows how politically (in)correct the world is becoming.

What next? Is it only a matter of time before vegans demand that Punch's sausages be replaced with a soggy lettuce?

PASS THE MUSTARD

Sheboygan sits on Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, a small city with a population of around 50,000. Its major claim to fame is being known as the Bratwurst capital of America: the locals, most of whom proudly trace their family history back to the foot-stomping, thigh-slapping, biergarten and oompah regions of southern Germany, like to say the world, but they would, wouldn’t they.

The reason I mention all this is because Sheboygan is home to the annual Johnsonville Brat-Eating World Championship, which is held at the beginning of August, and which this year saw Sonya ‘The Black Widow’ Thomas of Alexandria, Virginia breaking a world record by eating 35 bratwursts in ten minutes.

It was a narrow victory, however, with Joey Chestnut running into second place by downing 35 of the jumbo German sausages, while Rich ‘The Locust’ LeFevre tucked away 30 brats to come third.

All three are ‘professional eaters’ recognised by the New York-based International Federation of Competitive Eating, which supervises and regulates eating contests throughout the world.

Incidentally, Sonya the Black Widow shares the world popcorn-eating record with Rich the Locust – no less than 9 ½ large boxes of the stuff in 10 minutes.

Among the 23 IFCE world records held by Sonya are:

46 dozen oysters in 10 minutes

167 chicken wings in 12 minutes

65 hard-boiled eggs in 7 minutes

25 toasted cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes

4 ½ kilos of giant hamburgers in 48 minutes

38 Maine lobsters in 12 minutes

Sonya says she got into ‘professional eating’ after watching ‘celebrity eater’ Takeru Kobyashi getting through 50 (and a half) hot dogs in a record 12 minutes on the television three years ago. According to the US National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, the average American eats 70 hot dogs a year.

By now you have probably drawn a mental picture of Sonya as an overweight couch potato (or should that be sofa sausage?) If so, you are way off. For surprisingly, Sonya who is 37 and single, weighs only 50 kilos – and what’s more she does two hours of aerobics a day, five days a week.

Do I spot a Black Widow Diet book hitting the market in the not-too-distant future?

PUT LULU ON THE SHELF

Have you heard of Lulu? No, not the Scottish singer who shot to fame in the early Sixties and has hung in ever since: I mean Lulu the new website that pledges to publish anything by anyone - however obscure.

Titles such as How to Cook a Peacock and Ten Crochet Dude Dishcloths have, against all the odds, been published, and read, via the US website at www.Lulu.com, which has now launched in Britain.

Lulu encourages writers to upload their work to the website at no cost (yes, at no cost), with the books individually printed in paperback (with various binding options)) each time an order is placed. There are no minimum print-run costs and authors, who set the sale price of their work, receive up to 80% of the profit, which to me seems a better deal than the measly 7% offered by traditional publishing houses.

Since it kicked off in 2002, more than 100,000 writers have signed up to the website, and 20,000 of those have published and sold their work: 30,000 books sold on Lulu last month alone.

Jim Chevallier, author of How to Cook a Peacock - a translation of a fifteenth-century French cookery book featuring recipes for peacock, stork and turtle doves - has so far sold 32 copies of his book to aspiring medieval chefs: there can’t be many of them around and I wonder how many have actually used the recipes. Come to that I haven’t seen peacocks (or storks, or turtle doves) in Tescos lately, or any other supermarket come that.

Drew Emborsky, the self-styled "crochet dude" from Houston, Texas has meanwhile sold 60 copies of his crochet pattern book Ten Crochet Dude Dishcloths in recent weeks and at the same time has made it on to the Lulu list of books "least likely to become a number one bestseller" - the website's antidote to the mainstream bestseller charts. Texan crotcheteers? Davey Crocket and Jim Bowey must be turning in their graves.

So what’s hot at Lulu?

Riding high in the Top Ten is The Havenese by well-known American dog breeder Diane Klumb, described as a quintessential handbook for Havanese dog owners, breeders and fanciers. Here’s some trivia for you: the Havanese is the national dog of Cuba and its only native breed. Once called the Havana Silk Dog, or the Spanish Silk Poodle, the breed became trendy in nineteenth-century Europe, when Queen Victoria owned two. Charles Dickens also had one -- isn’t it amazing what you learn on this page!

