Cider-pig, Cider-pig

I'm as guilty as anybody of maintaining cider's second-class citizenship as a poor relation to beer.

Pork belly in cider

Don't get me wrong. I like cider a lot and, as other beer writers have noted, it has a stronger claim to being our national drink than ale.

But how often do I write about the stuff? About as often as I put pen to paper on the subject of vegan wholefoods and legumes. Which isn't often, obviously.

At the pub I'll only even look at the ciders available when I've made absolutely fucking damn sure that there are no beers that I want. Even then, if I'm honest, it's more likely that I've already walked out, leaving a Ben-shaped cloud of dust for the cartoon landlord to gently prod into disintegratatedness.

And while beer recipes have been hot fodder for a while now, cider recipes are still a bit thin on the ground.

So, what with it being Autumn'n'shit, it's probably a good time to share a seasonal, cidery recipe with you good people. This is a simple and relatively inexpensive dish that really highlights the relationship betwixt butchered pig and fermented apple.

All my trials soon be over

'You'll be sitting around for hours', 'you'll get sent home early and told not to come back', 'You'll probably just do a one-day trial and that'll be it'...

Pretty much everything that people told me about jury service turned out not to be true. And that's probably for the best.

I started at Woolwich Crown Court last Monday (an absolute cuntbugger of a place to get to, by the way!) and I'm now well into my third case. It's been more or less non-stop and really rather interesting - both the trials themselves and the fascinating insights into the machinations of our flawed but strangely effective legal system.

Truth is, serving on a jury has been an ambition of mine since I was a child, and it's been at least as fulfilling an experience as I'd hoped for, if not moreso.

(I still want to release a single that makes the lower reaches of the charts, I still want to win a parliamentary seat, and I still want to race an Opel Monza against a Ford Granada coupe while listening to Queen, but at least I can tick jury service off the list now!)

The sad (but philosophically necessary) reality is that the more ambitious ambitions are, the more likely they will go forever unfulfilled, but while I'm on a role and still relatively young, it would be nice to try and fulfil some of my foody, drinky ambitions.

That's got to be easier than the Monza-Granada-Queen race, right?

Flap-Jack-Jock-Beef-Cock

Like 45% of the people in Scotland I was disappointed with the referendum result, even though it panned out exactly as I predicted.

Not because I'm a Nationalistic Scot or have any kind of Nationalistic Scottish interests, but because I care rather more passionately than most about answering the West Lothian Question and the unfairness that is the Barnett Formula. Independence for Scotland would have provided a clean and fair resolution to these issues and left the Jocks to do their own thing without impacting unreasonably on the rest of us.

For that reason I was staunchly and unashamedly in the 'vote YES and FUCK OFF' camp. I'm surprised there weren't more of us really. (Not that we got a vote.)

Good news according to Ben

For much of the last few weeks, I've been lain low by the disease of kings. If you want an idea of how excruciating the pain in and around my left ankle has been, I actually went ten whole days without a drink at one point. Seriously. Ten!

It's an insufferable tease too, this gouty fucker. Just when I think it's getting better and I can return to enjoying my usual hearty quantities of ale and meat, the bloody pain strikes again and I'm back spending days on end sat indoors on a diet of low-purine food and Naproxen.

However - and I'm probably setting myself up for another uric fail here - it does finally seem to have subsided somewhat, allowing a pain-free me to focus on some of the really rather good stuff that's been happening lately.

And indeed, to share these good times with my readers.

BV London Pub of the Year 2013-14 - the results

Some jobs are very straightforward.

Look at human statues, for example. They barely move, and yet all-too-frequently have the temerity to expect payment for their efforts! Piss easy.

Being the bass player in the Stereo MCs is also an incredibly easy job. The bassline of 'Connected' contains, literally, one note (an F#), repeated about 500 times. Again, an absolute pissing piece of pissy piss.

A far more challenging task, however, is working out the podium finishes in the Pub of the Year. Believe me, I've spent many sleepless nights staying up weighing up the merits of each pub, trying to work out who should come where in the pecking order and listening to Stereo MCs.

But the wait is over. It's time to reveal the top five pubs in London and crown the 2013-2014 winner!

White lines (Do do it!)

The debate over the harmfulness of electronic cigarettes has been one of this year's hot topics, with industry assertions that using them is safer than staying indoors wrapped in cotton wool tempered by more cautionary counter-claims.

One thing's for certain though - they've really taken off like a big tobaccoey firework. You see a hell of a lot a lot of people vaping these days, not all of them cigarette smokers trying to quit either.

I myself own an e-cig purely for occasional, recreational use whenever I can get hold of refill cartridges in nice fruity flavours. Or chocolate, obviously. OK, and vanilla.

Whether it's harmful or not is fairly immaterial to me, as I consider real smoking a calculated risk worth taking in order to enjoy the occasional briar pipe or watermelon shisha.

But I've held the view for some years now that there is a genuinely 99.99% safe 'vice' that still feels a bit, well, naughty, and yet hardly anybody is aware of it. And it's incredibly enjoyable.

I'm talking about white snuff. Specifically, Schneeberg.

A first timer's guide to the GBBF - from a GBBF old timer

So, the GBBF starts tomorrow, and I've been looking forward to it since, well, since the last one! If I had a calendar, I'd have been crossing off the days in a big red marker pen (but not sniffing the nib afterwards, because that's solvent abuse, kids).

Alcohol abuse, on the other hand, is perfectly fine - so long as it takes place within the awesomeness of a big fuck-off beer festival.

I've been going for 20 years now, and while it was always a unique event, it's now bigger and better than ever and looms like a vast, beery ox in a year-round field of chickens. The very anticipation causes me to come up with fucktarded metaphors.

Anyway, the sheer massiveness of it all it can be a tad daunting for GBBF virgins, so following on from my rough guide to British beer festivals, here are a few friendly tips for anyone who perhaps doesn't have an awful lot of GBBF experience: