A Negus-less episode including Callum’s tales from the Test, a venue request from Prideaux, some talk about thermal imaging drones, beer labels, Callum’s plan to make Britain shit again (for it’s own good), and Wetherspoons.
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside. You can contact us by email on: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Edited and Produced by Amy Green.
This transcript was generated using AI and may contain minor errors.
Richard Prideaux: when you sponsor an African child or a donkey or something and they send you sort of photos of, updates of how that child's going.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I don't, but I'm familiar with the concept.
Richard Prideaux: So with, my tax and how it's being spent at the moment, I'd like for at least people to send me an update of, you know, how my tax has been spent. Your tax has purchased five of the lanyards required for this government office. Or you have purchased One half of 1 screw for an aircraft carrier.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Look, just come to Harlow on a Wednesday at like 1.30 and I'll show you exactly where it's going. Vapes mostly. Super strength lager seems to be quite popular. I think ciders, super strength ciders down.
Richard Prideaux: Is Kestrel still going?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: What was the, what was that one? Is it Frosty Jacks?
Richard Prideaux: Frosty Jacks, yeah.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: That was a classic. What a classic.
Richard Prideaux: Did Buckfast ever make it to Essex?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: No, it doesn't really, it doesn't travel well. That's the trouble. You know, it's like some of the beers you get that, you know, they only taste good in the country of origin. They don't travel well. And that's like Buckfast. It's great there, but Doesn't travel well. And the connoisseurs that drink it, they know that too.
Richard Prideaux: Someone is screaming at their radio now, but Buckfast actually comes all the way from Devon to Glasgow.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: That's it.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, it's made by monks in Devon.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Is it really? What are they doing?
Richard Prideaux: Doing something strange to Glasgow, I think.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: You know, I don't think I've ever had Buckfast.
Richard Prideaux: You're missing out, really are.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I got given, what's it called, Magnum? Have you had those?
Richard Prideaux: I'm familiar with the ice cream.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: No, It's popular with the African community. It's like a tonic wine.
Richard Prideaux: Is this your other family that we talked about?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, Magnum Tonic. So it is technically a product of Jamaica. I felt like I'd almost been initiated. my brethren turned to me and cracked open a magnum and passed it to me and I was like, yeah, say less, fam. I was one of them.
Richard Prideaux: We don't really get that experience up here. We get Wrexham Lager. Wrexham Lager's made a comeback, which is, it's had a mixed reception, let's say, because some people are like glad to see it go.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: You travel about a bit. Is there is there any. Any local brew that you have that you think, oh, I'd love if this was back home?
Richard Prideaux: No, because I can't remember the brand of any sort of small stubby lager or anything I've had overseas because I'm genuinely sort of Quite glad to see that it arrived in a sealed bottle, which means there's a very good chance it hasn't been tampered with or just refilled at the back of the restaurant before it came to you.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: That's, you know, that's just marred relief. And is it, is it got sweat of ice coming down the side of it? Yeah, that'll be fine.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So I tried to get one once that was, what was it called? It had a witch on it. Quinn. Quintin. Quinine. Quintin beer. I don't know.
Richard Prideaux: Quinine beer. Good for malaria then.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yes, it's Quintin. QUINTINE Quintin Amble. It's a Belgian beer. It's got a witch with a broom on it and it's really good in Belgium. And if you get it in a bottle and take it home, it doesn't taste anywhere near as good. And I don't know why, but it just doesn't. But it's so nice when you're out there. It's so nice on draught. It's yeah, it's really good. And there's a few local ones, UK ones that are bangers.
Richard Prideaux: There is a whole art to picking a beer based on what the picture on the label is. You know, it says about 6% and it's got a picture I quite like. I'll go for that please.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: They don't do pictures you like now. It all looks like tattoo artists. Years ago it used to be like goblins and mushrooms and \*\*\*\* that you think, oh, I'm not sure I should even touch that. Actually, the artwork of BB. So BB, the writer, used to write about field sports and whatnot. His artwork is that kind of weird psychedelic kind of trolls and little toadstools and all this kind of like folklore-y stuff. You think, where am I going to end up? What ditch will I end up if I do? If I drink 5 years, you feel?
Richard Prideaux: A bit peculiar, sort of you're not quite sure what's going to happen next. It's sort of comforting but horrifying at the same time.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I like that. It was a very 80s, 80s, 90s thing, wasn't it?
Richard Prideaux: There's a sort of, there's a very interesting aesthetic for an 1980s British Christmas, which is either decorations from the 70s that are still hanging around for a long time, or some weird sort of muted colour stuff of the 80s.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Can we talk about the smell? They all had that smell. I mean, if you're sitting at home, you don't have to have synesthesia to just remember what the Christmas box of the 90s smelt like. just that tinsel smell. exactly what I'm talking about too.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, I do actually.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: The tinsel plastic smell that you just go, that's Christmas.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah. So as eagle-eared listeners may have noticed, we are down to just two of us for this week because Richard Negus is.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: He's gone, he's gone out a whip round the whole way round the villages of Suffolk because SpaceX are IPOing tomorrow. So he's got he's got the whole church collection plate, everything. It's all gone in. He's pro Elon. He's going to get the first rocket out of Suffolk when this whole thing blows over.
Richard Prideaux: He's actually in West Sussex, which is one of those sort of counties I don't think really exists, or at least it doesn't exist as a workplace, because I've never been to West Sussex and seen anyone at work ever. I don't think anyone does.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I was in.
Richard Prideaux: That's a whole county alienated for the first third of the episode.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah. What about the French? They've had it too good for too long.
Richard Prideaux: Well, the French is too easy.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, fair.
Richard Prideaux: They just watch what they do and make comments on it.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: And take long breaks when they're meant to be in air traffic control. Really long breaks.
Richard Prideaux: A quarter of our country's economy into this one line of forts and defences. Oh \*\*\*\* the Germans have gone round it. Oh, what do we do? What do we do now?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Fair, fair.
Richard Prideaux: Niche reference. Anyway, back in the room, what have you been up to, Mr Callum?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I've done a lot of fishing. Like, My almost my yearly quota of fishing has been filled up in the past seven days.
Richard Prideaux: You should buy a broad license really, shouldn't you?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Well, I got two. You have to get, so you have to get two now. Yeah. So if you want to fish free rods, you have to get two rod licenses. Outrageous. Well, it's not outrageous. I mean, it should be like, if you want one rod, you should have one rod license and then you should have three if you want three rod licenses. not giving the EA any ideas, but the purr rod should be the thing. And then you've got to get another one for your salmon and game. But yeah, I've been fly fishing. So May, June time is just a solid time to start fly fishing really. You've got lots of flies hatching and also carp like to go on the surface. So you can catch carp on the fly. So I went to the River Test and I fished on the River Test, which is probably one of the best rivers maybe in the world.
Richard Prideaux: Which bit? Was it the upper test or the there's a middle and a lower, isn't there?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: The lower test. And I've never fished the lower before.
Richard Prideaux: Is that below Fording Bridge? Is that the one? Is that that town that's on like 1 long street, which is all cafes and fishing shops?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yes, it is below that one. Yeah, it's definitely below that one. Yeah, what's that called? Stockbridge. So below there, the lower test and the interesting thing about the lower test is a lot of the fish migrate out to sea, spend a long time out in sea and then come back into the river. So I call, they don't stock rainbow trout, but I caught this rainbow trout that was insanely long. And it was only sort of like 5 1/2 pounds. But it was, I don't know.
Richard Prideaux: That's an eel, surely?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, I know. Basically it was an eel. If you'd have caught it in a commercial fishery, it could have gone more like 15, 20 pounds, because it would have just been absolutely enormous. The length of it was insane. And in fast flowing water on a five or a six weight, I can't remember what mine is. it went pretty well. And even the trout catching, sort of had a three, 3 1/2 pound brownie and caught that on a mayfly. And they call them slob trout because they head down to the sea or brackish water, eat lots of shrimp. They kind of just look, they become like a strange shape. They're not like, they're not like little wild brownies. They're just a strange shape one. And yeah, but I managed to catch him on the Mayfly fly, one on a nymph and one on like this big fly thing that I just found in the box.
