Coca Cola is changing.
They have announced a new global marketing strategy.
It even has a name.
“One brand.” Continue reading “One Brand, Different Direction?”
The curlews at Garsdale Station welcomed us with real razzmatazz, presumably well aware of the impending downpour that hit the station just as soon as the train had dropped us on the platform and disappeared around the bend towards Kirkby Stephen.
We hadn’t expected to use the built-in raincovers on our rucksacks quite so soon, at least not until the next morning when we were due to start walking. But Mother Nature was determined to give us a taste of things to come…
The wisteria in Chiswick is pretty old, even if it is a relative newcomer by London standards. As the river Thames snakes through the suburbs of west London – past the old cemetery, the botanical gardens at Kew and the brewery of Fuller Smith and Turner – this foreign import sits quietly, gracefully; boughs of improbable twists clambering around the architraves and balustrades of the pretty terraces that run both parallel and perpendicular to the curves of the river.
It’s at Fuller’s Brewery that the oldest wisteria in the UK calmly entwines its way around the Victorian buildings, defiantly taking hold of the old brew masters cottage, never to let go. For 180 years it’s bloomed twice yearly, a bounty of lilac blossom weighing on the strong yet vulnerable web of vines.
The wisteria are the only twisting vines* that find their way into the brewery complex now that the famous Fuller’s beers are made with pelletised hops rather than full flowers, but boy would you not know that from the taste of the produce.
Perhaps Fuller’s have been inspired by the wisteria in their passion for brewing robust beers that develop, grow and flourish as the months and years slip by. Drink Past Masters XX or Brewer’s Reserve too soon birth and you get a sharp, unsubtle beer. Save for a year, or even ten, and the harsh youthfulness mellows into rich, decadent adulthood, bearing mature fruit and complex flavours.
Past Masters XX can trace its roots to 1891 making it younger than the wisteria. Based on a Victorian recipe for a beer called XXK (XX indicating a doubly strong beer and K meaning simply ‘keep’) it’s a splendid display of malt decadence and hop preservation – boozy, spicy and sweet. Plumage Archer, a long forgotten malt variety (even though it was bred, introduced and retired all within the second decade of the wisterias life) is combined with triple measures of Fuggles and Goldings hops, a combination designed to help the beer withstand the degrading effects of time.
Fullers Vintage, year 2000, is a bit of a stomach burner. Vodka and cardboard nose; prunes and fruit cake washed down with sherry; alcohol-soaked raisins for afters. It’s been 11 years in its bottle, quietly waiting to fulfil its purpose, and boy does it not disappoint – in fact it might be the most splendid bottle of beer of the past 11 years.
Technically Fullers beers have been maturing since 1845; recipes developing, brewing techniques changing, equipment getting shinier and more automated. If anyone knows how to age a beer it’s surely these guys.
After all, even Kew Gardens couldn’t keep their wisteria going for over 180 years. When their plant died, guess who they asked for a cutting…?
*Actually, hops are bines, not vines, because they don’t cling with tendrils, they grow skywards with the aid of their own hairy stems.
Thanks to Fuller Smith & Turner for inviting everyone on the inaugural European Beer Bloggers Conference to Sunday dinner and a session on how they age their vintage beers. Ta to all the team there – if you get the chance to visit the brewery (and eat and drink there) it’s an experience you won’t want to forget.
Day one starts with meadows and gentle fields punctuated with the endless curves of streams on ox-bow trajectories, and meandering roads that leave Hawes for the far corners of Wensleydale. Farmland gives way to sheep enclosures; muddy tracks give way to open access boundaries. Before long the gentle slope matures into the lekking grounds of High Abbotside, and the steep and rocky ascent of Great Shunner Fell.
At 1,000 feet the heavy sky suddenly seems closer, but grouse are nowhere to be seen. At fifteen hundred feet the pregnant clouds are voluptuous and imposing, rubbing up against the rising landscape with contempt. And the grouse are still hiding.
At 2,000 feet Wensleydale is a green corner of a skyline dominated by swathes of brown gaming moorland. Once barren moors – restored to full health by private ownership and dedication – weigh down the hill; hills that would be rugged if they weren’t so smoothly carved by glaciers and weather.
Suddenly, atop the fell, the winds change and we’re treated to a chilling breeze for elevenses. The legions of clouds become agitated; they maraud above us, a snail’s pace juggernaut oblivious to the dales beneath.
After a gloomy morning’s climb Great Shunner is defeated; the reward is the northward descent, a landscape of Tolkien proportions. Turner could paint a scene of a thousand blues and browns; Hockney might emphasise the startling definition between the skyline that hugs the endless horizon of moss and grass.
By afternoon we’ve descended from Middle Earth into the Shire via rocky tributary lanes towards the dormant village of Thwaite and past the ancient farm outhouses of Swaledale along paths strewn with rabbit corpses.
Soon we’re above the valley again, following the snaking path of the Swale. From our vantage point the history of the river is laid bare – every stealthy, eroding year, every rock that was too strong for the youthful water. The valley floor is an ancient wandering nomad’s paradise, and pondering the distinct lack of civilisation the sun wins its battle o’er cloud. We have no need to settle near the banks of the Swale, we have tea in a flask and Mars bars saved from lunch. We roll the rain covers away in a burst of afternoon optimism.
Out of the blue we see a pheasant stag poking its head vigorously through the shallow foliage, in a small edge of forest clinging by the scruff of its trunks to the hillside. Iridescent in the sun and unmistakable, he is joined by a shy hen and there rituals are watched by a small flock of seemingly amused sheep.
The sky suddenly creaks and groans. It can’t be thunder, why did we pack the covers away? But then no, its an engine, a plane surely? We look up and there’s nothing but clear blue sky, before, in a flurry of menancing power and bravado, a dark green winged machine bursts through the valley, taunting gravity, wings perpendicular to sea-level. Its whoosh is gone almost as soon as it appeared but for a few seconds Swaledale reverberates and then… silence. The valley seems even quieter than it was before.
The brute force of the plane is in stark contrast to the most graceful of grouse, swooning out of the sky and gliding towards Keld. It’s a secret view, looking down on a bird flying, and a rare easily-spooked bird to boot. Grateful we trudge on in its wake. “Keld must be just around this corner”.
Five or six corners and a few miles later the small and, until recently, dry town pops into view behind green and luscious fields.
At Keld Lodge, responsible for the village’s new found alcohol license, curried banana soup is ordered for starters, with lamb to dine on. 40 winks before tea, then a sneaky pint to whet the appetite (as if 12 and three quarter miles across varied altitudes and unruly terrain wasn’t enough).
The soup does what it says on the tin: banana + curry sauce. Pilsner Urquell and bread substitute for the fish shop chips that might have been the perfect accompaniment, whilst Black Sheep bitter washes down local meat and potatoes. After tea we retire to the drinking room with pints of Riggwelter, a sleeping potion for walkers crafted from the finest fruitcake and chocolate Horlicks.
Nodding off we count our blessings as three groups of Coast to Coast walkers share tales of horrendous conditions in the Lakes a few days ago: ferocious winds, men lifted off the ground, couples on cliff edges and roads closed to flooding.
As we cradle our nightcaps the Pennine Way seems a doddle. And then we remember that the following day is a 22 miler….
By my calculations we’ll reach Tan Hill Inn at… Oh. 11.15. Shit.”
Best laid plans for lunch and beer at England’s highest inn are scuppered, because it’s a 22 mile day and we’re keen to arrive at Middleton in time to watch Messi & co in the Champions League final. An 11 o’clock pint stop probably isn’t the best way to ensure safe passage over some of England’s most remote and boggy moors.
It’s a freezing Saturday and gloomy too. Keld and Swaledale are covered in mist as we rise above them past swelling waterfalls and dull sheep pastures. It’s 9am and there is no sign of yesterday’s resurgent sun.
