Write on beer

Famously, Laurie Lee, one of the nation’s most beloved novelists, wrote ‘on wine’.  Whether or not he was ever drunk in charge of a typewriter is unclear but one has to entertain the possibility that, as a poet, he typed without due care and attention.  He did his writing in the Greek Islands, presumably because in the days before bargain booze, affordable New World wines or even Blue Nun, this was the only way he could become sufficiently inebriated to welcome the Muse should she come to visit.  Also, proximity to Mt Parnassus may have helped.

Rock stars smoke, inject, inhale and presumably occasionally insert for inspiration.  Writers drink.  Christ alone knows why, as excessive booze normally leads to feelings of alienation from the world and a profound sense of being under-appreciated and misunderstood, all of which is achievable through the simple act of publishing a slim volume of verse.  Alcohol also inhibits early morning creativity, and certain writers famously were at their creative peak at first light.  Presumably this meant they could post the latest chapter of their novel off to their publishers at eleven in the morning on their way to the pub.

However, in the spirit of enquiry G&P is embarking on a five-part special to explore the effects of various types of alcohol on writing, beyond those of not being able to remember that fantastic idea for a novel you had last night (something about a boy wizard?) just before you passed out, or not being able to decipher the notes scrawled on a beermat that could be a poem, or somebody’s e mail address.

We continue with…beer.

I am writing this in the pub.  It’s actually called ‘The Red Lion’, which might give an insight into the sort of place it is, at three o’clock on a weekday afternoon, which might give you an indication of my commitment to my research.  Pubs off hours are very different to pubs when civilians (those who drink at Christmas/anyone who orders a Guinness last when getting a round in) frequent them.  They are communities.  The barmaid (who doesn’t know me, I hasten to add, I’m not rich enough to make a habit of this) asked me how I was?  OK, this may be barcraft 101 but it’s also a loaded question.  I’m in a pub at three in the afternoon, chances are things may not be going well (I will need many drinks) or I am celebrating something (many, many drinks, you’re not found ‘not guilty’ every day).  Actually, I see why she asked.

It’s also got a priests hole, and once upon a time there would have been a humorous sign, but Yewtree has fucked that for us as well.

The drink of choice is Stella Artois.  If ever there was an advertising Big Lie, Stella is a prime example of it.  Marketed as posh lager, it even comes, Belgian style, served in its own glass, a goblet style thing.  Anyone who is familiar with this beer knows that it should indeed be served in its own drinking vessel, but that this should be a plastic pint glass.  Stella, you see, has a reputation for turning people into aggressive nutters.

So what should one write on Stella?  Well, I am typing one handed while I make notes for a series of books that will be written under the pen-name of ‘Jack Stroud’ and will follow the fortunes of the males of the ‘Fret’ family as they fight in every war since..,let’s see, yes, the English Civil War.  Titles so far include ‘Royal Fret’, ‘Fret in Tartan’, ‘Fret at the Front’, ‘Frontline Fret’, ‘Fret and the Ruby’, ‘Fret Pulls It Off’, ‘Fret of the Artic’, ‘Fret of the Antarctic’, ‘Fret of the Falklands’, ‘Frantic Fret’, ‘The Fret Files’ (short stories) and, of course, ‘Fret with Wings’ (possibly featuring a female Fret).

Obviously, these will take off (especially the last one).  At that point, I employ an army of ghost writers and project the story of the Fret family backwards, as the Fret family take on the French, the Dutch, the Romans and the Vikings.

A movie adaptation you say?  Ha!  Remember, I’ve been drinking.  Stick your movie option up your arse, along with your assertion that this entire idea is predicated on the plot line from the Forrest Gump movie that every male in Lieutenant Dan’s family line had fought and died in some conflict.

I’m thinking…cut out and dress doll line.  Right?  Right?  Remember those 2D dolls you used to get in the back of magazines, with cut out clothes and tabs and so on?  Well, how about a Fret…but with loads of uniforms, it would be a cross between a really crap and outdated effort to keep kids quiet and a cutting edge publishing phenomenon and, here’s the kicker, it would be fucking useless on Kindle, unless Kindle comes with a printer.

Also, I’d market the cut out and keep doll and costumes with a colouring book and crayons and bundle it with the latest book in the Fret series, subtitled ‘Last of the Frets’ but titled in Great Britain ‘Fucking Fret!’ and in the US or any other country that doesn’t speak English properly ‘Fret’s annoyed’.  The plot is, er, just like the other plots, Fret has a hard time in some conflict, considers leaving, thinks on his family, rediscovers his courage and fucks somebody over with a rusty bayonet that belonged to his grandfather, or a pottery shard that a distant relative left buried in the sand, or in the side of an enemy also buried in the sand…

…details are unimportant.  What’s important is that the story involves Fret, this Fret, finding a diary from a Fret, that Fret, who fought in some previous war that, and here we go, not only gives him the courage to fight on, but actually reveals a hidden path to outflank the enemy.

Fuckin’ YEA!  This is going to be the first colouring book ever to win a BAFTA.  Did I type BAFTA, I mean Booker.  Fuck it, they need to invent a new category of BAFTA, or merge them, the first BOOFTA winner is, me!

So.  That’s beer then.  I suspect bitter might, paradoxically, inspire one to write something bucolic, possibly involving a bicycle and a clergyman, maybe even a crime thriller. But lager?  Lager is a war story in a glass.  Goblet.  Plastic beaker.  Whatever.

Postcard from Norfolk - Daffy and Dickie

  

An association is rather a good thing for a public house.  Fame and infamy can equally add character to a pub and, pubs being pubs and human nature being human nature, any pub of a decent age will be more likely to be infamous than famous.  Pubs, you see, even respectable ones with coffee machines and a breakfast menu, are less likely to be the place where a National Treasure hung her bonnet when writing the sort of fiction that is adapted for Sunday night viewing, and more likely to be the place where a laudanum soaked poet wrote his last before drinking himself into an early grave.  Alternatively, they were frequented by a bloke with the charming name of ‘Mad’, ‘Chopper’, or ‘The Lathe’, once to be avoided and now on a Gangland Walks trail.  Many pubs have Blue Plaques, more still have stained carpets.

Indeed, companies exist that can create character in a pub for you.  They scavenge skips (or to give them their full title rural action houses) and can transform a former car showroom into Ye Olde Something Or Other with the addition of only a few antique agricultural implements and a pine-effect condom dispenser.

However, it takes more than a few antique cigerette or Fry’s chocolate machines converted to dispense vape-sticks and pistachios to give a pub atmosphere, especially since the smoking ban came in.  What a pub really needs to do is a holistic historic makeover, setting up web-sites that will convince you that your local boozer has that most attractive of qualities, a pool table (just kidding, I mean A Past).

I used to drink in a pub that was featured on Crimewatch.  Everyone suspected that the landlord had done his wife in because a) she disappeared and b) the cellar acquired a new concrete floor.  The thing is, he kept a good pint.

Tricky moral decision, but when asked if one wanted a quick one ‘up the murderer’s?’, the answer was usually ‘yes’.  In his defence, I don’t think he served Stella, so he was obviously anti-violence to women.

Many pubs have, of course, been around since pilgrims needed somewhere to stop off for a quick drink before visiting Jerusalem.  Given the state of the Middle East today, that remains a good idea.  The older the pub the ‘richer’ the history, usually featuring, appropriately, claret.  But stabbings, gangland slayings and poetry is the least of it, given the amount of former entertainers, a trade that traditionally like a beer, now being locked up, it’s a wonder the police don’t just visit every pub called ‘The Yew Tree’ and throw a net over the regulars.

Of course, the best a Bristish boozer can boast is a resident highwayman.  Bierkellers are an efficient, mechanised, German pub and, if grainy black and white newsreel footage is to be believed (and why not) most of them were frequented by Hitler.  Not so much a Blue Plaque, more a brown shirt moment.

Britain’s pubs are richly decorated, and not just at chucking out time.  The walls of pubs in Britain are adorned not just with Sky Sport posters but with everything from hunting prints, to tabloid front pages, to wanted posters.  Look closer still and you will see why, in Britain at least, pubs remain haunts of gentlemen; photographs of regulars who may have stepped out, but who remain in spirit.

The Hoste Arms in Norfolk remains one of the best pubs in Burnham Market.  It remains so in rthe face of significant challenges, such as having a spa on site, and being frequented by very wealthy people.  It remains a good pub because the staff are quite, quite lovely and the place is at the same time the last word in excellence and not remotely pretentious.  I have had some great times there and sitting in the October sunshine with a glass of champagne and a springer smelling faintly of beach is one of life’s great joys.

The walls of the bar are adorned with original cartoons by Annie Tempest of her weekly strip (ooh er!) in Country Life magazine, ‘Tottering by Gently’, featuring Lord Tottering (‘Dicky’) and his wife, Daffy.  The strip concerns itself, as far as I can determine, with the upkeep of Tottering Towers, their stately home, red wine, dogs and, bizarrely, social media.  The strip is very ‘Country Life’, a magazine slightly up its own arse, more usually up a fox’s arse, but amusing.

All very lovely and slightly more original than a Space Invaders cabinet converted into a wifi booth or whatever.  A recent addition though are busts of Dicky and Daffy.

It’s always tricky to pull off a likeness of a cartoon character.  The last person to do it successfully was Michael Keaton.  However, one you get over the initial shock, they are actually quite fun.  Daffy is just as you would imagine her, although worryingly close to the red wine.

Dicky is fantastic.  That he does not resemble the cartoon character so well is fortunate, because the bust is an incredible likeness of the late, much missed, Professor Brigadier Richard Holmes.

Possibly the sculptor captures the likeness of the wrong Dicky.  Probably he captured the right one.

And if you were playing pub heritage top trumps, military history beats everything else.  From faded photographs of local lads in kaki, through oil paintings of Spitfires, through to bright photographs of local lads in desert gear, and never forgetting the gentleman in the red jacket, every pub should have a military connection.

Finally, the Hoste has it all.

Postcard from Yorkshire: Theakston's Brewery Tour

When I was in Ireland, I did the Guinness brewery tour. Actually, one has the 'Guinness experience' which is not, as anyone who has had a night on the Guinness might reasonably suspect, a polite reference to the bowel based madness that occurs the next morning, but a fun but sanitised visit to an area of the vast brewery in Dublin which is a sort of cross between a visitor centre, a museum and a sort of beery thrill ride, culminating in a free pint at the bar at the top of the place.


The Theakston's tour was nothing like this. It was a tour, of the brewery. We went into what was a surprisingly small space compete with steam gushing from vents, puddles of water here and there and the sort of very sharp metal corners on equipment that are only found in places where serious people do serious business.


The mystery of brewing was explained to us, and we followed our guide round getting an appreciation of the art. We passed little dishes of malt along the line, tasting a pinch like supplicants taking the Host, we looked into vast tanks full of beer and dodged workers who ignored us and got on with their mysterious work. This was alchemy and the upshot of the fascinating tour was that I now have a greater appreciation of real ale than ever before and I can use the word 'hoplet' (a small plug of compressed hops placed into the barrel of beer prior to sealing it so that it can cask condition) with authority.


The other thing I learned, apart from the astonishing fact that it only takes 15 blokes in the brewery to make all the Theakson's that's made, is that it's important to get the right gear when setting up. When a Leeds steam engine company contacted the brewery and asked if it could have the steam engine they thought might be there, that was over one hundred years old, for its museum, they were told no, as it was still in use. It was too, although I detected that great engineering breakthrough of the twentieth century, gaffa tape, had been employed quite a bit in maintaining it.

Finished the tour in the Black Bull in Paradise, chatting with a chap who had also been on the tour and, from the way he was discussing the real ale, had treated the visit to the brewery as others might perform a pilgrimage.

Beer beer beer

Stopping in at the Adnams 'cellar and home' shop at Holkham, I had a revelation. When wandering the 'cellar' part (much more interesting, there is only so much excitement one can summon for napkins, while beer, wine and gin is a source of constant delight) I saw that their idea of preparing for Christmas was to try and flog more beer.

Rather than try the genius marketing trick I have always favoured when justifying loading the supermarket trolly to the point when the back axle is dragging along the floor of wondering aloud 'do I want to be forever remembered as the host of the party where the booze ran out?' (now though, with the 'Shed Red' sitting maturing in a cupboard, I fear being the host who's guests we reduced to drinking the home brew), they go for the straightforward 'a keg and a tray, it's the Adnams party way'.

That's right, a keg and a tray. Not a keg. Not a tray. A keg and a tray! I am now gravely concerned that without a keg and a tray, I won't be able to party the Adnams way, which I presume means falling asleep pissed behind the sofa at some point.

I have always rather liked kegs, one has has that fabulous need to finish the damn thing on the same night that it is tapped, or it loses fizz or turns to slurry or something. I suppose it harks back to when we had sensible licensing hours and drinking against the clock was a real and valued skill.

Also, one can get several kegs and pretend to be a landlord. Is their anything quite so satisfying as barring one of your own mates?