Richard Prideaux: So are you changing up your flies as the day gets on, sort of match what would be hatching in the evening? Because is it Cadis in the evening to attempt to hatch?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So I'm not. I'm not the pro at this, but basically something.
Richard Prideaux: You used to write for magazines and things.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: But not about fly fishing. It's all about carp fishing, which is like, you know, peasant stuff.
Richard Prideaux: Stella and a bivvy.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, Stella bivvy, put the TV on. Yeah, basically that's it.
Richard Prideaux: Pot noodle.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Pot noodle or one of those toasty makers. That was it. Yeah. Cheese and ham. Any microwave moodle straight in the pot. So They start as little wormy little bug things and then they emerge and they come up in the water and then they break out. So the mayfly is obviously the big one and they emerge. So you fish nymphs for those when they're not actually hatched. There's certain changes in the water conditions, fresh water, water temperature, but the mayfly spends 364 days in its sort of little wormy stage, then is a cadis and then it eventually turns into a mayfly and it lasts one day and then it goes. So I was fishing. And it just all of a sudden, right towards the end of the day, the sun just dropped and come out and then it just turned on and there was all these mayflies starting to come down and you could just see them dipping up and down in the low sun. And they suddenly, it just switched on. It's so bizarre to be there and you might have spent an hour at the river and there's nothing rising. And then in 10 minutes, feel a bit of warm sun on your neck and then you just start seeing all this fly life come alive in the space of 10 minutes. So I saw one rise on the corner, quickly turned, changed the fly into a mayfly platen, put it right over the top and sure enough I had a three pound brown trout, which is pretty cool. It's just, yeah, fly fishing is such an interesting art form. I'm far from mastering it. And this river as well is mad because the water is so unbelievably fast and you put a fly across the river and within some of it, it's like within seconds it's drifted the whole way down and it's next to you and you're not allowed to fish downstream. You have to fish upstream and you've got to try and present these flies and keep them on the surface. But not let your line swing everything round. Because if your line swings everything round in the water, it's like dragging the fly across the surface. So you've got to try and present it across and let it stay so it's not being dragged and doesn't look unnatural. Try and make it look as good as possible. And a person that's very, very green at fly fishing, I get the concept, I get the idea. I've got a lot of experience in fishing, but actually doing this stuff I don't have any experience in. So it's really, it's a tricky old business. But I caught three on the test in an evening and then I caught two on the nadder as well, doing pretty similar tactics. Mayfly, waiting for a hatch and then I got annoyed with a mayfly because they've got these great big wings and they sort of spin around and they do all this. They just got well annoying. So I ended up fishing just a tiny little white fly that I like the look of because it just couldn't be bothered to keep trying to float this fly that kept sinking and being annoying. So whatever. People were like, oh, what did you catch that on? And I'm like, they've got all these names for flies. Bully \*\*\*\*\*\* Dusty Miller, you name it. There's just something, and I have no idea. I think I know about four different flies and then my knowledge is gone. Someone will write something, oh, why didn't you try a, why don't you try a blue caddis nymph? And you're like, no idea. Drop me out. I don't know what you're talking about. I'll have to Google that. Thank you. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: Person who wasn't there looking in with a situation where they had no sort of effect on the outcome of it whatsoever definitely has the right answer for you though in terms of what you should have done instead.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Oh, always. Always. Oh, they take this one here. I don't think it's that. I honestly don't think it's that big a deal. Like, I get you want to match what they're eating. But really, if it's white one, a black one, a big one, a small one, I mean, you can pretty much.
Richard Prideaux: And the biggest thing is that the fish have to be there in the 1st place.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: That is true.
Richard Prideaux: Because all my fishing now is on my coast, pretty much either on the boat or off rocks and off marks on the land. And state of tide makes a much bigger difference than the gear you're using. Or just are they feeding or are they just mooching around being lazy? Because that two different events would happen in the same spot.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So I did actually go bass fishing as well. The sea bass, everyone hates the word sea bass, but you've got to qualify it as sea bass.
Richard Prideaux: No, it's a bass. It's a bass in the sea.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Where's it going? I'm going to call it bass in the sea from now on.
Richard Prideaux: We didn't call it Hampshire trout, did you?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I might have done. No, you call them, you just call them trout, I suppose. But if you say bass, everyone thinks you're, everyone just thinks of like an American largemouth bass, don't they?
Richard Prideaux: Oh, the one, the Billy Big Mouth one, the toilet on the wall.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Oh, I used to love that. I did that the other day as well. And then someone told me that you should fish for them like you fish for perch. So instead of doing what I usually do, which is like skip lures really high in the water, I fished a thing called a Z man chatter bait, which is like what the Americans use.
Richard Prideaux: Hang on, chatter bait.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: Don't Google that.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: No, you're thinking of something different.
Richard Prideaux: Chatter space bait.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: No, I think it's all one word.
Richard Prideaux: Brilliant. The transcript for this is going to be great on the website now. Fantastic.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So chatter bait.
Richard Prideaux: There's a few 100 people trying to Google that and finding out you need a VPN in order to see it.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I remember that back in the day. It was a great website. Before they, to be fair, my web cloud quality on here doesn't look that far off. This could be, this could be one of those chats.
Richard Prideaux: I know somebody who worked through their history masters whilst they were doing webcam stuff as a mail and they paid for some of their living costs on it.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Well, can we do that while podcasting?
Richard Prideaux: It's what we do every week anyway. I don't know about you. Anyway, where are we fishing? Bass.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So yeah, I fish for those like I fish for perch. So I let it sink to the bottom and I was just dragging it along the bottom. And then all of a sudden you just saw fish picking it up and moving it, but they clearly weren't big enough. They must have been schoolies just taking the lure and playing with it. And then I just left it, let them do what they want to do with it. I kept jigging it and putting a bit of motion into it. And I could see fish were going for it, but they obviously weren't big enough. And then all of a sudden I get a big pull on the rod and that was it. I had my first keeper. So yeah, I've done a lot of fish cooking in the past week.
Richard Prideaux: They're quite meaty when you get them in as well, aren't they, Bass? Particularly, you needed quite a bit of space to deal with them.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah. Oh yeah, they're hard work getting it in and then having to dispatch while in the kayak.
Richard Prideaux: Having measured it carefully, of course.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Well, What's the legal limit? 45 centimetres, right?
Richard Prideaux: 40, it's 42 up here. I know that.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, okay, 42. Which coincidentally happens to be elbow to finger. So if I got a, I'm 40, I've got a 45 centimetre elbow to finger. So you do not really need to measure such things. If you've ever curious, just measure your forearm to your top of your finger and you'll probably find that you might have a good guide of whether you can get a keeper or not.
Richard Prideaux: Well, it depends on how tall you are, because your arm length is proportional to your height.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I know, but also people can have little tiny stump arms, can't they as well? I mean, not just like, I didn't, that wasn't like a. a particular drug that was available in years ago.
Richard Prideaux: If you're ever at a party with other able-bodied people and you're short of something to do, get everyone to work out their ape index. So you lie on the floor, arms sort of stretched out, like Jesus on the cross, and measure fingertip to fingertip, and then measure that person's height. And it should be within a few centimetres, but some people have a longer arm span than their height. Some people have a shorter arm span than their height. So it's whether you've got a positive or negative ape index. So some people have sort of orangutan arms, they've got long arms and a short body.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think I've probably got quite long arms compared to my body.
Richard Prideaux: You are like sometimes a giant squid, aren't you?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I know one guy who's like Mr. Tickle. His arms are so unbelievably long. Every time I see him, I just think, what happened to you?
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, well, you're trying to hold onto 2 trains at the same time.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: He's a funny guy.
