Brains SA 4.2% £2.95
Copper Dragon Best Bitter 3.8% £2.85
Stonehenge Pigswill 4.0 % £2.85
Oldershaw Regal Blonde 4.4% £2.95
Caledonian Double Dark Oatmeal Stout 4.6% £2.95
Guest Beers 13th November 2009
November 13th, 2009A one way street named Hopback Entire Stout
November 12th, 2009Sometimes life comes at you full on. Maybe it can’t get any better or perhaps you get handed one of those hospital passes that smack you in the face and leave you wondering…
One sinking sip, another inhalation and a deep palateal reflection. Mesmerise into the darkness of the caramel. What a disguise! There is music but no road out. The talk flows around you just as the flavour rolls across the tongue; sensation penetration. Gentle inebriation.
A one way street named Hopback Entire Stout.
A golfer’s eulogy
November 8th, 2009When his game is up,
And prompts no more debate,
And life’s unerring drive,
Ascends the green of fate,
It will I’m sure be said,
By crowds that filled the gallery,
That upright was his stance,
Whilst stood upon the final tee,
And when the last put drops,
Stewards will murmur from afar,
In marking of his card,
He played his round in level par.
sediment
November 8th, 2009Brussel sprout flavoured isosceles triangles
available from a good gastro geometric outlet near you,
banana trapezium, its full flavour slips down well at the gymnasium,
merry go round in toffee apple infused circles,
square noises chop through imperfect ponds and
glass fronted hurricane shop windows stir up
enthusiasms not yet tempered in pink.
Estate agents spin their ceramics on
bamboo pole extensions, losing the pattern
as simply as arboreal baby castanets,
discretion being valued as highly as
enthusiasm amid the placations of the assuaged.
The fire crackles on and the guitar rests
calmly on the spots of the sofa,
notwithstanding the variously striped cushions.
Passing conversations
November 8th, 2009Passing conversation in the queue at one of the mens toilets in the Millenium Stadium – one person coming out talking to another going in. It lasted five seconds.
Hey how’d the MOT go?
Not bad thanks – only forty quid.
Good, got away with that then!
They continued on their separate ways.
He turned to me and said – that was my dad.
VOGUE
November 8th, 2009Ralph Lauren and Jimmy Choo,
Louis Vuitton and Prada too.
The wonders of Tiffany,
A YSL epiphany.
See the Marc Jacobs catwalks,
Read the trend debates and talks.
Heels to die for,
Dresses girls cry for.
The do’s and dont’s,
The certainly won’ts.
But never do I see
A smile upon a single one
Of those models faces.
Looks like AA Gill
November 5th, 2009Smart grey suit with dark lapels, grey silk Liberty handkerchief, crisp white shirt & expensive watch on his right wrist
Effeminate voice.
Completely out of place at the buffet bar on the 7.29 from Newark Northgate to London Kings Cross.
Teddy Bear
November 3rd, 2009He may be small,
He may be big,
But he’s definately good to hug.
I love him to bits,
I think he’s wonderful,
and I’ve had him all my life.
Although he’s tattered and he’s torn he’s still standing tall,
He’ll still be there when I’m eighty four,
Yes thats my teddy bear.
Foods Of The Family
November 3rd, 2009From an original idea from Hannah with help from Megs in the pool.
Stella, Stella, Chicken Paella,
Lily, Lily, Sausages are silly,
Meg, Meg, boiled egg,
Hannah, Hannah, bendy bananas,
John, John, tea and scone,
Joe, Joe, ate his big toe,
Tom, Tom, bacon bap bomb,
Tref, Tref, fruit instead, (NO),
Anne, Anne, dropped the frying pan,
Toby, Toby, alu gobi,
Ann, Ann, doesn’t like ham,
Sue, Sue, vindaloo,
Eileen, Eileen, ate a bean,
Tadcu, Tadcu, ate his hanky,
Mair, Mair, champion fryer!
Dark outside
November 1st, 2009It’s getting dark outside. The clocks went back last week and the nights have closed in on us. I like this time of year. This afternoon I cleaned the grate out and set the fire ready for a cosy evening on the settee.
As I fetched in some kindling from the woodpile at the bottom of the garden a small bird flew across the lawn and into the hedge. Getting ready for a quiet nestle in the nest for the evening no doubt.
We are all at it. All is well.
IOM 2009
October 30th, 2009Then. Island living. You make your own entertainment. Long winter nights radiating around coal fires in smoky-dark front parlours of elbow-worn public houses.
The road outside leads grimly to the tidal harbour, lashed full of herring boats battened down against the storms that visit now as regularly as tourists in summer.
There is little movement during the shortened days. Beds stay occupied when there is no fishing and the nets have been seen to. Oil lamps supervise the weekly news from the rest of the island. Shadows are cast and the narrow cobbles between the houses rarely see direct sunlight.
Quilts are stitched and there is the unvarying routine of keeping the household going. Fireblack, scrubbing the doorstep, breadmaking, the Monday washroom mangle, the gossip over the doorstep with the neighbours.
Sundays present little variation to the theme. Some tidy up and in their best suits pay homage to the All Powerful, praying perhaps for a gap in the weather.