Norfolk notes - drink

Hydration is important. Normally in England in October one can rely on the elements to try and hydrate you as often as possible, whether you want it or not. But as a family that cannot function without constant supplies of tea, this was the holiday where the thermos flask, and flask tea in particular, came into it's own.

Flask tea is a very particular brew. You can make up your tea however you choose, brew in a pot and decant to a flask, adding the milk on site later separately, or add the milk to the flask and save yourself the hassle. Or just take boiling water in the flask and take the tea bags and the milk separately. It doesn't matter, because once anything from a flask enters a cup; that cup contains flask tea. It's like alchemy, with tea.

The taste is unique. I could describe it as being the result of the thermos flask needing to be sealed and hence depriving the tea of oxygen, or being the result of some sort of in-flask brewing or fermenting process, but the reality is that it's probably the result of not washing out the thermos flask as often or as thoroughly as one should. What makes flask tea taste like flask tea is probably the ghost of soup. That, the tannins and quite a few molecules of metal from the interior of the flask.

It also tastes different because it's served outdoors. Those cowboy movies where they all sit round a camp fire that has a pot of coffee brewing on it, that's flask tea. It's the taste of freedom, of independence and, most of all, tea.

Tea's poor relation, coffee, also got a look in. Oddly, we'd walk on the beach and then have some tea to give us the energy to go somewhere for a coffee. While tea is drunk out of a flask, coffee is taken in pubs or bars or coffee shops because it's hard to reproduce a really good latte from a flask and a cuppachino is impossible because the chocolate sprinkles melt in transit. Having a posh (bought) coffee was not just a treat, it washed the taste of the damn flask tea out of our mouths.

Because I was driving the wagon, I was on it as well and so was denied my normal lunchtime tipple of six pints of whatever has the most interesting decoration on the pump handle. This did not stop others developing a taste for a lunchtime glass of champagne as a reasonable option to a latte. Champagne served by the glass is the sign of a civilised society. It's the perfect lunchtime alternative to coffee in that it is refreshing after a morning's walk, but it won't keep you awake all afternoon.

It also means it's somewhat difficult to make the transition back to work following the holiday. As one stares at a paper cup full of, probably quite decent, coffee, one cannot help feeling a little short changed that it's not a flute of a bubbling beverage that one can describe as 'biscuity'.

Worcester beer festival 2010

Currywurst

Like many Premiership footballers, I enjoy taking pictures of my sausage with my 'phone.

Ever since I saw a ‘close up’ feature about currywurst on the BBC’s news web site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8408716.stm), I’ve been excited to a degree best described as ‘juvenile’ about the prospect of trying this exotic new dish.

Apparently the Germans have the same enthusiasm for curried sausage as they do for lederhosen, beer and war. The origin of the dish is that a German Housefrau in 1940s allied occupied Berlin obtained some curry powder from British troops and created the curried sausage and the lucrative sex-for-food trade at the same time

Currywurst is available in London at Kurz & Lang, 1 St. John Street, Smithfield, London (www.kurzandlang.com). They are, apparently, a German sausage importer and the shop has a small café attached. And by café, I mean griddle in a room.

The café itself is a monument to white tiling, like a better class of public convenience. There is a shelf running along the front windows and at this you can sit up on stools, watching the world go by while passers-by look in end envy you your hot sausage and cold beer. Those having their wurst inside get it on a china plate, those who wish to sit outside at the small tables on the pavement and fag up get paper plates.

Inside it’s a cosy and warm place to be on a winter’s evening. The hiss and sizzle of sausages cooking on the griddle complete with the banging tunes coming out of the radio, more commercial rock than oompah. It wasn’t in the least crowded but there was an atmosphere, which by my reckoning was never less than about 70 per cent pork fat and occasionally took on an almost solid appearance not unlike one of my more enthusiastic weekend fry-ups.

There are a variety of sausages on offer, all cooked by an authentic German chap sporting a rather unfortunate beard. I went for the posh end of the wurst experience; currywurst, sauerkraut, fried potato and a roll. In truth all you need is sausage and sauce and roll.

The currywurst is a sausage, smothered in a spicy brown sauce and then sprinkled with curry powder. Seeing curry powder shaken over sausage and sauce was truly a cultural shock and something of a taste sensation. Curry powder in British cuisine has the reputation of being used timorously by housewives in the late 1970s to bring a touch of the exotic to the dinner table. But not too exotic - lest one inflame passions that, in an era heavy on man-made fibres and material, might lead to chaffing, or tremendous static discharge. No, you used just enough to have you reaching for your glass of blue nun.