Richard Prideaux: Anyway, I've got a request for help. Yeah, just kick me off this show. No, I've got a request for help amongst our listeners. I am in need of a farm or a farm type place somewhere in South Shropshire, Herefordshire, Warwickshire, top end of Gloucestershire, bottom corner or top end of Oxfordshire, somewhere in that sort of Midlands zone. I need someone with a farm or something similar where I can take some chefs, not sort of posh high end go out with Callum to do stuff type chefs. These are chefs who are, it's their first hospitality venue that they're working in. This work we're doing with the restaurant, I'm trying not to say the name because it's a fairly big chain up here, but they're all sort of independently owned.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Harvester.
Richard Prideaux: It's not harvester.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Beefeater.
Richard Prideaux: We already trained them up here doing some wild food things and outdoor cooking and that kind of thing. And they have a request to do something for their cluster of restaurants that's kind of in the West Midlands or the southern part of the Midlands. So I think sort of Milton Keynes is the furthest S they go. But I need somewhere where I've got a farm bit where they can go and sort of do a farm tour and a walk, see where some of that food is coming from. And then we have a bit of a cooking session at the end. So get in touch with me via the podcast or my social media. It's all in the show notes and the links below. If you have somewhere that can help or you know someone that can help, there's some money in it as well as a fee. but I just need it for a couple of days in the summer, really, between now and the end of October. So please get in touch with me because I might have promised something I haven't actually got a venue for. So please help. Yeah, there's nothing like desperation, you know, to really get a good price negotiated, is there?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, I think so. That's the key to leverage.
Richard Prideaux: Get really desperate and then hope people will give you a good deal. Yeah. But no, I can do with some help and it's for a good cause. So please get in touch.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So, Mr. Prido, what have you been up to?
Richard Prideaux: I can mostly walk without a crutch. This is sort of like cripple update every week, isn't it? Just watching me heal a little bit more every time. So I can walk without a crutch now, although I sort of walk handy-legged because my left leg keeps forgetting it's meant to be a leg. That sort of goes like a wet spaghetti piece every now and again. Nice. It's fun.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: You did describe it as a crutchless walk the other day, which I found, I've heard of things being crutchless, but never a walk.
Richard Prideaux: No. The great thing about this is because any kind of movement at all is really sort of expensive in calories and effort. So I'm getting quite ripped at the moment comparatively because even just walking to the end of the lane is like doing a marathon.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So I need some of that. I need some of that ripping.
Richard Prideaux: So I'll be fat again by the game fair. What else? Oh, I am in possession of one of the new DJI thermal drones. So It's been sent out to me sort of some evaluation and testing and I've got to demonstrate it to a few people. But the technology is a bit scary now. So we've talked about drones before and most people listening will have seen, you know, you can get 4K footage, really good TV quality footage from a drone you can pick up from Argos or Amazon. Well, this new one is DGI. So same company do basically all the drones now. They This is their thermal imaging one, but it's a smaller package. It's not the huge one that's like the size of a small bed. This is about 1 foot by 1 foot, just under 2 kilos.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: What do you need? Do you need to be qualified to fly that?
Richard Prideaux: For some places. So it's all, you need to register in the UK with a CAA and get your operator ID. But how close to people, how close to roads and built up areas and things like that, you can fly them legally is dependent on the weight of the drone. And so if you have a qualification, then you can fly closer to people. But there is a sort of a category out in the middle of nowhere where you can fly. And I know a lot of people have had these on demo for doing deer counts and deer surveys and sort of seeing, could they be useful for assessing how many deer are in a wood block or something like that. So not a lot of the keepers and the deer stalkers listening will have seen these things, but I just want to talk about it more broadly because the technology is a little bit unnerving. So you put the drone up and you set it to the right mode. It will look at the scene and then tell you, okay, there are this many vehicles in shot, there are this many people in shot, It'll put a little green arrow on every vehicle and every person and track them around. It'll also tell the difference between a vehicle and a boat or something like that. So it'll tell you stuff out on open water. You can set it to track and follow around any one of those things. It will tell you the temperature of things from several 100 metres away. So it can read the temperature of your skin within a few degrees from a few 100 metres away. You can also set it to do mapping and do waypoints and just set it to fly on a grid until the battery dies and then return back to base. And it'll do that in most weathers. It's pretty scary compared, you know, if you go and watch Terminator 2 or something like that and you've got the opening scene where you've got the robots going across the battleground and fighting against the humans. We're at the starting point of that now. with the technology and the drones. So, I would say just aim for the power pack.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I don't plan on invading anywhere. So for me...
Richard Prideaux: What if they know that the robots are coming to you? That's the thing.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, but I'm ever since like 1999, I've been listening to Daft Punk and now my best friend's a French robot AI. So I've been nice to them. So they're not coming for me. I'm one of them. until obviously the final resistance.
Richard Prideaux: They are.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Doomed.
Richard Prideaux: They are coming for farmers and people working on the land. So there are forestry drones that are starting to make the news now, which have basically a chainsaw dangling off underneath. And they'll cut and process a tree.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Did you see the news where they gave an AI the ability to grow a tomato and it successfully it successfully did the whole robotic side of it and grew food.
Richard Prideaux: Well how would it get access to a tomato?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I know they gave it access to all these things and it successfully grew food.
Richard Prideaux: See that's less impressive if you just told an AI to grow a tomato and it recruited humans to go and buy things for it to plant out that would be more impressive.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: They also gave They gave an AI like a fully autonomous situation where it could do whatever it wanted. And in the back end, it repurposed its GPU to mine crypto without telling anybody.
Richard Prideaux: AI and crypto, this is our audience's favourite things. They love it when they're listening to the Country podcast.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Well, it just proves, it just proves that, you know, AI does exactly what it wants. So It's not to be trusted.
Richard Prideaux: The AI bubble is sort of, I reckon, bursting by Christmas at this point.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, I do wonder what's going to happen.
Richard Prideaux: Well, the bit of relevance to the rural stuff is now there's a sudden huge demand for data centres. The Americans are ahead of us in this, but All this information processing needs a data centre, which is effectively a very large computer in a shed. You need space for that, you need water requirements, you have power requirements for these huge things. And the cropping up all over the UK, there's a huge amount about to go into the central belt in Scotland. It does seem like a lot of corporations now they've realised they need data centres, have sort of quietly pushed all this climate change thing to one side, and we're going for the building the data centre thing instead. The priority seems to have changed now.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think that a lot of farms will actually turn into data centres in not that long. Although...
Richard Prideaux: What are we going to eat?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Only Germany are pot noodles and we'll just import them.
Richard Prideaux: Of course.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Or ramen noodles. We'll get them direct from China. China, all right. Koreans, they're all right. We'll just get that. We'll just see that.
Richard Prideaux: We'll never be at war with China.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Nah, no, it'll be fine. Just trust, just trust them completely and have zero food security. That seems to be the government thing. Yep, we did politics. Wish we'd done politics.
Richard Prideaux: Politics, crypto and AI. Yeah, they're all the three things that every week we get feedback, people saying how much they love us talking about crypto and AI and politics.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I don't think we haven't done crypto in a while.
Richard Prideaux: No, that's why the reviews have been getting better.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Oh, well, we're back. We're back. We're so back, baby.
Richard Prideaux: Talking of back, have you seen any of the new season of Clarkson's Farm?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Oh, I didn't even know it was on.
Richard Prideaux: Brilliant, this is a great segment.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: You know the best thing about Clarkson's Farm is something I can actually watch when you have children present. There's not many things that grown-ups can watch that don't have mature content in it. I'd say Clarkson's Farm is the closest thing that's actually enjoyable for an adult that is family viewing.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, that's an interesting observation.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I like that. I will watch it. Do you want to spoil some for me?
Richard Prideaux: No, we'll do it. We'll do it when everyone's back together because next week Richard Negus is coming to Wales and if he survives the... Well, I think he's actually staying in the local Wetherspoons.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: He's not.
