Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Recently I was stood outside Huddersfield Railway Station waiting for my Replacement Bus Service. I was eating much needed food from a nearby fast food outlet and contemplating my next move. Other match-goers had gone home but I had over 50 minutes to wait for my bus. We’d already been to a few of our post-match regular spots and so I was…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE There’s a set of garages to rent as storage units near my workplace. One of them is taken by a local florist that uses it to store flower arrangements for various events, that are more often than not funerals. As such, at least once a week at 8am I will pass a car being loaded up with flowers arranged into heart shaped patterns or the letters M U M.…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE A pint in Mr Foley's Tap House from December 2022 This is Part 3 (the fourth post) of an ongoing project. Please see the beginning of Part 0 for details. Come the end of this journey, there may be a lesson in procrastination that I am unlikely to heed. These posts stem from a list that I made three years ago and a series that I embarked on 18 months…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE I once took my niece to the pub. She was either 1 or 2 years of age. I often looked after her on Saturdays and on one of our weekly walks, for the first time, I stopped by the local pub, mainly because my friend was there with his daughter of similar age. The two kids got on well together and it was a lovely couple of hours; a perfect showcase of…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE The ritual of the after work pint has to remain a sanctity. I’m on my third beer. I’m being picked up from the pub in 15 minutes. I have about a quarter of my pint left. I’m relaxed and mulling over some words I’ve just jotted down about the pub as a sanctuary. But there’s a niggling in the back of my mind that it is making editing the words…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE I first obtained my booze “bragging rights” drinking 4 cans of the black stuff at a house party in my mid-teens. Teenage masculinity was judged on one’s ability to put away alcohol in the early noughties. It appears trite and toxic now but, as a 15-year-old, to hear my older brother’s friends say “Well played mate, I couldn’t down that stuff” was the…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Manchester's alright. It does a job as a city. It's got a bit of music based history if that's your bag, and it has managed to house two of the biggest football teams on the planet - ergo the two most annoying fan bases in sport history - within its metaphorical walls. It didn't have a huge impact on the country until the 19th century but is now…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Dear Reader / Bend when you can / Snap when you have to / Dear Reader / You don't have to answer just 'cause they asked you My beer stash still mostly lives in the shed. In 2022 it was subjected to varying temperatures across 50°C. The argument about beer storage has always been one that I have longed to debunk. Whilst temperature control is…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE I began 2022 with a couple of dry weeks in the month of January. It wasn’t the entire month but still the longest I’d gone without a pub visit for a good number of years. I needed it. I’d actually looked forward to it. It was a necessary break to hit reset. I was drinking too much. I hadn’t handled a couple of big personal losses in 2021 well and this…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE For an introduction to these posts see Part 0. People find their homes. Some visit cities and find that they are suited to the cosmopolitan lifestyle. Some find idyllic spots in the Lakes or in little villages in the Peak District or along the North Yorkshire coast. These become frequent holiday destinations, or a retirement plan, or even their actual…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE I just like pubs. The rise of the "micro-pub" has been rather incredible in the last five years. It often feels as though you will find one previously non-licensed and repurposed small drinking venue in every town you can name. They have become the anti-thesis to the Pubco and Tied-Lined controlled public houses, that have been losing customers on a…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE There was a time when the rock was magic. There was a time that it was at its most magical in its unhuman form. Never before had a beer release captured the entire community. The annual release of Un-Human Cannonball from Magic Rock, in those glorious 660ml bottles, was an unparalleled event in the UK beer calendar for a few years. People set alarms…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE This year makes it ten years that I've been writing about beer in blog form. In celebration I thought I'd borrow from Boak & Bailey's 15 year anniversary format and answer some questions from my Twitter followers. Thank you to everybody that took the time to even bother putting questions forward and sorry to anybody who doesn't enjoy excessive use of…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Orangery behind Westgate station For an introduction as to why I am bothering with these ventures, please see the beginning of Part 0 here. Wakefield was always a different sort of Yorkshire city. I have spent many an hour trying to defend the "It's a shithole" reviews that others would give it, with little arsenal to use. Even those that lived and…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Nobody knows that I still tread the same walking route that we did during his last year. Nobody knows that I stop and sit by the stream that he loved playing in, have a sip of juice and picture him splashing in the water. Nobody knows that I feel the tall reeds in my fingers, in a scene reminiscent of Gladiator, through the long meadow grass that he…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE During the initial lockdown months of 2020, I indulged in some of the social media hoo-ha that became the "10 day series." "Post an album a day for 10 days that influenced your music tastes." "Post a computer game a day for 10 da..." you get the picture. All rather drab but entertainment was required. One such game was the "10 pubs that influenced…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Over the weekend, I travelled on a number of different trains to a couple of different pubs and beer events. It was the first time since the start of the pandemic that everything about the day felt part of a previous lifetime; one that had been merely paused for a couple of years and restarted. It came just a week or so after the 2 year anniversary of…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE As this project has been halted, like the majority of life, for 18 months, I allowed myself a small cheat to get back into the swing of things. My house, my rules. The reason for these excursions is detailed in previous post such as the original one in 2019 . This excursion happened in September 2021, as pubs were still tentatively waking up to a…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Are you really gonna talk about timing in times like these? And let all your damage damage me It can't possibly be March. It is possibly around the second week of January, which is still too late for a round-up of the previous year. However, closure helps one move on and progression sometimes require the closing of a door. Please accept that most of…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE From mid-2014 to late-2015 the idea of life as a long-term project had been lost to me. I was fighting against the internal cries to end everything and those months became about existing from one day to another. Whilst various prescribed drugs and therapies…
When I were a lad this was all fields Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE In fact, I lived that experience a little as a child. Our estate backed on to a lot of fields. They all had nicknames that may or may not have been devised by our gang - inventive titles such as The Sandhills and The Backfield. Some were for making dens, others were for playing football. We were always, in some…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE It is the fourth week of the UK’s experimental appropriation of Bart Simpson’s “Do-What-You-Feel” Festival. Keeping yourself and others safe is now a choice rather than a requirement. “You have no idea how long we’ve waited for this” says the nightclub punter interviewed on local news, possibly living in a different universe to the rest of us who are…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE The doors are open. The gabble of chatter can be heard from the street. The sky is an undisturbed blue. The anticipation has been building for hours as the seats are taken, the orders received and the first glass is placed on the table. The moment is finally here. At least, that is the romanticised version of events that had played in my head for the…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE For the rest of my time, I will remember the exact stretch of woodland I was in as the origin of this post was forming. Across the stream, a break in the trees opens onto a miry marshland where a Golden Retriever, tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth, is doing his upmost to find the muddiest…
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE The below trip was experienced just over a year ago now. I've postponed writing about it as the current situation has continued and the future of pubs has been in doubt. For completion's sake, and with the suggestion that I can look forward to starting these trips up again next season, I've written the below. My experiences are based on a pre-pandemic…