Tag Archives: beer

A Quiet Night Out

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We had a committee meeting of the Numismatic Society last night. It was difficult to tell it apart from a group of elderly men having a meal. The average age must have been 65, the average hair was white and the eldest member joined the society before the rest of us were born.

It is the 75th Anniversary of the society this year and the conversation was mainly about ex-members, including a fair number who have stopped collecting and joined the choir invisible. Against that background, one of the younger members tried to start a conversation about recruitment of younger people and the future of the society. Most of the members were too deaf to hear him so a potential moment of tactlessness soon passed.

And that is about all that happened at the meeting. It only meets once a year and is not the most active committee I have ever been on, I must admit. At one time I would have had a go at livening things up but I can’t really be bothered.

I did, however, have a very nice Steak and Ruddles Pie with gravy, a small portion of chips and a tiny blob of mushy peas. It was an adequate portion, but, as you may detect, one that fell slightly short. The pie was excellent, and large, so I wonder why they feel the need to make themselves look mean by skimping on the cheap bits.

Ruddles, for those of you who don’t know, was once a great British beer formerly brewed in the county of Rutland. It’s a bit annoying that the Greene King pub chain has taken Ruddles over, plundered and pilfered its good name, altered the recipe and is now using it to add luster to its steak pie.

They call it marketing, I call it another reason I hate the 21st Century.

British West Africa 1/10th of a Penny

Out with the Old and In with the New

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Unless I suddenly discover a previously unknown reserve of ambition and energy this is going to be my last post of 2017. I may squeeze another one in, but I probably won’t as I intend to make soup and sandwiches in a few minutes and spend the rest of the evening  making a serious dent in the Christmas food mountain.

As usual, I bought too much, because you don’t want to run out of food when you have guests over.

I also bought too much beer. I’m not going to be depleting the beer stocks as I’m not much of a drinker these days. I bought a selection pack of Adnams beer to test over the holiday but only tested three of them.

I can report that they tasted like beer, with a distinct beery aftertaste. The Lighthouse and Easy Up were easy to drink, as I like IPA-style beers. The Ghost Ship was a trifle heavier and sent me to sleep.

As reviews go, it’s going to win no prizes. You need vocabulary like citrus, hoppy and fruitcake aroma if you’re a beer reviewer and, quite honestly, I couldn’t say fruitcake aroma with a straight face.

In future I’m going to work to my strengths and stick to book reviews. Or I could build up my knowledge and vocabulary and train to be a chocolate reviewer too, but I fear it’s an unattainable dream. Losing weight is a priority, beer and chocolate are not.

However, on to my latest hobby horse. I nearly wrote a post entitled “Knee-deep in Bovine Excrement” after reading about a new career I’d never heard of before.

I’ve previously written about professional cuddling. I’m not going to knock it, if you can make $60 an hour cuddling someone, and can find people who will pay it, then good luck to you. I can see how it could help people, and can’t do much harm (unlike drugs) but is it really a career?

Now I’ve found and even more insubstantial “career”. It’s very tempting to study for it, but, as with beer reviewing I might find it a bit hard to keep a straight face. Check out the International Federation of Biblio-Poetry Therapy for details of what I consider a flimsy career.

Again, it may we do good, and it can’t do much harm. Compared to the cuddling there’s also less room for awkward misunderstanding. However, if you want to know more about becoming qualified you will have to pay $20 for the information pack. Not only that but if you want to convince one of the mentors you are serious about it you have to take a creative writing course. That will cost you around £400. It’s a good course – you can tell that because one of the course directors is a mentor for the International Federation of Biblio-Poetry Therapy. Er… hang on a minute…

Let’s just say that I wish I’d known about this twenty years ago.

According to one internet entry (which may or may not be true) you can charge $160 for prescribing a therapeutic reading list.

Sorry, have to go now, can’t type more as tears of laughter are obstructing my view of the keyboard…

Happy New Year to you all, see you next year.

Me and the Christmas Spirit

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Julia, with her normal concern for my moral welfare, has decided that today is going to be spent in a flurry of activity. This, it seems, will prevent me getting into mischief and will ensure that we have an excellent family Christmas.

It involves shopping, buying things we don’t need, and arguing.

What it doesn’t involve, I’m told, is stocking up with beer so that, with the assistance of my brother-in-law, I may construct a masterly essay on brewing and beer tasting. That’s a loss to the world of literature, and if Julia takes her place in history alongside the person from Porlock she has only herself to blame.

The shops will be closed for one day. We will have a special meal. We will do a lot of sitting round eating, talking and complaining about the poor quality of TV. This pretty much describes every Sunday of my youth. Things have moved on since then but have we really lost the knack of sitting round talking about nothing and eating roast meat?

The shops used to close on Sundays, TV only had a couple of channels and we had a roast dinner – the phrase “Sunday dinner” was invented specifically to describe this.

We never had to fight people in the aisles of the supermarket or buy enough food for a week just to see us through until Monday.

I’m not going to resist, as I won’t win. As you go about your pre-Christmas tasks just spare a thought for a poor man being swept along on a tide of Christmas preparations, being elbowed by pensioners as he competes, under the orders of his wife, for the last few nobby greens.

At least my moral welfare will be impeccable, my soul will be stainless, and, after a generous portion of high-fibre brassicas, my bowels will be gleaming.