Richard Prideaux: So he is. I've given him links to the hotel and I haven't told him where it is. So I think he's staying in the hotel in Rithin, which is the Wetherspoons. So we'll see if he survives that. Have you been to a Wetherspoons with him yet?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I took him to McDonald's.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, he asked for cutlery.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, took him to a drive-through and it was a bizarre experience. I think he's, although he's quite distant from the everyday man and quite sheltered in Suffolk, I think he'd handle himself just fine in a Wetherspoons.
Richard Prideaux: We've talked about this before, but Wetherspoons, there's always two types. There's flat roof pub or the best pub in town. So it goes either way.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah. Like, I couldn't believe when I went to the House of Lords that it was the same as a Wetherspoons, but without sticky carpet. You know, it had the same, exactly the same decor as most Wetherspoons I've ever been in. Like, Pretend grand old paintings. actually, they are actually grand old paintings. But the our local Wetherspoons recently got shut down for a zero star food hygiene rating.
Richard Prideaux: Zero is good.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So often zeros come from. So environmental health are not kind to people. And sometimes they give you a zero for like having an oven that's not too close to a fridge. So you would think, zero, but this pub got a zero for being absolutely filthy and probably riddled with rats.
Richard Prideaux: See, Wetherspoons, it sort of holds its fascination for me. It was the first pub in a town where I lived, so I moved to a town. the first pub we used to regularly go to and meet people in, but that was about 2001. And it was the burger and a pint nights. Was it Fridays or Thursdays? We used to do that. Yeah. And it's just part of this gradual initiatification of everything where we had things quite good in the early 2000s and we didn't really know it. And it just gradually, everything's gradually got worse ever since.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I haven't been to a Wetherspoons to meet up with people for probably 15 years plus. And it was a place, like the burger and a pint was great, curry night or something, that was like a Wednesday or something. That was half decent as well. I do wonder, now it just seems, if you're going to Wetherspoon Stout, it just seems to be sort of desperate men that have been in there since 9:00 getting a pint. just care that the beer is like 50p cheaper than anywhere else and bloody Sharon, she took the kids. That sort of, yeah. Boxing Day is not Christmas, is it?
Richard Prideaux: There's a lot of market town Wetherspoons. They have sort of a ratio of how many they're allowed in an area, I think. So they don't outcompete each other, but you get a lot of market town Wetherspoons. But you don't get any properly rural Wetherspoons. I don't know of any that have taken over a village pub or something. They're always in a town.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think they probably just want the footfall. They want the... It's a numbers game. Must be for them.
Richard Prideaux: You don't drive to a Wetherspoons, do you?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Nah, nah. Get the bus.
Richard Prideaux: Rural pubs though still... I don't know what they're like around there, but here it's you're a restaurant or you die. It's the markup.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I mean, can you make markup just solely on booze? Probably not. I mean, some can if you were seasonal, but it's really hard. I am. I was talking with Artem who owns the Warwick in Pimlico and just. The cost, the rising costs of staff costs, the national insurance, the rise in business rates, it makes it really difficult. Thankfully, he's bucked the trend because he's just busier than ever because the food's really good. But generally, it's really hard for businesses out there.
Richard Prideaux: Well, there's this campaign at the moment, isn't there, for producing the VAT for hospitality.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, that's an interesting one.
Richard Prideaux: Taking it from 20% to 10%, because for non-UK listeners, yes, that really is 20% here.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, most people don't pay anywhere close to that, do they?
Richard Prideaux: No.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think it's certain things you've got to realise that a pub as well does a lot of social good. There's, I mean, sure, there's some bad stuff around a pub, but like generally a place where people can meet community in a day and age where we're talking about AI and stuff like that, in a day and age we're letting American tech companies just absolutely dominate our entire lives. We should probably be supporting, punishing them and supporting local businesses and places that stitch back the fabric of community rather than all sit there looking at our phones all day and just doing nonsensical stuff that we all seem to have been suckered into. So yeah, I'm pro supporting pubs.
Richard Prideaux: We're probably the last generation that will have a fondness for pubs on mass because it seems like the next generation, sort of Gen Z, they didn't have the same experience growing up. And so COVID really finished that off and the lack of hospitality in that period. So every survey and every sort of analysis of what Gen Z do does not veer towards drinking. But then you go around London on a Thursday night and watch all those apprentices and interns and everything just falling out of the pubs and just spewing onto the pavement in the city. They obviously are in some places, but not everywhere.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think. It's not as bad as it's made out, but then there are quite a lot of people that have taken their phones and being antisocial as a lifestyle choice. There's an awful lot of those, but it's not everyone. And seeing the young farmers and things like that, that's brilliant to see those guys actually out there doing it, living the dream, enjoying themselves. And just, I think it's a really important... I kind of got a theory that we've spent a lot of time trying to... Oh my God.
Richard Prideaux: What have you done?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I know exactly what's about to happen. The missus is trying to use my card to approve the Tesco shop.
Richard Prideaux: You're going to shout the code.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I have approved the delivery.
Richard Prideaux: This is the domestic segment of the podcast.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Return to the app. I have approved the payment. Thank you.
Richard Prideaux: It's like Callum's the AI for his wife.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah. I know I'm finance. Unfortunately.
Richard Prideaux: You're a chat bot.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I find myself in the position of I had to approve the payment on my on my app because my Tesco shop is so bloody expensive. Where were we? I got a theory, right? That.
Richard Prideaux: Other supermarkets are available, but not in your area.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: We have spent an awful long time sheltering everybody from doing bad things and unhealthy things. But I think that the only way that you work stuff out is by making the mistakes in the 1st place. Like I learned that I can't drink 15 pints. by drinking 15 pints and then that made me really sick. And I know I can't do that. So I'll stop at a much lower, these days it's like 2 pints and I need to go to bed or I need my mum. But I think that the more we shelter from the things that are bad for us, so the more information that we're like, oh, we should be doing this and we should be doing that and the pressure to conform to be progressive and perfect and healthy, the less of the bad stuff, So I think what we really need to do is make Britain \*\*\*\* again. make people go out and drink more than they should. Make people eat too much greasy food and just do Have awkward interactions with people until eventually you don't, you're not as awkward as you were or you just become, what do they call Richard, an extrovert? Or you just eventually, you know, awkward interactions, you're getting paid for them and you're talking in front of the Women's Institute.
Richard Prideaux: Fine tuning these awkward interactions down to a monetisable level.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Exactly. I think we need to make Britain \*\*\*\* again.
Richard Prideaux: So this is the actual an argument for intuitification, which is push people out to the limits of what they can survive so that they can pull back a bit and find their sort of sweet spot.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, but I don't think we've done, like we've ruined pubs. We've ruined engagement with young people. It's really hard to, I was in a place the other day and I overheard the girl saying that she was scared of drunk people.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, that is a thing of a fear of interactions with other people, anxiety about interactions, yeah.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: And she said that because they were because they were unpredictable, which I get it, but they're not really unpredictable, are they? like, they talk loudly, they fall over things like having a newborn, they puke. Just, it's not. They're not unpredictable. And it's just sad that we've lost, we've lost a lot of things in the past 20 years and we're doing a lot of things different. So I think the in shitification, yeah, everything's \*\*\*\*. Is everything \*\*\*\*? I don't think it is, but I think we can do more to make, to make, make mistakes by yourself and then learn from them.
Richard Prideaux: And we all feel, you've just made everyone feel old as well. talking about their youth and how far behind it was. So I'm going to finish it off for the main show with this little just thing to put people at ease and make them feel warm and fuzzy about the direction their life has gone. You know the film Back to the Future.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I do.
Richard Prideaux: The first film was 1985 and he travels back for 30 years and time to 1955. So if you were making that today, Martin McFly would travel back to 1996.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Spice Girls was number one. Oh wow. I'm pretty sure Toy Story was the film of the year. 1996\. Wow.
Richard Prideaux: So there you go. Everyone feels old now. Right, on to the after show, which is for patrons only. But for everyone else, we'll see you again next week, which will feature a live recording in the field with Richard Negus and I, but probably not Callum, because he'll still be paying for his Tesco shop.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I can't get got around me keep somehow.
