Bovril

Hey, lets get us a new one

New residential build is VAT exempt. Or zero-rated. Whatever the jargon, you don't need to slap another 20% onto the developer's budget costs to help the government pay for their moat-cleaning or bailing out (since when did 'bail out' mean 'finance huge bonus paid to...'?) bankers. Repair and refurbishment of existing? Well, hand over that fifth as much again to the HMRC pickpockets.

No wonder there a HM in that HMRC. She's running low on yachts, helicopters and castles.

I don't know whether taxation is supposed to send messages. It seems that the tax on fags and beer is designed to obtain a nation imposing less of a burden on the NHS. How about the obesity (Mac-A-Tax), the Scottish obesity tax (deep fried Mars-A-Tax), the drug-related health and crime costs (smack-tax), or the bevvy-levvy? That's supposed to send a message.

The new build / maintain the existing tax message is: don't bother looking after it, knock it down and start again, mate. There's a clear and plain financial disincentive to looking after your premises.

It seems the same applies to footballers. Arsenal spent an age on securing Theo's contract extenstion. Gibbs picked up an injury on Wednesday night, by close of business Thursday there's a shiny new £10m left back ensconced at the training ground, signed, sealed, medically tested and delivered. Our LB cover did elicit a tweet from MM on Wednesday night questioning whether he'd played football before. As in ever before.

We have had a similar argument with mortgage providers and the like in the past. Bonuses or performance criteria meant that new business was attractive, and returning clients were less so. Why, went the questioning, is a new bloke getting a better rate than we are after years of loyalty?

In any case, the messages are throw it away and get a new one, while in terms of sustainability and sanity they should be the opposite.

Oy! Carrot. There's no cowin' Bovril

So old, Jasper Carrot was new. The routine may be on You Tube. Pretending not to be Birmingham fans in the United end at United at a time when grounds could be violent places, Carrot's mate did his best to blow their cover by loudly announcing in broad Brummie that there was, in Pulp Fiction terms, A Bovril Situation.

Yesterday's conversation:

ME: Got a load of mouth ulcers. Tired. Both knees ache. (Obviously, there was lead up, I didn't just plunge in with the crybaby routine).

BLISS: Sounds like you're run down.

ME: (on the mobile and hands free, so I decided against the 'two lorries and a bus' stuff she's heard before anyway) so what do I need?

BLISS: Corsodyl mouthwash. And B vitamins. B complex vitamins.

ME: what're they in?

BLISS: (wondering how the hell she managed to land such a thicko) they're in Superdrug. In boxes marked Vitamin B complex (then, taking pity) and Bovril, Marmite, yeast.

ME: (Homer Simpson-esque) Boooo-vrillllll.

Has the recipe changed? Has the EU regulated and made Bovril less potent? The second cup, double dose, three quarters full, was much better.

Anyway, while kettles boil and cups are found, the mind wonders...

...there's something wonderfully simple about Bovril. Just as tea benefits from a bit of ceremony, and can have a language and cadence all of its own: draw and boil fresh water, warm the pot, pour and agitate the leaves, all that malarkey, Bovril cares not whether it comes in bone china or polystyrene. There's tea, endless, bewildering varieties, builders' splosh upwards, with sugar, with milk, with milk and sugar, without, with lemon...

...Bovril is just Bovril. There's no “how do you take your Bovril?” is there? It's better as the temperature drops, better outdoors than in, burns your hands less if you double up on the polystyrene cups, all the better if your team's winning.

Beef extract and yeast extract, the ingredients list says before I lose the will to read on. I don't know about different quality yeasts, but there's no illusions about that being extract of fillet steak. Extract of scrapings from the slaughterhouse floor and the butcher’s dustbin, that's what's in these delicious cupfulls of beefy goodness. A fine example of making something good from what might otherwise go to waste (or just top up the horse in your Tesco-burgers).

'Just add to boiling water and enjoy', it does exactly what it say on the...er...jar.