Through the rain we can’t see much of the small uninhabited valleys; the electric squawk of the curlews only serves to reiterate our isolation from all but nature and ruined limestone barns.
By 10.23 we’re crossing on the most northerly roads in Yorkshire. This is Tan Hill and its famous inn, the highest public house above sea level in England. We stop all too briefly to change the map in the porch – awkwardly our next 4 miles takes us along the cusp of OS Explorer OL30 and my folding abilities are tested to the max (if there’s a record for ‘getting in the way of a busy public entrance’ then my ineptness at folding an Ordnance Survey into a plastic map protector broke it with ease).
Tan Hill Inn is buzzing with stretching residents and sweating passersby: a motorcycle club, a cycle race and pursuers of various water sport activities are filling up with caffeine or stopping for glucose.
Reluctantly we walk on leaving England’s most remote public house to cross one of England’s remotest moors. Strangely, the next hour is a surreal march against hundreds of spinning wheels and dazzling leotards as weekend cyclists make the most of the mild weather racing conditions.
To our left, due north, Sleightholme Moor stretches out as far as the eye can see, boggy and unkempt. In the distance, cars barely move along the A66 which we pass under later in the afternoon. It’s a wilderness, the only signs of human interference the stone tracks, occasional cairn and sporadic grouse butts. Oh and of course the moors themselves: man-made but forgotten by all but conservationists and game shooters. Leggy heather dominates the landscape. Small patches are burnt to the ground to allow new growth; the result appears as a strange lunar desert in a parallel universe where it was once occupied but left in a hurry.
The moorland gets to your after a while, so much so on a brief foray into arable enclosures we lose the trail whilst thinking about our stomachs. Lunch is devoured on uncomfortable stones and thistles and straight after we soon come to a dead end: a gorging river on one side and a sheer cliff face on the other. Ahead a farm behind barbed wire. The compass suggests that the only option is the cliff. Cue a hands and knees scramble 60 feet to the top. Our packs suddenly feel heavy.
At the top of the cliff dirty hands have to deal with unavoidable barbed fencing that separates us from the comfort blanket of Pennine Way way markers, so over we go and somehow avoid falling backwards to an undignified end.
Some hours later we’ve finally crossed the caravan-laden A66 (much less glamorous than its American namesake). We’re rising to the moors final test, another 600m above sea level from yet another valley bottom. Every mile represents two in this part of the world thanks to the terrain and the weather. The Way becomes non-existent and we keep on the trail only by recognising the thin black lines that represent walls and fields on the map. Bog takes over, boots start to feel damp. The entire sky disappears under deep charcoal clouds.
It rains for the next hour and the bog becomes marsh for much of the long slog over Bowes. Welcome to Durham County. For some reason I’m find myself adapting Bruce Springsteen lyrics for the Pennine Way. The moors will do this sort of thing to you…
We’ve done perhaps 13 miles already and still ahead of us are the first of the Northumberland reservoirs. Then we hit surprise sunshine and a glorious plush valley picture perfect as if waiting to become a Nikki Corker postcard. Hannah’s meadow is here, once home of Hannah Hauxwell, the daughter of the Dales. We pass nature reserves, farmland and meadows, but still there’s 6 miles to go until Teesdale and more hills to test our legs. Football and beer seem like a promise that the day never intended to keep.
At last though, dizzy with fatigue the final few hundred feet are climbed and Teesdale opens up below, Middleton in the middle and windy meadows everywhere in-between.
Not content to let the terrain have all the fun, huge clouds are edging through the valley on the prevailing wind, with wisps of raindrop-heavy mist below, acting as the infantry to the cavalry above.
We’re for another soaking and can only hope that the hotel has a drying room and decent beer. Talk about tempting fate…
Morning in Dufton is heavenly. Soft light glistens on the village green, the distant hills are misty, and the birds seemingly haven’t slept, instead devoting every moment, dark or light, to their celestial symphonies.