Richard Prideaux: Bye.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Bye.
Richard Prideaux: when you sponsor an African child or a donkey or something and they send you sort of photos of, updates of how that child's going.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I don't, but I'm familiar with the concept.
Richard Prideaux: So with, my tax and how it's being spent at the moment, I'd like for at least people to send me an update of, you know, how my tax has been spent. Your tax has purchased five of the lanyards required for this government office. Or you have purchased One half of 1 screw for an aircraft carrier.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Look, just come to Harlow on a Wednesday at like 1.30 and I'll show you exactly where it's going. Vapes mostly. Super strength lager seems to be quite popular. I think ciders, super strength ciders down.
Richard Prideaux: Is Kestrel still going?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: What was the, what was that one? Is it Frosty Jacks?
Richard Prideaux: Frosty Jacks, yeah.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: That was a classic. What a classic.
Richard Prideaux: Did Buckfast ever make it to Essex?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: No, it doesn't really, it doesn't travel well. That's the trouble. You know, it's like some of the beers you get that, you know, they only taste good in the country of origin. They don't travel well. And that's like Buckfast. It's great there, but Doesn't travel well. And the connoisseurs that drink it, they know that too.
Richard Prideaux: Someone is screaming at their radio now, but Buckfast actually comes all the way from Devon to Glasgow.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: That's it.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, it's made by monks in Devon.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Is it really? What are they doing?
Richard Prideaux: Doing something strange to Glasgow, I think.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: You know, I don't think I've ever had Buckfast.
Richard Prideaux: You're missing out, really are.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I got given, what's it called, Magnum? Have you had those?
Richard Prideaux: I'm familiar with the ice cream.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: No, It's popular with the African community. It's like a tonic wine.
Richard Prideaux: Is this your other family that we talked about?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, Magnum Tonic. So it is technically a product of Jamaica. I felt like I'd almost been initiated. my brethren turned to me and cracked open a magnum and passed it to me and I was like, yeah, say less, fam. I was one of them.
Richard Prideaux: We don't really get that experience up here. We get Wrexham Lager. Wrexham Lager's made a comeback, which is, it's had a mixed reception, let's say, because some people are like glad to see it go.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: You travel about a bit. Is there is there any. Any local brew that you have that you think, oh, I'd love if this was back home?
Richard Prideaux: No, because I can't remember the brand of any sort of small stubby lager or anything I've had overseas because I'm genuinely sort of Quite glad to see that it arrived in a sealed bottle, which means there's a very good chance it hasn't been tampered with or just refilled at the back of the restaurant before it came to you.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: That's, you know, that's just marred relief. And is it, is it got sweat of ice coming down the side of it? Yeah, that'll be fine.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So I tried to get one once that was, what was it called? It had a witch on it. Quinn. Quintin. Quinine. Quintin beer. I don't know.
Richard Prideaux: Quinine beer. Good for malaria then.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yes, it's Quintin. QUINTINE Quintin Amble. It's a Belgian beer. It's got a witch with a broom on it and it's really good in Belgium. And if you get it in a bottle and take it home, it doesn't taste anywhere near as good. And I don't know why, but it just doesn't. But it's so nice when you're out there. It's so nice on draught. It's yeah, it's really good. And there's a few local ones, UK ones that are bangers.
Richard Prideaux: There is a whole art to picking a beer based on what the picture on the label is. You know, it says about 6% and it's got a picture I quite like. I'll go for that please.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: They don't do pictures you like now. It all looks like tattoo artists. Years ago it used to be like goblins and mushrooms and \*\*\*\* that you think, oh, I'm not sure I should even touch that. Actually, the artwork of BB. So BB, the writer, used to write about field sports and whatnot. His artwork is that kind of weird psychedelic kind of trolls and little toadstools and all this kind of like folklore-y stuff. You think, where am I going to end up? What ditch will I end up if I do? If I drink 5 years, you feel?
Richard Prideaux: A bit peculiar, sort of you're not quite sure what's going to happen next. It's sort of comforting but horrifying at the same time.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I like that. It was a very 80s, 80s, 90s thing, wasn't it?
Richard Prideaux: There's a sort of, there's a very interesting aesthetic for an 1980s British Christmas, which is either decorations from the 70s that are still hanging around for a long time, or some weird sort of muted colour stuff of the 80s.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Can we talk about the smell? They all had that smell. I mean, if you're sitting at home, you don't have to have synesthesia to just remember what the Christmas box of the 90s smelt like. just that tinsel smell. exactly what I'm talking about too.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, I do actually.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: The tinsel plastic smell that you just go, that's Christmas.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah. So as eagle-eared listeners may have noticed, we are down to just two of us for this week because Richard Negus is.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: He's gone, he's gone out a whip round the whole way round the villages of Suffolk because SpaceX are IPOing tomorrow. So he's got he's got the whole church collection plate, everything. It's all gone in. He's pro Elon. He's going to get the first rocket out of Suffolk when this whole thing blows over.
Richard Prideaux: He's actually in West Sussex, which is one of those sort of counties I don't think really exists, or at least it doesn't exist as a workplace, because I've never been to West Sussex and seen anyone at work ever. I don't think anyone does.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I was in.
Richard Prideaux: That's a whole county alienated for the first third of the episode.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah. What about the French? They've had it too good for too long.
Richard Prideaux: Well, the French is too easy.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, fair.
Richard Prideaux: They just watch what they do and make comments on it.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: And take long breaks when they're meant to be in air traffic control. Really long breaks.
Richard Prideaux: A quarter of our country's economy into this one line of forts and defences. Oh \*\*\*\* the Germans have gone round it. Oh, what do we do? What do we do now?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Fair, fair.
Richard Prideaux: Niche reference. Anyway, back in the room, what have you been up to, Mr Callum?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I've done a lot of fishing. Like, My almost my yearly quota of fishing has been filled up in the past seven days.
Richard Prideaux: You should buy a broad license really, shouldn't you?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Well, I got two. You have to get, so you have to get two now. Yeah. So if you want to fish free rods, you have to get two rod licenses. Outrageous. Well, it's not outrageous. I mean, it should be like, if you want one rod, you should have one rod license and then you should have three if you want three rod licenses. not giving the EA any ideas, but the purr rod should be the thing. And then you've got to get another one for your salmon and game. But yeah, I've been fly fishing. So May, June time is just a solid time to start fly fishing really. You've got lots of flies hatching and also carp like to go on the surface. So you can catch carp on the fly. So I went to the River Test and I fished on the River Test, which is probably one of the best rivers maybe in the world.
Richard Prideaux: Which bit? Was it the upper test or the there's a middle and a lower, isn't there?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: The lower test. And I've never fished the lower before.
Richard Prideaux: Is that below Fording Bridge? Is that the one? Is that that town that's on like 1 long street, which is all cafes and fishing shops?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yes, it is below that one. Yeah, it's definitely below that one. Yeah, what's that called? Stockbridge. So below there, the lower test and the interesting thing about the lower test is a lot of the fish migrate out to sea, spend a long time out in sea and then come back into the river. So I call, they don't stock rainbow trout, but I caught this rainbow trout that was insanely long. And it was only sort of like 5 1/2 pounds. But it was, I don't know.
Richard Prideaux: That's an eel, surely?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, I know. Basically it was an eel. If you'd have caught it in a commercial fishery, it could have gone more like 15, 20 pounds, because it would have just been absolutely enormous. The length of it was insane. And in fast flowing water on a five or a six weight, I can't remember what mine is. it went pretty well. And even the trout catching, sort of had a three, 3 1/2 pound brownie and caught that on a mayfly. And they call them slob trout because they head down to the sea or brackish water, eat lots of shrimp. They kind of just look, they become like a strange shape. They're not like, they're not like little wild brownies. They're just a strange shape one. And yeah, but I managed to catch him on the Mayfly fly, one on a nymph and one on like this big fly thing that I just found in the box.
