Tag: drinking

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I probably made a poor choice to make a bumper post covering the entirety of my time off work. I’ll publish the first two weeks now and update the post when I have finally pulled out my finger and finished writing it!

I landed an early summer holiday in the leave rota at work, which also fell between two long weekends. The net result was pretty much a month off work. Armed with a fortnight of unlimited rail usage, some adventures were had.

Spent a few days visiting the parents. I shall spare the main complaints.

First main trip was a run up to Newcastle to catch up with some of the chaps from training school who are based up there. Unfortunately, this visit coincided with Newcastle United winning some football game and having a parade through town. Many busy pubs and pints in plastic cups were enjoyed. The Wetherspoon I was staying at ran out of chips. I also had a ride out on the Metro, before the old trains become baked bean cans.

Next was a bit of a tour of the South East. First stop was Oxford, where I had booked in to see David Starkey talk at the Literary Festival. Very conveniently, a recording of the talk was uploaded whilst I was writing this for posterity1I started writing this on April 28th. I really do put in the effort to press the publish button.. Then onto Reading where I had booked the country’s shitiest Travelodge for digs. I suspect it used to be a 1970s office building that had been converted to a hotel, except no effort was made to modernise any of the original bits. I also paid a visit to the Nags Head, a quality pub that I had last attended over a decade before for a beer launch. Original football stadium signage was, happily, still in situ.

The following day took me to West London, where I took part in a loaded test run of a battery powered train. I was interested in the tech side mainly, considering that most of the rolling stock I work on is currently of the diesel variety, so I’m likely going to be using trains with a similar powertrain in the future. There was also an informative presentation from the engineering team afterwards, along with some freebies that are a part of these corporate events. I am now rocking a fetching lanyard at work. The return to Reading was supplemented by some more Wether-spotting in such exciting locations as Slough and Windsor.

The tour of Berkshire continued into the final day, where I dropped into the delightful concrete jungle of Bracknell. Most of this has been pulled down now, or been hidden behind cladding, so its starting to look a bit more 21st Century now. It’s still ongoing though, with a couple of massive car parks and office buildings all boarded up awaiting demolition. The big hotel in the centre has also shut down.

Next up was a visit to North Wales, primarily for Wether-spotting in Wrexham, Mold, Ruthin and Shotton. I managed to additionally drop into a former Spoons in Holywell, which is now independently operated. Although you’d never notice looking at the menu which provides a like-for-like selection of items to choose from. There was also time for some cultural nonsense, as I had time to pop into St Winefride’s Well. There was also the opportunity to do a devotional dunking but, as this was a spur of the moment visit, I hadn’t come prepared with suitable towels and shorts.

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    I started writing this on April 28th. I really do put in the effort to press the publish button.

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I’d accumulated a fair bit of unused leave from last year, so I was kept being given various odd days off from work. As a result, I managed a few barely planned away days, including:

  • A mistimed visit to Newark: we were intending to go to the Triangle Beer Festival, but got there a week early.
  • Wakefield: where we managed to get into the Red Shed.
  • London: where Verdant were having a tap takeover at the Shirker’s Rest, so of course I got my fill of Putty.
  • Doncaster: where a day of easy drinking began with a 17% abv American stout and an 11% Italian stout.
    • Whilst I successfully made it back and was fairly fine in the morning, Rich was less so given the text I received from him the following morning where he had fallen asleep on the bus and then had to walk across Leeds to get home.
  • Skegness: where I wouldn’t ordinarily choose to go, but needs must for a stag do.
    • There was no cask at Butlin’s, as was to be expected, but they had bottles of Doom Bar available. Some bars also had it on keg – abomination! Needless to say, a lot of lager was consumed.
    • Considering the captive market, the beer pricing was not as excessive as I may have expected

I somehow managed to corrupt the memory card in the camera, so I annoying lost a batch of pictures that I hadn’t got around to copying onto the computer. I don’t think there were any of great importance, so I’ll just carry on as usual.

 

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New year was a bit of a washout then. I was going to go to the pub but it was raining exceedingly heavily, so I resorted to my own supplies.

The Grannywagon was serviced and tested for another year. The rear shock absorbers needed replacing, but overall the cost was not too excessive. I was expecting the shock absorbers to be a big spring, but in reality they look more like the stays on the boot lid. The coil springs are a separate component, apparently.

A couple of trips out. First was a day trip around the Dearne triangle of random small towns. The highlight was the Wath Tap micropub, where I ended up surrounded by a birthday party for one of the regulars there. I was also able to collect a few more Spoons for the tick list.

Next was a couple of days in Blackpool. It snowed and froze over whilst I was there, unusually for the coast, so I slid over a few times and obtained some cuts and bruising. The copious amounts of booze consumed on the Thursday pub crawl probably didn’t help.

My new years splurge was on a Choyong LC90 radio which, probably uniquely, combines both a shortwave tuner and an internet stream and Bluetooth receiver in one unit. It has some quirks and oddities but seems to work fairly competently. I’ll probably write up some more substantial opinions on the thing once I’ve used it for a few weeks.

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This would have been two weekly posts, but as I had difficulty changing the original post setting from ‘draft’ to ‘published’, you can cope with a combined fortnightly post instead.

The presence of a long weekend along with a desire to do something that wasn’t sleeping lead to a hastily arranged trip to that there London. Hastily arranged as in all planned at 2300 the day before whilst at work. A cheapo hotel room was obtained in Kingston-upon-Thames so that became the focus of drinking activities. I managed to collect a few more Spoons for the collection, and also some other pubs for the purists. Highlight location was probably Surbiton, which I had unfortunately left until late on, so didn’t make it around everywhere I had my eye on. A return visit will be in order, along with Tolworth which also had some interesting looking establishments that I saw going past on the bus.

A more local drinking session took place in Wakefield with Rich. As a result, I am now in possession of a deerstalker.

I came across a heavily discounted parka-type coat that I purchased, which came in handy for a period of unusually cold weather. The heating in the flat has now been switched on too. There was also a heavy dumping of snow that made getting home from a late pub shift, that would normally take around 35 minutes, take around three hours instead.

Also picked up on the cheap was a pod coffee machine. Teach me not to proof read, I got this last week. Anyway, the following still stands: Now, I fully appreciate that coffee pods work out more expensive per cup and have a potentially dubious environmental record, however the convenience of not having to grind beans, warm up the espresso machine and then clean it up afterwards when I just want a quick shot to go wins out overall. Fellow pod machine owners have also pointed me towards some alternative avenues to pick up pods at a lower price point that I shall investigate.

The coffee machine at the church kitchen had been playing up for the past couple of weeks. It was ascertained that perhaps reassembling the filter bowl completely – i.e. putting the spring mount back in – after cleaning it would stop it flooding the counter with coffee.

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I’ve moaned previously about the disconnect between the national management of the Campaign for Real Ale (saying that membership should not expect or demand discounts on products) and the membership of said organisation (expecting or demanding discounts on products). That memo doesn’t seem to have reached local branch management. One of the local branch team was in having a loud discussion. His view was that pubs should be offering discounts to CAMRA members, as that is the only reason people join CAMRA and go to pubs.

Yes, it was the neighbouring pub’s beer festival again so there was some overspill of beer veg demanding half pints with discounts.

I still stand that The Barking Guitarist should remove the pub’s own CAMRA discount; nobody else is making up the 20 pence shortfall per pint, and all those 20p’s add up. Particularly now with all commercial bills going sky high. Only the most fickle or moronic are going to stop frequenting the premises if they aren’t saving pennies a time. If someone isn’t prepared to pay the going rate for a product they care about, they probably don’t really care about it after all.

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The main event of the (three) week(s) was Collin’s wedding. This required a trip back to Lancashire so the Grannywagon got a bit of a blast over the peaks and around the motorways. The perpetual Smart Motorway (i.e. stupid) roadworks along the M6 have moved slightly north so I wasn’t able to avoid the average speed checks.

I booked a B&B without breakfast – should that be a BnotB? Most of the weekend was spent drinking. The wedding itself was a generally subdued affair, with the guest numbers being reduced to 30 in place of the originally intended 200+. The lack of a proper reception/party was made up by the food being exceptionally good. Congratulations to Jonners and Mel.

I never did get that nice pair of shoes I wanted in part 116-119.

I’d made it a long weekend so I dropped by to see the folks on the way back. The remnants of a shelf of belongings were handed over, along with a bunch of tools from my late grandad’s shed that had been kept aside – including a power drill, wood plane, a collection of saws and a pair of shears. I did wonder whether I would use any of these, but a large bow saw came in handy when dealing with some buddleia that had cropped up in the side passage. Always have tools handy.

The pub has returned to table service inside, so similar to the situation in the autumn just gone. Despite the pleasant weather, most patrons take seats inside so dealing with orders is much easier as everything is within sight of the bar. Roll on the return counter service and it will be the enjoyable moonlighting activity it previously was.