No wonder it’s called the Vale of Eden. And the prospect of exploring Cumbria’s fertile land spurs us to leave Dufton. That and the unenviable comfort of youth hostel bedding…
Within minutes of joining the Way we’re surrounded on all sides by undulating fields of faultless farmland dressed in a glorious, consistent green. The land is all one hue, the only difference in colour between fields achieved by the sun that dances on the curvatures of the land. Nature creates art with the shadows of millions of blades of grass, a silent spectacle unfolding beneath a cloudless sky.
As we rise above Cosca Hill, fresh faced and glad we didn’t win a week’s worth of beer at the quiz the previous night, the terrain dissolves into the no man’s land between moor and field; trees thin out, streams narrow, and hedgerows give way to the resilience of reeds and gorse. Greenery darkens, the sun rises towards its late morning perch above the verdant cone of Dufton Pike. Against a dull hill the rigid blue sky is speckled with ever watchful radomes bouncing radio waves against passenger planes in the sky.
This eerie place sits 1000 feet above Dufton. It’s a tough climb for the first day, and our route avoids the curiously new road surface that curves up towards the heavenly looking golf balls. Just to spite us, the detour naturally involves the circumnavigation of a disused quarry shaft, appropriately named ‘Dunfell Hush’ which is exactly the sounds of falling down it when miles away from another living creature. Luckily we skip over any hidden mine shafts and the path pop us right up against the radomes. The spooky spheres are less angelic up close, coloured in roughly with worn-off white and sat atop windowless square boxes that looks like they’d blow away in a gentle gust. They look less airport security and more hideout for mad scientists trying to create a real life Day of the Triffids. On the cheap.
We’re not halfway done for the day but lunch is calling. The afternoon trek towards our hostel seems an age away. We can’t even begin to think of a pub yet…
Our lunch stop marks the tallest part of the entire Pennine Way so far, surpassing the more foreboding features of even the Three Peaks of Whernside, Ingleborough and Pen Y Ghent. Cross Fell’s summit roars with wind and we join two southbound walkers sheltering behind the meagre walls of its dry stone cairn. The air is pregnant with cold and hot air which sweeps along the inclines of the fell and gives birth to the Helm Bar, an innocuous enough looking line of cloud that rustles the winds into a turbulent force of nature. They say Cross Fell is named for the typical English meaning of the words – think angry, grumpy wind demon sitting atop a desolate fell trying to keep pesky explorers away. “I don’t care how windy it is, it’s MY fell!”
Suddenly two fighter jets accelerate cloud wards over nearby Dun Fell, so low against the brow of the hill that we could pluck the pilots faces out of a police line up. But even the power and noise of their twin jet engines fails to out muster the Helm Wind which sweeps across the tops and batters us into the cold hard discomfort of the shelter walls.
Along with our fellow explorers we re-gather our strengths – bananas, dried apricots, Mars Bars, cheese and pickle sandwiches consumed via osmosis in the teasing gaps when the wind doesn’t batter us blue. Even without our lunch the views from our lofty plateau lift us – a panorama of vale and fell in equal measure spreads out for miles below. From this vantage point we can track the wandering of smoke from distant factories which cloud the view towards the peaks of the eastern line of the Lake District.
We rise and turn into the wind, and very soon lunch seems insufficient and a pint seems unimaginably far away.
I’ve been wondering recently why nothing ever lasts.
Not in the sense of entropy, or our futile battle against energy dispersal.
But in the sense that cars can’t be fixed by hand anymore, hardware/software is compatible for next to no time, phones are built to last months not years, my tablet battery isn’t replaceable yet alone accessible…
This post popped up Just in time… Continue reading “Beko and The Moneymen”
It’s a pub like any other. Traditional, wood panelled (old wood) with a real bar (brass?). There’s a perimeter shelf for empties (nice touch) and a place for coats (polite). Perched on high seats huddled around circular tables with cheap beer mats. The bar is awash with suits finishing work. It could be the bar of a provincial Wetherspoons in an old civic building turned public house.