Richard Prideaux: So are you changing up your flies as the day gets on, sort of match what would be hatching in the evening? Because is it Cadis in the evening to attempt to hatch?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So I'm not. I'm not the pro at this, but basically something.
Richard Prideaux: You used to write for magazines and things.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: But not about fly fishing. It's all about carp fishing, which is like, you know, peasant stuff.
Richard Prideaux: Stella and a bivvy.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, Stella bivvy, put the TV on. Yeah, basically that's it.
Richard Prideaux: Pot noodle.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Pot noodle or one of those toasty makers. That was it. Yeah. Cheese and ham. Any microwave moodle straight in the pot. So They start as little wormy little bug things and then they emerge and they come up in the water and then they break out. So the mayfly is obviously the big one and they emerge. So you fish nymphs for those when they're not actually hatched. There's certain changes in the water conditions, fresh water, water temperature, but the mayfly spends 364 days in its sort of little wormy stage, then is a cadis and then it eventually turns into a mayfly and it lasts one day and then it goes. So I was fishing. And it just all of a sudden, right towards the end of the day, the sun just dropped and come out and then it just turned on and there was all these mayflies starting to come down and you could just see them dipping up and down in the low sun. And they suddenly, it just switched on. It's so bizarre to be there and you might have spent an hour at the river and there's nothing rising. And then in 10 minutes, feel a bit of warm sun on your neck and then you just start seeing all this fly life come alive in the space of 10 minutes. So I saw one rise on the corner, quickly turned, changed the fly into a mayfly platen, put it right over the top and sure enough I had a three pound brown trout, which is pretty cool. It's just, yeah, fly fishing is such an interesting art form. I'm far from mastering it. And this river as well is mad because the water is so unbelievably fast and you put a fly across the river and within some of it, it's like within seconds it's drifted the whole way down and it's next to you and you're not allowed to fish downstream. You have to fish upstream and you've got to try and present these flies and keep them on the surface. But not let your line swing everything round. Because if your line swings everything round in the water, it's like dragging the fly across the surface. So you've got to try and present it across and let it stay so it's not being dragged and doesn't look unnatural. Try and make it look as good as possible. And a person that's very, very green at fly fishing, I get the concept, I get the idea. I've got a lot of experience in fishing, but actually doing this stuff I don't have any experience in. So it's really, it's a tricky old business. But I caught three on the test in an evening and then I caught two on the nadder as well, doing pretty similar tactics. Mayfly, waiting for a hatch and then I got annoyed with a mayfly because they've got these great big wings and they sort of spin around and they do all this. They just got well annoying. So I ended up fishing just a tiny little white fly that I like the look of because it just couldn't be bothered to keep trying to float this fly that kept sinking and being annoying. So whatever. People were like, oh, what did you catch that on? And I'm like, they've got all these names for flies. Bully \*\*\*\*\*\* Dusty Miller, you name it. There's just something, and I have no idea. I think I know about four different flies and then my knowledge is gone. Someone will write something, oh, why didn't you try a, why don't you try a blue caddis nymph? And you're like, no idea. Drop me out. I don't know what you're talking about. I'll have to Google that. Thank you. Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: Person who wasn't there looking in with a situation where they had no sort of effect on the outcome of it whatsoever definitely has the right answer for you though in terms of what you should have done instead.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Oh, always. Always. Oh, they take this one here. I don't think it's that. I honestly don't think it's that big a deal. Like, I get you want to match what they're eating. But really, if it's white one, a black one, a big one, a small one, I mean, you can pretty much.
Richard Prideaux: And the biggest thing is that the fish have to be there in the 1st place.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: That is true.
Richard Prideaux: Because all my fishing now is on my coast, pretty much either on the boat or off rocks and off marks on the land. And state of tide makes a much bigger difference than the gear you're using. Or just are they feeding or are they just mooching around being lazy? Because that two different events would happen in the same spot.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So I did actually go bass fishing as well. The sea bass, everyone hates the word sea bass, but you've got to qualify it as sea bass.
Richard Prideaux: No, it's a bass. It's a bass in the sea.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Where's it going? I'm going to call it bass in the sea from now on.
Richard Prideaux: We didn't call it Hampshire trout, did you?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I might have done. No, you call them, you just call them trout, I suppose. But if you say bass, everyone thinks you're, everyone just thinks of like an American largemouth bass, don't they?
Richard Prideaux: Oh, the one, the Billy Big Mouth one, the toilet on the wall.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Oh, I used to love that. I did that the other day as well. And then someone told me that you should fish for them like you fish for perch. So instead of doing what I usually do, which is like skip lures really high in the water, I fished a thing called a Z man chatter bait, which is like what the Americans use.
Richard Prideaux: Hang on, chatter bait.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah.
Richard Prideaux: Don't Google that.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: No, you're thinking of something different.
Richard Prideaux: Chatter space bait.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: No, I think it's all one word.
Richard Prideaux: Brilliant. The transcript for this is going to be great on the website now. Fantastic.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So chatter bait.
Richard Prideaux: There's a few 100 people trying to Google that and finding out you need a VPN in order to see it.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I remember that back in the day. It was a great website. Before they, to be fair, my web cloud quality on here doesn't look that far off. This could be, this could be one of those chats.
Richard Prideaux: I know somebody who worked through their history masters whilst they were doing webcam stuff as a mail and they paid for some of their living costs on it.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Well, can we do that while podcasting?
Richard Prideaux: It's what we do every week anyway. I don't know about you. Anyway, where are we fishing? Bass.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So yeah, I fish for those like I fish for perch. So I let it sink to the bottom and I was just dragging it along the bottom. And then all of a sudden you just saw fish picking it up and moving it, but they clearly weren't big enough. They must have been schoolies just taking the lure and playing with it. And then I just left it, let them do what they want to do with it. I kept jigging it and putting a bit of motion into it. And I could see fish were going for it, but they obviously weren't big enough. And then all of a sudden I get a big pull on the rod and that was it. I had my first keeper. So yeah, I've done a lot of fish cooking in the past week.
Richard Prideaux: They're quite meaty when you get them in as well, aren't they, Bass? Particularly, you needed quite a bit of space to deal with them.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah. Oh yeah, they're hard work getting it in and then having to dispatch while in the kayak.
Richard Prideaux: Having measured it carefully, of course.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Well, What's the legal limit? 45 centimetres, right?
Richard Prideaux: 40, it's 42 up here. I know that.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, okay, 42. Which coincidentally happens to be elbow to finger. So if I got a, I'm 40, I've got a 45 centimetre elbow to finger. So you do not really need to measure such things. If you've ever curious, just measure your forearm to your top of your finger and you'll probably find that you might have a good guide of whether you can get a keeper or not.
Richard Prideaux: Well, it depends on how tall you are, because your arm length is proportional to your height.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I know, but also people can have little tiny stump arms, can't they as well? I mean, not just like, I didn't, that wasn't like a. a particular drug that was available in years ago.
Richard Prideaux: If you're ever at a party with other able-bodied people and you're short of something to do, get everyone to work out their ape index. So you lie on the floor, arms sort of stretched out, like Jesus on the cross, and measure fingertip to fingertip, and then measure that person's height. And it should be within a few centimetres, but some people have a longer arm span than their height. Some people have a shorter arm span than their height. So it's whether you've got a positive or negative ape index. So some people have sort of orangutan arms, they've got long arms and a short body.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think I've probably got quite long arms compared to my body.
Richard Prideaux: You are like sometimes a giant squid, aren't you?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I know one guy who's like Mr. Tickle. His arms are so unbelievably long. Every time I see him, I just think, what happened to you?
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, well, you're trying to hold onto 2 trains at the same time.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: He's a funny guy.
