At first, I thought that there wasn’t much to say about Vikings. I’ve been watching TechnoViking on YouTube quite a lot, but everyone knows he isn’t a genuine Viking anyway. I considered giving them the benefit of the doubt and broadening the General Banter category to include virtually all barbarian hordes of all stripes.
Then I realized that there’s a reason that people still talk about Vikings - they were the dog’s bollocks. First of all, as far as true Vikings are concerned, there is Beowulf. Yes, he was a Geat - but that’s a lot closer than a lot of other Viking heroes get to the frozen tundra of the Northlands. Vikings terrorised Europe, their descendants conquered this country, and they pioneered trans-Atlantic exploration and colonization, established colonies in Greenland and Canada.
Viking mythology is fucking brilliant. The eddas and sagas outline a divine opera with contains the underpinnings of some Christian lore and rivals Greco-Roman mythology as far as internecine bitchiness is concerned. Not only that, but while Zeus was just another sky-god, Odin had a pair of ravens and only one eye. Not to mention the eight-legged horse. And let’s not forget one of the great tricksters of all time, Loki, and Ragnarok, the end of the reign of the gods, in a giant cosmic battle that pits god against titan.
I’m feeling lazy, and this blog needs an update. No more bitchiness!! Just good quality plagiarized lists and the like from now on, until I can be arsed to write a proper post. So here it is. Yawn.
1) You don’t need to worry about drinking and driving, although it does pay to check that your chauffeur’s hip flask does only contain water every once in a while.
2) You don’t have to worry each year about filing a tax return. Your accountant makes sure you don’t pay tax.
3) Your parents don’t care if you crash the car.
4) You can use your body clock in the mornings, not the alarm clock.
5) Why rent a porn video when you can rent the porn star?
6) You don’t have to worry about how expensive this petrol station is compared with the rest.
7) You can use a new razor blade every time you shave without feeling wasteful.
The legends preceded it: chocolate so dark it ceased to taste like chocolate. Chocolate so intense it required cautionary statements. Chocolate so fine it cost £75 per kilo.
Such purity is exceptionally rare. A normal Cadbury’s Dairy Milk bar is rumoured to contain about 11% cocoa. The “Dark” chocolate Dairy Milk bar is just 40% cocoa. Connoisseurs must look to a more exotic manufacturer for their intense cocoa hit.
The Lindt Excellence line of fine chocolate bars is widely available in the UK. Dark chocolate versions with 85% cocoa can be found with relative ease at chains as plebeian as ASDA. Such ubiquity is not shared by the 99% bar. For it, one must travel to a Lindt chocolate shop or buy online.
At the shop, I was greeted by two pleasant-enough young women offering free chocolate samples to browsers. My goal clear, I declined their truffles and proceeded straight to the chocolate bar section. There, on the wall, I saw it: a 99%-pure bar of cocoa. One of the saleswomen regarded my choice with concern. She made sure that I knew what I was getting into, that I knew I should enjoy the bar slowly, at home, with proper reverence and plenty of water. Undeterred by the cautionary statements, I asserted my comfort with the chocolate and completed my purchase. On the way home, I picked up a more mundane 85% bar for comparison.
After consuming just three squares of the 99% bar, I felt it was time to bring the experience to an end. The richness of the chocolate was leaving me satiated, and I didn’t want to waste either bar when I was not in the proper mindset for full enjoyment of the act.
If you get the opportunity to try high-quality, high-purity chocolate, I recommend that you indulge. If nothing else, you will gain a new appreciation for the rift between British commodity chocolate and what is possible from the world’s elite chocolatiers such as Lindt.