But this is a bar like no other. Continue reading “Strangers Bar”
I would love to be able to call The Glad a university haunt of mine. Tiny, and frugally filled with ramshackle furniture, my feet tap away on the exposed floorboards to jitterbug ska and rockin-robin boogie. The soundtrack, like the decor, is unmastered, mono.
If named for the Honourable William Ewart then I can’t second guess what the old Liberal Prime Minister would make of it. Grandiose it is not, but dirty back street boozer it is neither. Continue reading “The Glad, SE1”
English breakfast? No!
Spring along the cliffs to find
Sagres and seafood.
Originally published APRIL 28TH, 2012 on real-ale-reviewsdotcom
“I’m rat-arsed” our hero shouts to the whole pub. “And this is one of the greatest working class songs ever!” as the familiar block chords are joined by a familiar drum roll and a scrawling copycat voice. “Slip insiiiide the eye of youuur miiii-iii-iinnd…”
Home at 11.30 on a school night, sniffing my coat. It’s been a good few months since I last let a cigarette pass my lips. Tonight’s a school night, a strange night to jump off the nicotine wagon, but conversation was deep and my companion had Marlborough Reds. There’s nothing beneficial about smoking, not one bit. Continue reading “Cigarettes & Alcohol”
On days when work is a bit too intense, or the week gradually catches me up and prepares to spit me out somewhere uncomfortable, there is a pub within walking distance of my office where I can take a book, sip on a half pint of cask conditioned British beer, and nestle against the wood panelling, enjoying the quiet and the peace. Continue reading “Hideaway”
Deep in a basement bar in Bratislava, huddled over drinks in our winter coats, exposed arches of brick leaning towards us, I’m starting a new love affair. Continue reading “Basement Beers”
Just like Mike Parker, the author of <a href=”http://amzn.to/q2ytNj”>Map Addict</a>, for years I’ve been mesmerised by the enigmatic Spurn Point, that strangely shaped strip of almost-land that stretches from the tip of the East Riding of Yorkshire and awkwardly attempts to reach back downstream towards the sands of the Humber estuary. Continue reading “Spurn Point”
Sweaty arms, clammy knees. Bag heavy with laptop and a change of clothes. And four hardback books bought from a dodgy looking bookshop opposite Kings Cross Station. Continue reading “The Lamb, London”
There’s nothing quite like the nervous excitement of the build up to an evening football match.
Right down to the exit from work – the last-minute rush to finish the last job on the to-do list and turn down, log off, and clock out. There’s the quick two-pint pub visit, or the nip home to grab the forgotten tickets and then where will we eat where can we park where shall we meet you shall we get a taxi? Continue reading “Anticipation”
You only notice the musty smell if you’re unfortunate enough to get stuck in a queue back past the bread plinth, towards the shanty town of chest freezers (the sliding doors are the backbone of each ageing unit rather than the doorway to claim Aunt Bessie’s Apple Pies and out of date Fab lollies). From the darker corner, Continue reading “The Corner Shop”
Somewhere amongst the craft beer revolution the mass produced lagers that line supermarket shelves were demonised, no thanks to A-B InBev and a dash of UK lout culture. It probably didn’t take much for some people to come to this conclusion, not least those who’ve read anything by Naomi Klein. Continue reading “Economies of (sc)Ale”
Day Four. The last leg and the longest. No steep mountain climbs on this stretch of the Pennine Way but a long slog to the ridges above Ribblesdale.
Ribblesdale is the least forgiving of the Yorkshire dales. Shops and towns are non-existent. Continue reading “Horton to Hawes”
Day Three. After two easy days this years Pennine Way walk got tough on Day 3.