Richard Prideaux: Anyway, I've got a request for help. Yeah, just kick me off this show. No, I've got a request for help amongst our listeners. I am in need of a farm or a farm type place somewhere in South Shropshire, Herefordshire, Warwickshire, top end of Gloucestershire, bottom corner or top end of Oxfordshire, somewhere in that sort of Midlands zone. I need someone with a farm or something similar where I can take some chefs, not sort of posh high end go out with Callum to do stuff type chefs. These are chefs who are, it's their first hospitality venue that they're working in. This work we're doing with the restaurant, I'm trying not to say the name because it's a fairly big chain up here, but they're all sort of independently owned.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Harvester.
Richard Prideaux: It's not harvester.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Beefeater.
Richard Prideaux: We already trained them up here doing some wild food things and outdoor cooking and that kind of thing. And they have a request to do something for their cluster of restaurants that's kind of in the West Midlands or the southern part of the Midlands. So I think sort of Milton Keynes is the furthest S they go. But I need somewhere where I've got a farm bit where they can go and sort of do a farm tour and a walk, see where some of that food is coming from. And then we have a bit of a cooking session at the end. So get in touch with me via the podcast or my social media. It's all in the show notes and the links below. If you have somewhere that can help or you know someone that can help, there's some money in it as well as a fee. but I just need it for a couple of days in the summer, really, between now and the end of October. So please get in touch with me because I might have promised something I haven't actually got a venue for. So please help. Yeah, there's nothing like desperation, you know, to really get a good price negotiated, is there?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, I think so. That's the key to leverage.
Richard Prideaux: Get really desperate and then hope people will give you a good deal. Yeah. But no, I can do with some help and it's for a good cause. So please get in touch.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So, Mr. Prido, what have you been up to?
Richard Prideaux: I can mostly walk without a crutch. This is sort of like cripple update every week, isn't it? Just watching me heal a little bit more every time. So I can walk without a crutch now, although I sort of walk handy-legged because my left leg keeps forgetting it's meant to be a leg. That sort of goes like a wet spaghetti piece every now and again. Nice. It's fun.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: You did describe it as a crutchless walk the other day, which I found, I've heard of things being crutchless, but never a walk.
Richard Prideaux: No. The great thing about this is because any kind of movement at all is really sort of expensive in calories and effort. So I'm getting quite ripped at the moment comparatively because even just walking to the end of the lane is like doing a marathon.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So I need some of that. I need some of that ripping.
Richard Prideaux: So I'll be fat again by the game fair. What else? Oh, I am in possession of one of the new DJI thermal drones. So It's been sent out to me sort of some evaluation and testing and I've got to demonstrate it to a few people. But the technology is a bit scary now. So we've talked about drones before and most people listening will have seen, you know, you can get 4K footage, really good TV quality footage from a drone you can pick up from Argos or Amazon. Well, this new one is DGI. So same company do basically all the drones now. They This is their thermal imaging one, but it's a smaller package. It's not the huge one that's like the size of a small bed. This is about 1 foot by 1 foot, just under 2 kilos.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: What do you need? Do you need to be qualified to fly that?
Richard Prideaux: For some places. So it's all, you need to register in the UK with a CAA and get your operator ID. But how close to people, how close to roads and built up areas and things like that, you can fly them legally is dependent on the weight of the drone. And so if you have a qualification, then you can fly closer to people. But there is a sort of a category out in the middle of nowhere where you can fly. And I know a lot of people have had these on demo for doing deer counts and deer surveys and sort of seeing, could they be useful for assessing how many deer are in a wood block or something like that. So not a lot of the keepers and the deer stalkers listening will have seen these things, but I just want to talk about it more broadly because the technology is a little bit unnerving. So you put the drone up and you set it to the right mode. It will look at the scene and then tell you, okay, there are this many vehicles in shot, there are this many people in shot, It'll put a little green arrow on every vehicle and every person and track them around. It'll also tell the difference between a vehicle and a boat or something like that. So it'll tell you stuff out on open water. You can set it to track and follow around any one of those things. It will tell you the temperature of things from several 100 metres away. So it can read the temperature of your skin within a few degrees from a few 100 metres away. You can also set it to do mapping and do waypoints and just set it to fly on a grid until the battery dies and then return back to base. And it'll do that in most weathers. It's pretty scary compared, you know, if you go and watch Terminator 2 or something like that and you've got the opening scene where you've got the robots going across the battleground and fighting against the humans. We're at the starting point of that now. with the technology and the drones. So, I would say just aim for the power pack.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I don't plan on invading anywhere. So for me...
Richard Prideaux: What if they know that the robots are coming to you? That's the thing.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, but I'm ever since like 1999, I've been listening to Daft Punk and now my best friend's a French robot AI. So I've been nice to them. So they're not coming for me. I'm one of them. until obviously the final resistance.
Richard Prideaux: They are.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Doomed.
Richard Prideaux: They are coming for farmers and people working on the land. So there are forestry drones that are starting to make the news now, which have basically a chainsaw dangling off underneath. And they'll cut and process a tree.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Did you see the news where they gave an AI the ability to grow a tomato and it successfully it successfully did the whole robotic side of it and grew food.
Richard Prideaux: Well how would it get access to a tomato?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I know they gave it access to all these things and it successfully grew food.
Richard Prideaux: See that's less impressive if you just told an AI to grow a tomato and it recruited humans to go and buy things for it to plant out that would be more impressive.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: They also gave They gave an AI like a fully autonomous situation where it could do whatever it wanted. And in the back end, it repurposed its GPU to mine crypto without telling anybody.
Richard Prideaux: AI and crypto, this is our audience's favourite things. They love it when they're listening to the Country podcast.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Well, it just proves, it just proves that, you know, AI does exactly what it wants. So It's not to be trusted.
Richard Prideaux: The AI bubble is sort of, I reckon, bursting by Christmas at this point.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, I do wonder what's going to happen.
Richard Prideaux: Well, the bit of relevance to the rural stuff is now there's a sudden huge demand for data centres. The Americans are ahead of us in this, but All this information processing needs a data centre, which is effectively a very large computer in a shed. You need space for that, you need water requirements, you have power requirements for these huge things. And the cropping up all over the UK, there's a huge amount about to go into the central belt in Scotland. It does seem like a lot of corporations now they've realised they need data centres, have sort of quietly pushed all this climate change thing to one side, and we're going for the building the data centre thing instead. The priority seems to have changed now.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think that a lot of farms will actually turn into data centres in not that long. Although...
Richard Prideaux: What are we going to eat?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Only Germany are pot noodles and we'll just import them.
Richard Prideaux: Of course.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Or ramen noodles. We'll get them direct from China. China, all right. Koreans, they're all right. We'll just get that. We'll just see that.
Richard Prideaux: We'll never be at war with China.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Nah, no, it'll be fine. Just trust, just trust them completely and have zero food security. That seems to be the government thing. Yep, we did politics. Wish we'd done politics.
Richard Prideaux: Politics, crypto and AI. Yeah, they're all the three things that every week we get feedback, people saying how much they love us talking about crypto and AI and politics.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I don't think we haven't done crypto in a while.
Richard Prideaux: No, that's why the reviews have been getting better.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Oh, well, we're back. We're back. We're so back, baby.
Richard Prideaux: Talking of back, have you seen any of the new season of Clarkson's Farm?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Oh, I didn't even know it was on.
Richard Prideaux: Brilliant, this is a great segment.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: You know the best thing about Clarkson's Farm is something I can actually watch when you have children present. There's not many things that grown-ups can watch that don't have mature content in it. I'd say Clarkson's Farm is the closest thing that's actually enjoyable for an adult that is family viewing.
Richard Prideaux: Yeah, that's an interesting observation.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I like that. I will watch it. Do you want to spoil some for me?
Richard Prideaux: No, we'll do it. We'll do it when everyone's back together because next week Richard Negus is coming to Wales and if he survives the... Well, I think he's actually staying in the local Wetherspoons.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: He's not.
Richard Prideaux: So he is. I've given him links to the hotel and I haven't told him where it is. So I think he's staying in the hotel in Rithin, which is the Wetherspoons. So we'll see if he survives that. Have you been to a Wetherspoons with him yet?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I took him to McDonald's.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, he asked for cutlery.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, took him to a drive-through and it was a bizarre experience. I think he's, although he's quite distant from the everyday man and quite sheltered in Suffolk, I think he'd handle himself just fine in a Wetherspoons.