Now. The jungle is long tamed and grows tidily in pots and on trellises seen through French windows. Concessions are made to island life. The internet brings a choice of entertainments and world news updated by the minute. Virtual escapism.
Beds stay occupied when the storms lash the golf course though nowadays the Church only half fills. The occasional sortie to Safeway replenishes supplies and the hatches are closed again.
There is little fishing except in the long summer days when generations come to visit and chaos reigns. The noise and the laughter evokes memories of other times.
Walks down to the promenade and the lifeboat lead to a spot of rock pooling around the castle. Ice-cream parloured sticky- faces complain about sandy feet and want lifts back up the hill.
Maturer beer-stirred relaxations outside the marina facing Creek Inn are followed by gourmet dinners back at HQ.
Visits all too short though as long as anyone can cope with.
After early morning goodbyes, it grows quiet again and a deep peace settles over The Grove. Old friends, the couple, fifty years young, reflect on the harmony of their half century together and smile.
For Alun and Eileen Davies
Dolgellau 1961 – 1967
October 30th, 2009They made it. Across the Cambrian divide and with it came total immersion for her in the language of the hills. The lush surroundings a fertile backdrop for the young couple with a growing family.
Friday night out with the boys, Saturday mornings refereeing rugby matches. Nursing, the stroll down the hill into the village, post office and corner shop, Christmas came with Babycham and bottle top badges proclaiming Pale Ale by the crate.
Mountains were climbed, sandcastles built and long, cross country journeys spent in the car back to the coalfields.
Machynlleth, Aberystwyth, Aberaeron, Lampeter, Cross Hands, bus trips into Llanelli, Carmarthen and Swansea.
Carwyn James, The Farmers Arms. Slack coal on tips picked with Rachel Mary drws nesa’. The shed with the gas mask and world war two helmet. Bryn’s pop factory; coloured bottles that could never be successfully hidden from small prying eyes. Welshcakes, visits from Uncle Glan and Anti Lilian, Cei and Clarice.
John the baker and the co-op van vied with the mobile library to provide distraction. Tenby. Cricket in the back garden, hide and seek in the front. The tin bath in front of the fire, the cupboard under the stairs and the cold, dark, downstairs toilet out the back.
For Alun and Eileen Davies
London 1959
October 30th, 2009He set off, it seems like yesterday. A valley born boy from the western edge of the South Wales coalfield, the census reported religio-mill-working-mining stock with a farming heritage.
A strong community held together by hard work, hard living and a religion. The green valleys scarred indiscriminately by industrial activity shaped his mindset. Echoes of the chapel pulpit bounced off the walls of the cottages lining the road to the pithead where he lived.
He arrived. The dirty, humanity littered streets didn’t feature in the ad. Still it was an adventure. An adventure mapped out by a job offer and piece of paper with an address to hide in.
Everyone succumbs, for at least a part of their lives. Some make it, some don’t. Those that don’t stay trapped, cage-bound in suffocating concrete, bars gripped desperately through which the stares of the lost meet but don’t see.
Outside these prison bars was a jungle. Stark inner city schools and hospitals, emerging still from a bombed-out, war-ravaged London. National service fresh in the mind, petrol rationing a periodic feature, grey surroundings with splashes of occasional colour relieved the monotony, the smog smothered red of the Routemaster bus.
Nurse! An Irish country girl with a strong character that the convent couldn’t kill. A large family meant farming out the kids. Childhood meant driving the donkey and cart into the town dairy to deliver milk. Green fields the playground unaffected by the war that waged on outside the dream.
Country migrants with eyes open wide and gaping mouths learned the language of the streets. They found new words that spelt feelings. There were moments. Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and the Two I’s coffee bar, rock and roll and the sound of skiffle.
They met and lost touch. An age sped by and the jungle forced them together again. Age old instincts cut through the formalities.
19th December 1959, Ammanford Roman Catholic Church. Interdenominational with a hint of inter-racial. It rained. It could rain all it liked. No-one cared. Then back to reality and the return to the city. The time stamped struggle of a young family fighting their way upriver.
For Alun and Eileen Davies
John
October 16th, 2009How many times (in nearly a decade)
Did I hear him raise his voice?
And while others raucously their views made
Not he, ‘twas not his way nor choice.
Rather, he liked to take the middle ground
To mediate, to quell and smooth
The clanging cymbal of the “I am” sound,
Conflict? He’d rather deflect and soothe.
I did hear him raise his voice to sing of Love
And although no Caruso he,
God and His angels rejoiced high above
“A Christian sings! Praise be! Praise be!”
He wondered long at the limitless sky,
At hands that flung stars into space.
Together we’ll sit and watch Red Dwarfs die
When we meet in another place.
I read a poet called Whitman who wrote
“A reasonable man achieves naught”
But JW realised something of note
When those to the Cross, he brought.
Leek Pie for Two
October 16th, 2009Leek Pie for Two
“Back to the future” they say
Surely they mean back to the past?
When two suddenly became three –
And another was place set
Eighteen brief years
Of that extra place mat
And then a lifetime
Of cooking for two
“As long as he’s happy, we’re fine”
“We can do what we want now”
But what I want to do
Is cook again for three