Picture the scene:
It's a little over six years ago. Mrs B-V and I have decided we're going to move out of London and are house-hunting in the East Surrey area.
One of the important factors in our search is having a good pub nearby. A pub where we can get to know the locals and make it a key component of our day-to-day lives and, crucially, a pub where there will be ever-changing cask beer that will allow me to easily indulge my hobby - nay, my lifestyle - as a ticker.
"I'm no 44.5 kilogram weakling but I always go the extra 1609 metres. I'll continue to drink the occasional 568 millilitres and eat 113-grammers until I'm 183 centimetres under..."
It's been in the what-passes-for-news-these-days recently that retailers might, at some point, be given the option to use Imperial measurements when selling us apples and dried pulses and pork scratchings or whatever we want to buy.
You know, pounds, ounces, maybe even hundredweights if you're buying something absolutely fucking massive.
We won't know exactly what these measures will look like, if indeed anything changes at all, until we see the result of the consultation, but the gist of it is that nobody is going to be compelled to do anything differently - this would, in all likelihood, actually represent a relaxation of the current legislation (with its origins, predictably, in the EU) which forces retailers to use metric, whatever the context.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of the double Bank Holiday and some sort of 'Jubilee' celebration, apparently one of such Platinumness that the likes of it will ne'er be seen again in our lifetimest.
Anyway, it is perhaps more notable because I have yet to drink a single Jubilee-themed ale this time. Not a single one. And, believe me, if I'd found some available I'd have purchased and consumed them.
Was it really ten of the Queen's Whole Years ago that I blogged about the Diamond Jubilee and imparted fairly disparaging reviews of the beers brewed to mark the occasion?
Why, yes. Yes, it was. I've been around longer than a decade. Who'd have thought it?
If you're a Croydon-based fan of Wetherspoons, you might be feeling a bit sorry for yourself lately.
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| Coming soon... fuck all |
Having lost the Ship of Fools a few years ago, there is now just one Spoons in an area that once had four. Even with my mixed feelings generally about Spoons, I think that's a right shame.
Anyway, I tried to visit these pubs a few times before they bit the Wetherdust, which gave me the opportunity to check out eateries in the area.
One of which is the 'traditional Persian' menu at Crystal.
About five years ago, I was talking to a mate who was looking to get into craft brewing professionally and was struggling to come up with a name that wasn't either completely fucking shit or already in use.
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| Beers that never were |
Matt decided against a career in the beer business, possibly after learning that it mostly involved cleaning equipment, and Assassin Brewing was, alas, never to be.
To be honest, it's not something that particularly keeps me awake at night.
Well, not often.
In a few weeks time I shall be 45, and, unless there are some big developments in the health and fitness sector, this probably means that I am more than half way through my life.
That's a sobering thought in and of itself, but getting older pushes me more and more down the comfortable pipe of nostalgia where slightly melancholic memories hold more sway than the contemporary world.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all about trying new things. Drinking new beers, eating new foods, visiting new places - I largely measure my life by 'ticks' - but that doesn't mean I'm remotely comfortable when the old things disappear from the world.
And they don't even have to be that old.
Well, it's now 2022, which means it's time to look back on my favourite beers of the past year.
It's been another year disrupted by lockdowns, restrictions and - in my view - unnecessarily draconian - legislation, but, hey, we're all still here. Apart from the Duke of Edinburgh, obviously. And Alan Bradley. Well, the actor who once played him.
Now as you'll almost certainly know, my drinking preference - the default position if you like - is to drink cask beer in a pub, and, putting it politely, that habit isn't altogether compatible with the COVID situation. I didn't even get to drink a pint at a pub until April 11, when the grand midnight re-opening at PotY The Kentish Belle marked perhaps the most memorable quenching of thirst in history!
But let's not let such happy occasions distract us from the sad fact that the hospitality industry is still suffering, and the biggest threat of all is to places that rely on selling cask beer!