Richard Prideaux: We've talked about this before, but Wetherspoons, there's always two types. There's flat roof pub or the best pub in town. So it goes either way.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah. Like, I couldn't believe when I went to the House of Lords that it was the same as a Wetherspoons, but without sticky carpet. You know, it had the same, exactly the same decor as most Wetherspoons I've ever been in. Like, Pretend grand old paintings. actually, they are actually grand old paintings. But the our local Wetherspoons recently got shut down for a zero star food hygiene rating.
Richard Prideaux: Zero is good.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: So often zeros come from. So environmental health are not kind to people. And sometimes they give you a zero for like having an oven that's not too close to a fridge. So you would think, zero, but this pub got a zero for being absolutely filthy and probably riddled with rats.
Richard Prideaux: See, Wetherspoons, it sort of holds its fascination for me. It was the first pub in a town where I lived, so I moved to a town. the first pub we used to regularly go to and meet people in, but that was about 2001. And it was the burger and a pint nights. Was it Fridays or Thursdays? We used to do that. Yeah. And it's just part of this gradual initiatification of everything where we had things quite good in the early 2000s and we didn't really know it. And it just gradually, everything's gradually got worse ever since.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I haven't been to a Wetherspoons to meet up with people for probably 15 years plus. And it was a place, like the burger and a pint was great, curry night or something, that was like a Wednesday or something. That was half decent as well. I do wonder, now it just seems, if you're going to Wetherspoon Stout, it just seems to be sort of desperate men that have been in there since 9:00 getting a pint. just care that the beer is like 50p cheaper than anywhere else and bloody Sharon, she took the kids. That sort of, yeah. Boxing Day is not Christmas, is it?
Richard Prideaux: There's a lot of market town Wetherspoons. They have sort of a ratio of how many they're allowed in an area, I think. So they don't outcompete each other, but you get a lot of market town Wetherspoons. But you don't get any properly rural Wetherspoons. I don't know of any that have taken over a village pub or something. They're always in a town.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think they probably just want the footfall. They want the... It's a numbers game. Must be for them.
Richard Prideaux: You don't drive to a Wetherspoons, do you?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Nah, nah. Get the bus.
Richard Prideaux: Rural pubs though still... I don't know what they're like around there, but here it's you're a restaurant or you die. It's the markup.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I mean, can you make markup just solely on booze? Probably not. I mean, some can if you were seasonal, but it's really hard. I am. I was talking with Artem who owns the Warwick in Pimlico and just. The cost, the rising costs of staff costs, the national insurance, the rise in business rates, it makes it really difficult. Thankfully, he's bucked the trend because he's just busier than ever because the food's really good. But generally, it's really hard for businesses out there.
Richard Prideaux: Well, there's this campaign at the moment, isn't there, for producing the VAT for hospitality.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, that's an interesting one.
Richard Prideaux: Taking it from 20% to 10%, because for non-UK listeners, yes, that really is 20% here.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, most people don't pay anywhere close to that, do they?
Richard Prideaux: No.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think it's certain things you've got to realise that a pub as well does a lot of social good. There's, I mean, sure, there's some bad stuff around a pub, but like generally a place where people can meet community in a day and age where we're talking about AI and stuff like that, in a day and age we're letting American tech companies just absolutely dominate our entire lives. We should probably be supporting, punishing them and supporting local businesses and places that stitch back the fabric of community rather than all sit there looking at our phones all day and just doing nonsensical stuff that we all seem to have been suckered into. So yeah, I'm pro supporting pubs.
Richard Prideaux: We're probably the last generation that will have a fondness for pubs on mass because it seems like the next generation, sort of Gen Z, they didn't have the same experience growing up. And so COVID really finished that off and the lack of hospitality in that period. So every survey and every sort of analysis of what Gen Z do does not veer towards drinking. But then you go around London on a Thursday night and watch all those apprentices and interns and everything just falling out of the pubs and just spewing onto the pavement in the city. They obviously are in some places, but not everywhere.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I think. It's not as bad as it's made out, but then there are quite a lot of people that have taken their phones and being antisocial as a lifestyle choice. There's an awful lot of those, but it's not everyone. And seeing the young farmers and things like that, that's brilliant to see those guys actually out there doing it, living the dream, enjoying themselves. And just, I think it's a really important... I kind of got a theory that we've spent a lot of time trying to... Oh my God.
Richard Prideaux: What have you done?
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I know exactly what's about to happen. The missus is trying to use my card to approve the Tesco shop.
Richard Prideaux: You're going to shout the code.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I have approved the delivery.
Richard Prideaux: This is the domestic segment of the podcast.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Return to the app. I have approved the payment. Thank you.
Richard Prideaux: It's like Callum's the AI for his wife.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah. I know I'm finance. Unfortunately.
Richard Prideaux: You're a chat bot.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I find myself in the position of I had to approve the payment on my on my app because my Tesco shop is so bloody expensive. Where were we? I got a theory, right? That.
Richard Prideaux: Other supermarkets are available, but not in your area.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: We have spent an awful long time sheltering everybody from doing bad things and unhealthy things. But I think that the only way that you work stuff out is by making the mistakes in the 1st place. Like I learned that I can't drink 15 pints. by drinking 15 pints and then that made me really sick. And I know I can't do that. So I'll stop at a much lower, these days it's like 2 pints and I need to go to bed or I need my mum. But I think that the more we shelter from the things that are bad for us, so the more information that we're like, oh, we should be doing this and we should be doing that and the pressure to conform to be progressive and perfect and healthy, the less of the bad stuff, So I think what we really need to do is make Britain \*\*\*\* again. make people go out and drink more than they should. Make people eat too much greasy food and just do Have awkward interactions with people until eventually you don't, you're not as awkward as you were or you just become, what do they call Richard, an extrovert? Or you just eventually, you know, awkward interactions, you're getting paid for them and you're talking in front of the Women's Institute.
Richard Prideaux: Fine tuning these awkward interactions down to a monetisable level.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Exactly. I think we need to make Britain \*\*\*\* again.
Richard Prideaux: So this is the actual an argument for intuitification, which is push people out to the limits of what they can survive so that they can pull back a bit and find their sort of sweet spot.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Yeah, but I don't think we've done, like we've ruined pubs. We've ruined engagement with young people. It's really hard to, I was in a place the other day and I overheard the girl saying that she was scared of drunk people.
Richard Prideaux: Yes, that is a thing of a fear of interactions with other people, anxiety about interactions, yeah.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: And she said that because they were because they were unpredictable, which I get it, but they're not really unpredictable, are they? like, they talk loudly, they fall over things like having a newborn, they puke. Just, it's not. They're not unpredictable. And it's just sad that we've lost, we've lost a lot of things in the past 20 years and we're doing a lot of things different. So I think the in shitification, yeah, everything's \*\*\*\*. Is everything \*\*\*\*? I don't think it is, but I think we can do more to make, to make, make mistakes by yourself and then learn from them.
Richard Prideaux: And we all feel, you've just made everyone feel old as well. talking about their youth and how far behind it was. So I'm going to finish it off for the main show with this little just thing to put people at ease and make them feel warm and fuzzy about the direction their life has gone. You know the film Back to the Future.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I do.
Richard Prideaux: The first film was 1985 and he travels back for 30 years and time to 1955. So if you were making that today, Martin McFly would travel back to 1996.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Spice Girls was number one. Oh wow. I'm pretty sure Toy Story was the film of the year. 1996\. Wow.
Richard Prideaux: So there you go. Everyone feels old now. Right, on to the after show, which is for patrons only. But for everyone else, we'll see you again next week, which will feature a live recording in the field with Richard Negus and I, but probably not Callum, because he'll still be paying for his Tesco shop.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: I can't get got around me keep somehow.
Richard Prideaux: Bye.
Callum Mcinerney Riley: Bye.