Are you entrepreneurial? Then maybe you should go for a copy of How to Start a Wedding Planning Business, described as comprehensive course covering wedding etiquette, coordination and directing ,as well as the business side of wedding planning. Don’t start humming ‘Here comes the guide’.

A little less genteel is The Ultimate Tattoo Guide that will show you everything you need to know about getting started in the tattoo business – from needles and inks to styles and patterns. The book was written by D Heren, a fairly prolific all-round writer who also penned The Pelvic Pain Solution (your guide to dealing with such problems such as prostatitis and a range of other ‘itises’), and, wait for it, The Secrets to Raising Twins the Right Way (will there be a Wrong Way sequel?)

HYBRID WARFARE

You were probably unaware that while all the attention is being focussed on militant Islamic terrorism in the UK, there are meanwhile an estimated 17,000 leylandii wars going on in the country.

Leylandii can grow to 25 metres high (that's 80 feet for the metrically impaired) and are often used as wind breaks or for privacy. But if they grow out of control they cast shadows, depriving neighbour’s gardens of light. And that's the reason for the warfare.

The British government estimates that 10,000 – 100,000 people suffer from high hedge problems, and while mediation is successful in most cases (85%), large court costs are involved in these disputes. A couple in Northumberland have spent £25,000 in legal fees to have a leylandii cut down, while down in Southampton, a thriving £70-an-hour conciliation service is run by psychologist Naomi King-Li to resolve hedge disputes.

The species is named after C. J. Leyland, who discovered the natural hybrid of two trees in South Wales back in 1888. If you want to get technical, Leyland cypress is a hybrid of Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa) and Alaska-cedar, also known as Nootka cypress, (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis).

Six hybrid seedlings (unknown to be hybrids at the time) derived from the Nootka mother tree were taken by Leyland to Haggerston Castle estate in central England where they grew rapidly into large trees. Things have been going downhill ever since, which is a pity as the leylandii is from two variants of the cypress tree which in Old Testament imagery stands as a symbol of grace, fruitfulness and peace.

But where does the warfare come in? Well, while the British courts are bogged down with an influx of Leylandii cases, some normally God-fearing people have taken the law into their own hands.

In the Welsh town of Powys, a man was murdered when a Leylandii case dispute intensified. Elsewhere, shots were exchanged between rival factions in the upmarket Berkshire horse-racing town of Newbury.

I suppose you could say that the high cost of Leylandii litigation gives a whole new meaning to Hedge Funds.

CHELSEA COULD HAVE SCORED

It seems that Bill Clinton is against the idea of his daughter Chelsea marrying into politics. At least that's the message I read into an article in a recent edition of the Nairobi Nation, in which a Kenyan provincial city councillor says he is still waiting for a reply to a marriage offer he made more than five years ago to the then incumbent President Clinton.

Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor, a 36-year-old elected city councillor in Nakuru gave the paper a did-not-kiss-but-still-telling 'exclusive' in which he says he offered Bill Clinton 40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter's hand in marriage back in 2000- and is still waiting for an answer.

Nakuru, incidentally, lies north of Lake Naivasha in Kenya's safari-land: known for its hundreds of thousands of flamingos, the fourth largest town in Kenya was once dubbed 'the cleanest town in East-Africa.'

You would have thought that with the region's flamingo glut, Godwin would have thrown a couple of dozen birds into the dowry offer -- if only to add a romantic touch.

Go-for-it Godwin says he contacted Chelsea's dad during the then-president's visit to Kenya back in 2000. Apart from the animal dowry, the Kenyan would-be suitor also promised a massive wedding presided over by none other than South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Somebody who has had dealings with the White House protocol tells me that the offer would not have got past first base, and would have been put in the round bin long before it reached the Oval Office.

Maybe. Or was Bill holding out for 40 cows and 20 goats to give his blessing for his daughter to become Chelsea Chepkurgor? You have to admit, the name has a great alliterative ring to it.