It was quite a surprise to see that it’s curry powder that gives the currywurst its kick, not so much a curry sauce, Curry sauce is, of course, a staple of after hours cuisine in the Midlands where, smothering chips, it is often the last, desperate throw of the dice to try and head off a hangover. It’s probably possible to work out where you are in Britain by what people put on chips, curry sauce means Midlands, chips and gravy means t’north and chips and cheese is, of course combined with a glass of white wine to constitute the ‘ladies special’ at the Café Piccante in Edinburgh. (www.cafepiccante.com). God knows what they serve further north than that; maybe the national dish of the Shetlands is chips and sheep dip.

To drink? An excellent lager – pauliner in this case, but there was quite a selection. It was such a shock not to be grossly overcharged for decent German beer that I quite forgot to steal the glass as a souvenir.

Also on sale was Jagermeister (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4germeister). This was sold in a bottle (from which you pour a shot), a little bottle (from which you pour a shot), and in a test tube (and if you’re drinking from that, it’s time to go home). I’m wary of drinking anything from a test tube as a search of literature shows this inevitably leads to transformation into Mr Hyde. Unleashing an inner beast without conscience usually happens when I drink stella anyway.

In addition I’m made aware that there’s a practice called Jagerbombing, surely the preserve of somebody hell bent on self-destruction, you drop a shot of Jagermeister into a glass of red bull and end up hammered but unable to sleep it off. It’s exactly this sort of behaviour that makes you hellish grumpy and sets a nation down the road of fascism.

Fast food, convivial atmosphere, with booze! Surely this is the way forward.

Postcard from Spain - Bar none

When on holiday, your behaviour is somewhat determined by your nationality. If you’re a German, you lie on a sunbed from dawn to dusk turning a disturbing mahogany colour. You do this topless. Note – German men invariably have bigger boobs than German women.

If you’re a Brit, you head to the bar for respite from the sun, Germans and whoever you are on holiday with and drink for a bit, noticing that all the Spanish in the bar are nursing small but incredibly powerful coffees – this is because they are trying to stay awake during siesta time. The bars are deliciously dark and cool, surrounded as you are by wooden panelling on the walls and cooled by regular wafts of cold air from the fridge being opened and closed to get you a fresh, cold glass for your beer.

The thing about this area of Spain is that they acknowledge that it gets hot as the hobs of hell. This is why they have siesta (best time to invade Spain, 2-4 Monday to Friday). It’s also why their bars are wee hole in the wall affairs, long and narrow, the better for creating shady areas at the back, like a cave, with a beer pump and tapas.

In a major concession to location, I patronised a bar/restaurant on the beach. There’s a lot to be said for a shady nook (my favourite example of the art is in Seville), but also a lot to be said for sipping a beer a few feet from the Mediterranean gently washing back and forth. I mean, if you’re in danger of overheating, you can always paddle.

Plenty of nose

In a recent presentation (powerpoint, natch) to the French President, the impact of global warming was illustrated, not with images of stricken Banglideshi children flooded out of their Nike factories, but by the movement of the optimum weather for growing champagne grapes away from France and over to SE England.

Sacre Blu! Say the French.

Formidable, say I. I was especially tickled because I learned of this the week after planning a vine in my very own back garden.

Jeremy is now firmly embedded and, I hope, thriving. Indeed my next mission is to source some poles and stuff for him to climb along.

In the meantime, I am occupying myself by daydreaming about bottling my first run of Château Macnabbs and doodling logos for my ‘vineyard’. So far the leading designs are a stylised bunch of grapes or a Ford Transit bearing the words ‘Van Ordinaire’.

Something tells me that the combination of clay soil, together with contamination from cat pee and creosote from the nearby shed, will ensure my vintage will be rather ‘vin de table’ but, as long as none is actually spilled on the varnish of the table in question, I trust we’ll be okay.

Don’t know if I’ll actually get a crop this year but this has not stopped me from starting to look at wine making kits and preparing to say at parties that ‘I’m into wine production, in a small way’. Bloody small in fact. Indeed, I’ve promise a few friends a bottle of the Château Macnabbs ’08 and even then I think I’m pushing my luck although, thinking about it, maybe the answer is to go with those miniature bottles you get on aeroplanes.

HUmmmn, wonder if I can get a hop plant from somewhere? If I put my mind to it, I might become self-sufficient in booze!