The fruits of my labour

Brewing beer is big business; distribution is bigger still. There are more and more pubs run by the same big breweries; Wetherspoon’s remodels ailing buildings from banks to theatres and smears them with microwavable curry. Butler & Smith disguise themselves in a chain of drinking holes from the student Scream pubs to 'buy a bottle of vinegar disguised as wine for a fiver' pubs through to All Bar One. You wouldn’t even know they were B & S (it’s not even on the small print of some menus). Then, the other end of the brewery cunning spectrum is Sam Smith’s with its 160 pubs serving its own brand Ale, Lager and Spirits.

I like pubs, I have loved working with them, drinking in them and learning about the produce behind their heavenly oak portals. (A pub with a good bit of timber is preferable, always.) I revel in discovering new ones, and when visiting a new city, they are always a preference. York was the new city this time round, and what a place for the hallowed portals of draft and drizzle. Adding to the Yorkshire tradition of ale drinking, and proud pubbing (Sam Smiths is a Yorkshire brewery) is the twelve year old ale brewer, York Brewery, and tagged York’s One and Only. The founders evidently have a first-rate idea of the Trades Description Act. The brewery is home to a twenty barrel brew, and nine different ales, five of which are brewed on cycle all year round and with four guests. I don’t drink ale. I drink lager -- starting on Fosters when I was eighteen and worked in my local with an alcoholic Savoy trained chef for a boss. Fosters was the lager of local choice, and I got rather drunk on three pints of 1664, so I drunk the pretend Aussie pizzle.

York Brewery, after a morning of variously arranged stuffed dogs (and cats) in exhibitions at York Museum, was a refreshing little escape from pubs in town, and, much over the counter draft ale. Centurion’s Ghost, a dark bitter with the palate of a rich, round merlot and an after taste of sour cream was at the brewery clear, rich and fresh. At the Golden Fleece, the most haunted pub in town, it was a thick, opaque glass of chalk. Needless to say, I didn’t finish my half.

Over the next few months I will sampling various beers, wine and gins, watching my gusset - and fatigued sense of doom - grow. Nice.

Get me outta here...

It has been brought to my attention that 'i'm a d-lister, and double d cup and I want some tele exposure' is back on the tele box from next week. Flying to Sydney the same week as some of these 'old school stars' facilitates a fun game to play in international departure lounges and boarding queues. Clearly I'll be aiming high, and where the regular fame academy of Amy, Katy and Russell all have distinctive hair dos and silly boots, Amy’s dad looks like a cabbie and that girl what Russell did and then told her grandpa looks like most girls hanging about looking sullen. Basically, many of the performers that chance their career and ass over the long drop in the jungle, look like normal people. So every mumsy looking lady with over coloured red hair could be Whigfield and every grumpy middle aged guy embracing a truly awful spiked haircut could be bros - or Jedward post a nasty crack addiction following their startling fall from reality involving some old guy in an alley who sounded similar enough to Simon Cowell. I digress. The only problem with all these rock and roll encounters is my flight goes via Tokyo, for a week, give or take, and then on to Sydney. So the lunch stop over in Heathrow and the fidgeting time in Sydney on the way to Melbourne, land of the ever changing climate and Conor off neighbours, all occur just as the TV show starts. Maybe Peter Andre's mum will be jetting in late from Cyprus to tell the world how wronged her son was, I'm sure she'll be easy to pick out of the hoards of holidaying ladies. Or Joan Jet's daughter's mate's niece who is launching a singing career with a cover of Britney Spear's version of I Love Rock & Roll from that karaoke competition in Crossroads. (The film starring Britney Spears and a hunk of a male lead NOT the ITV Soap Opera which returned to territorial TV screens in 2001 only to be axed two years later with the whole cast waking up and finding ironically the end of their acting career's final role to have just been a dream.) Saying that, maybe someone from Crossroads will be in the Jungle. I'm getting my double failed career radar googles ready for Heathrow, programmed for Crossroads. You never know, the BBF off Britney’s version may be there...

vamoosh numero uno

welcome to my blog. although in many senses of the word blogs went out of fashion in 2004 comment is still cheap enough, so here's mine.