Thirteen miles including the ascension of Malham Cove, Fountains Fell and Pen-Y-Ghent. We’d be over 600m above sea level for most of the day and climb 3 times that, Continue reading “Malham to Horton-in-Ribblesdale”
Day Two. A coffee and a banana were the best Earby had to offer for brekkie and we set out before 9am towards Thornton in Craven, the official start of our second day walking.
Farmland dominates this part of the Pennine Way until the path hits Yorkshire again, and despite a near miss Continue reading “Thornton in Craven to Malham”
Day Zero. I see my Dad get off the train at Leeds station, a sore thumb amongst the suits and skirts that rushed from the Cross County carriages. We bundled onto the connecting line and stuffed our rucksacks in the ample overhead shelves (funny how local trains have better storage than the national ones). Continue reading “Stanbury to Earby”
Once upon a time Britain was an industrial nation. The population were manual workers, skilled or miners, all contributing towards the rise of the Empire.
Nowadays we work at screens, behind partitions, “in services“. Continue reading “Underbelly”
The run up to the 2010 election isn’t looking like much of a beery affair. There may be some lively debate between scaremongering neo-prohibitionists and staunch defenders of personal freedoms, but I’m yet to be convinced we’ll see mandatory tee-totalism as the main focus of the next live television debate.
Back in 1874 the general election was a distinctly beery affair. ” Continue reading “A torrent of gin of beer”
“Mark from Morley has texted in” said Adam Pope, and he proceeded to read the whole text message I’d sent to BBC Radio Leeds (all 500+ characters of it) word for word, live on air. I burst into tears, full-blown streaming tears, soaking my chin and my shirt and blurring the M621 in front of me.
Fuck, it really happened. It really fucking happened.
I’d known since early that Friday afternoon it was happening. On my lunch I’d walked up to Leeds City Square expecting a handful of local reporters and desperate supporters outside the grey, charmless building of the administrators that were deciding the fate of Halifax Town AFC. But there was nothing but disinterested office workers and recruitment consultants in ill-fitting suits wandering around aimlessly. Back at my desk I didn’t do much work that afternoon, between refreshing BBC Football and repeatedly pressing F5 on the Halifax Evening Courier sports pages.
That long motorway drive, listening to my own words read back to me by Pope’s familiar tones, was two years ago, and my tears did little to stop Halifax Town disappearing from the face of English football. I welled up at the sound of my desperation and slammed my hands against the steering wheel in a mix of anger and despair.
Tonight, however, my beloved Shaymen fought back.
FC Halifax Town, the phoenix from the flames of the team that had played at the famous Shay stadium since 1921, recorded a historic point that secured the Unibond Northern Premier League Division One North title. 99 points and 107 goals were enough to fend off the challenge of Lancaster City’s Dolly Blues and confirm Town’s status as champions.
The long road back to Conference and League football is a step closer.
Tonight there are no pathetic tears, no pointless despair. Tonight’s celebratory beer is pure, unrivalled, pride.
This beer helps drown all the joys and sorrows of missed play off finals and the unparalleled relief of staying up on the last day of too many seasons. This beer is for the years, the heroes, the woodwork and the bulging net.
This beer is for Steve Norris, Jamie Paterson and Geoff Horsfield; for Lewis Kileen and Chris Wilder. This beer is for Neil Apsin, all the people who resurrected the club, and the fans who trudge to the ground each week.
This beer is for Tom Baker, because his 87th minute goal – which made me erupt with emotion in the presence of 1,932 strangers – is why I’m not in bed yet and instead, still up late, on a school night, drinking beer.
In a world of Top 100 lists and a thousand and one books about 1001 things you’ll never be able to afford to do, us Homo Sapien types often lose our perspective. We had caught up in the whims of our tiny, insignificant lives and convince each other that we are more important than we really are.
If I was compiling a list of photographs that you must see before you die, there is no doubt that Pale Blue Dot would be somewhere near the pinnacle of my list. The photo, taken by NASA in 1990, illustrates just how insignificant our little Blue Planet is in the vastness of our solar system. The image of a small dot – less than 1 pixel wide – does not even illustrate what a microscopically tiny part of our galaxy the Earth is, let alone the Universe.