I’ve quit the booze again, and gone so far as to pour the contents of the drink cupboard down the sink. Put simply, I drink far too much and don’t know when to stop which then means I go and do stupid things. The final straw came after a session in Leeds with Ricardo: upon arriving back home, I attempted to do DIY whilst exceedingly inebriated (clever, no?) and sprained my ankle falling off a ladder. Gone too far, so need to stop.

I lost another green hat. Never mind, ebay to the rescue – I now have three more! They’re only £3.50 a piece so I’m not losing out much when one goes astray, and somebody gains a free hat as a prize if they find where I left it.

The summer is very much here, which means the unique microclimate that is the two floors of the house is very much in operation. Upstairs is ridiculously warm and stuffy, with the heating thermostat reading around 23°C. Downstairs is generally cool and comfortable, with the old heating thermostat that wasn’t removed but still shows a readout showing a readout around 19°C. No idea what causes that, but I’m spending more time downstairs as a result. Maybe I should call them the summer and winter floors instead of ground and first?

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I’ve been slack of late. This post has been sat in drafts waiting for me to finish it but I’ve not been bothered to do so. Here goes a catch up, then.

  • There was a beer festival at a neighbouring establishment (“pox-secure” by being pre-book only, two hours max per session) meaning that there was an overspill of beer veg demanding halves of everything with a CAMRA discount. Or a CAMDRA discunt, more like.
  • Apparently, there is so much work for tradesmen at the moment they are willing to work weekends. Therefore, the landlord was able to schedule the annual gas safety check on a Saturday.
  • I’ve started shopping in Sheffield more often – it’s only 30 minutes away – purely to frequent the Beer Central off licence in the Moor Market. Nice people and good range.
  • Richard correctly predicted earlier in the year that there would be another EconomyFuck shutdown. As a result, there were a few last minute trips out:
    • In an effort to use up some of the farcical level of accrued annual leave, a mid week trip to Coventry occurred. The Spoons there were knocking out Jaipur for £1.69 a pint. I think this was the cause of my falling over on the way to the hotel.
    • The following day saw was in Stoke on Trent, for a viewing of Jimmy Cauty’s MdZ Estate installation-in-a-box. Well worth a visit if you like weird subersive stuff, it’s next location of Leicester Hull. I may well go again.
    • A quick weekend trip to Leeds. Leeds had gone into Tier 2 EconomyFuckLite so to cover our bases, we ventured out to still Tier 1 Harrogate and Knaresborough on the Saturday. Most of the Leeds pubs hadn’t bothered opening on Sunday, so most of the day was spent in the new Head of Steam.
      • I may have bought a quite expensive can of imported US beer. Actually, I think I did.
    • Halloween was spent in York. Unknowingly, they’d entered Tier 2 that day and most places were being completely overzealous in their application of the guidelines. As a result, The Humph and The Mullet got most of our trade that day.
  • I bought a hedge trimmer to sort out the green wall in my front yard. It didn’t end well. Luckily, Doc Rob was able to attend to apply a repair and the trimmer lives to see another day.

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  • In another round of “throw some shit and see what sticks”, the pub now has to close at 22:00. As well as robbing me of a couple of hours of wage a week, it won’t make any difference to the pox. Particularly if everyone is milling the streets looking for taxis at the same time, it may encourage take-up. Maybe that’s what the Government wants so they can bump off a few pensioners/benefit claimers and save a few quid. Cynical me, no?
  • Took a day trip out to Newark. The usual round of Castle Barge, Just Beer, Prince Rupert, Just Beer again, and the Arse Doctor. Richard introduced me to the concept of beer cocktails, learnt from the landlady of the Trafalgar Bay in York. One of these was the ‘Black Forest Gateaux’ – consisting of one part Samuel Smith Chocolate Stout and one part Samuel Smith Cherry Beer. We clocked that Just Beer stocked the Chocolate Stout and made a subsitution of Lindeman’s Kriek for the cherry component. Works extremely well.
  • The Derby car club electric cars, which were of the Renault Zoe variety, have been replaced with new BMW i3 models. They have the benefit of a greater range (160-200 miles compared to the 60-80 miles of the Renault); but the interiors are made of the world’s cheapest plastic and they drive like a dodgem. The brakes automatically apply when the accelerator is released, whereas the Renault coasts when you come off the gas which is more akin to the behaviour of a fossil fuel motor. I’ll probably get used to it over time.
  • Some person on the internet may have revealed how to get an ordinary current account with a private bank. Despite my recent slimming down, I may have drunkenly opened an account using said method.