Mmm, Beer…!

I’ve been a beer drinker for some time, not to mention a little bit poncey about it for quite a while too, by which I mean I won’t drink any old shite, I’d sooner drink a Gin and tonic or a half decent wine than a crap beer or almost any lager.

Wherever I live I like to find a nice pub where I feel at home.  There are several things that help me choose where that is going to be, it needs to be within walking distance of the house, it needs to have good beer and it needs to be a nice space.  What about the people you cry… fair point, but in my view the venue has to cater for the first 3 things and if they build it then they will come. The people that you get in craft beer outlets whether old men, hipsters or old hipsters are a particular brand of people and they are very often my people.  Everyone a people’s philosopher, every one with a schooling that goes beyond formal education and every one a taste for something that little bit finer than the norm.  Given that taste is so subjective you may begin to see the challenge that the venue may have to satisfy such a band of ‘epicurios’ but herein lies the joy, a good pub will embrace that challenge with staff who delight in telling you what you’ll enjoy and when they know you well looking forward to seeing if they’ve picked your taste right.  It is a symbiosis that makes everyone happy.  I like nothing more than entering an establishment where I’m known and the person behind the bar telling me “I’ve got just the thing for you…”

So what is to be done in lockdown, pubs are shut and the industry is flung into crisis, robbed as it is of its very particular customers for whom the selection at a supermarket barely scratches the surface and comes with neither ethical consideration nor bonhomie.  So the breweries have been forced to take on that challenge a little and have begun to increase their experimentation and produce different things often each week alongside their core range and ship direct.  What has impressed me very often is the nature of the communications and ethos of these organisations, that matters to me.  From vocal support of the #blacklivesmatter campaign to telling customers how they planned to keep their staff safe both physically and financially during the crisis.  It has shown me that the backend part of the craft beer movement is very much akin to the nature of us customers at the front end of it.  I have been pleased to be able to support brewers and help them realise some of their goals whilst supporting an industry that has been of pleasure to me. although the potential plight of the physical establishments remains a concern.  The range of beers now is so immense, single, double, triple hopped with seemingly new yeasts, new hops all the time so varied that there really is something for everyone and I would defy even the most vehement of non-beer drinkers not to find a taste they enjoy.  For me it is a quasi golden age of the art of brewing, that is to say a Double Dry-Hopped Pale age and long may it continue.

Not So Shocking, Pink!

Sometimes I like pink.  I wear pink shirts, I like ‘salmon-‘ and ‘dusky-‘ in particular. I heard that it used to be that pink was a masculine and blue a feminine colour but I don’t know how apocryphal that is.  For me the aesthetic is in the shade of something rather than a block and pink lends itself to warmth in a less brash way, like a minor chord with a touch of depth.

Clarity

I have always liked Liverpool, maybe it’s the fact that we visited often when I was young, maybe it’s the fact that the people are friendly, maybe it’s the heavy Irish influence under the surface everywhere but it definitely has much to do with the people.  However it is also a striking place where there were once untold riches born of the slave trade.  Thankfully the slaves are gone but the architecture across much of the port area has not.  The architecture here is not picturesque, but the evening was!  Looking from here your next sight of land would be the Emerald Homeland itself.

Dungeness

There is the place, a tip of the country where several things are to be found.  Firstly it is the only officially designated ‘desert’ in the UK.  Not what you’d perhaps imagine as a desert, there is no sand only shingle, but it has the sense of desolation you might associate with one.  Secondly there is a lighthouse you can ascend which always yields good views of the surrounding area.  Finally, as glimpsed through this lighthouse glass there is the nuclear power station stating like a monument to Brutalism, ominous and imposing and dominating the landscape for miles.  Hopefully it will only ever be its aesthetic and concept that will be seen as malign.

Saudades

Certain places, certain people, certain times make an indelible impact on our lives.  We know them when they come and lament them when they are gone.  If we are lucky then we have some pictures in our minds, if we are luckier we might also have the odd one or two in photograph.

This luck is counter-balanced sometimes by the flood of memories that can be elicited from the picture(s) we have.  They render everyday routine to a sense of drudgery and ourselves more dissatisfied with our lot than we otherwise might be.  This malaise will pass and we will smile again on the recollections we have.

But something of the saudades will always be there because once something, or someone, has got under your skin like that you are never the same person again.

Ecclesiastical Luminaries

Just a chance position, or likely one chosen by those that cited it, it works too well for mere happenstance.  – Magdalen College Chapel

An Old Friend

So long ago, what must be well more than 30 years now, I visited this place with my father and this little engine was running happily on a small line garnering less attention than a larger more illustrious visitor some yards away.  Due to that lack of attention I was granted a ride in the cab as the engine pulled passengers up the track.  I was a boy, naturally I was interested in trains.  But this was special, this was interaction, this was the noise of the steam, smells of burning furnace and oil and also of loading coal onto the fire to make the engine work.  I never forgot it.

We are both older now, she hasn’t run in more than 20 years but I have returned as a father myself now to introduce my own already train-mad son to my old friend that started it all.

Above The Clouds

Above the Olympics the scenery of Rio continues implacably and irrespectively.  The sky does not see the poverty in the favelas or the temporary opulence in the stadia, all is calm and unlike what is below it will remain so when the fairground is gone.

Lights, Camera…

From afar they resembled swooping and gliding flying fish.  Close up though they became white and looked a little more like sinister banshees!  This was taken when they were nice!

Portrait Of The Artist As A Middle-Aged Man

KONICA MINOLTA 7D

Not exactly Our Man In Havana but a sighting on the continent of oneself by one’s kin. I rarely allow myself captured on film and even less often for it to see the light of day.  Mark ye for shall likely not come again!