Carl Sagan, at who’s request the photo was taken, summed this up beautifully. He cooly points out that every life, every birth, every death, every war, every fight, every breath, every human thought, all took place in this infinitesimally tiny piece of rock amidst an infinity of rock, gas and nothingness. And that includes every pint in every pub.
So, in the grand scheme of things, beer really doesn’t matter. All the beer ever brewed, ever drunk and ever dreamed about amounts to a relatively tiny bundle of charged particles, given energy by the star we call our Sun and ultimately delivering intoxication to a teeny bunch of people who are doing their best to put their everyday lives and strifes behind them.
One day, that same Sun will eat the Earth in a mind boggling display of unstoppable solar bravado, dwarfing it’s heavenly subjects as it accelerates towards it’s ultimate fate, collapsing under the weight of the universes’ weakest force and destroying, potentially, all the life that there ever will be or has been.
So in some ways, human fate is ultimately doomed. There’s no point to anything we do, we may as well drink, get fat and fuck off, leaving a dead planet behind to rot and burn.
But, as we all know, size isn’t everything.
Our human lifetimes which flash by in an instant are a speckle on the astronomical time line, but to each and every one of us, those moments when we breathe, think and drink are all we will ever have. They are our own personal time-constrained eternities. We will never have any one elses moments, we will never be able to see everything in the world. We will spend our lives missing out on everyone elses moments and clinging desperately to our own.
There are times we come together and share in our (utterly pointless and insignificant) lives. We celebrate the fact we have each other. We celebrate our health and happiness. We counter our grief and illness by coming together and offer our company to those in despair.
And during these moments, at these good times that we remember (and often at the bad ones we can never forget) many of us have beer as the focal point of our communion.
Beer is touted as the most social of our tipples, a drink for the masses, for all of the classes, with simple, earthy ingredients, served in community centres for the local people, ‘public urban boundary systems‘ where people come together and network, socially, without the need for technology nor pixels.
Beer is arguably no more important than wine, than vodka, whiskey or cider. It’s rarely shared in the same way as the sambucas that you set on fire or the tequilas that we neck along with salt and lemon. It doesn’t have the shock and headfuck kick of a jagerbomb.
It is though, the most popular of all the alcoholic lubrications1. There are beers of various different levels of potency. There’s a beer for every occassion. A gueze to share, a kriek to start a party. A bitter after a long walk, a porter to sit in front of an open fire with. There’s a beer to cool you down in summer sun, a beer to warm you up after a cold winters day.
There’s a beer for a chat, beer for a session. Beers to knock you for six and beer to stay up all night with. There’s beer for drowning our sorrows and beer for celebrating milestones. There’s beer for beer geeks and beer for John Smith down the local WMC.
Arguably no other drink shares this diversity – no other drink can match beer for depth, diversity and refreshment.
‘Nothing ever lasts forever’ sang Echo & his Bunnymen. Not even the sun, this Earth or maybe even time. But in each and everyone of our worlds, our lives are our eternity and to us, everything matters. If beer matters to you, then beer matters.
1 So says a source on Wikipedia, and who am I to argue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer#cite_note-1
The Misfortunates
I’ve been meaning to write something about this since I saw one of the best films I’ve seen for ages at the 23rd Leeds International Film Festival earlier this year.
The Misfortunates follows the trials and tribulations of a highly dysfunctional Belgian family, the Strobbes. Gunther lives with his father, three uncles and grandmother and looks set for a ne’er-do-well adulthood just as his male heroes, all veritable Frank Gallagher types. Through copious amounts of alcohol (including a World Cup drinking game involving only Trappist ales), girlfriends, arguments, tears and more beers, the film is a retrospective look back from Gunther on his childhood and a peak into how he ended up.
Beer, ale ... whatever. 