Just as there is a thin line between love and hate, or strong ale and LOOPY JUICE, there can some times be not much between excellent pubcraft and pubtwattery. One man’s smart land grab for a table in a pub is another’s aggressive take-over bid. So instead I shall describe a scenario and see if you feel this fulfils sin or is actually impressive work. Note, this is in the PUB DEADLY SIN section so it is clear what I think.
I was in a pub with a friend watching the cricket. The nature of this pub is that the table was close to the TV, so the best angle on the cricket was from one end of the table. The other end of the table was bookended by the window in the pub. Nevertheless we had happily shared this table with a French couple having a slightly disappointing Fish And Chips. Who left after being slightly disappointed. To be replaced by a couple of Finnish women who asked if the end of the table was free. Yet again, showing excellent pub manners, we assented. more »
Worried about the recruitment slowdown in the credit crunch? Concerned about equality and the glass ceiling in many careers. Like a beer? Why not be a publican. OR as Greene King would put it, why not be a Lady Publican or a Public Housewife. On one hand we should applaud Greene King for trying to tackle the appalling lack of diversity in the publican trade.
BUT NOTE YOU CAN ONLY APPLAUD WITH TWO HANDS.
Look, Its PINK!!!! FOR GURLS
The Public Housewifes Website is aimed at women. How do you know? Well it is pink*. more »
As deliberate foodologists we cannot wait for the arrival of SQUEEZ BACON in the UK. The difficulty of proper bacon, however well cured, is its intractability when it comes to being spreadable, and the difficulty in writing your name with it. As we all know bacon is a malleable and portable substance ideal for squirtyisation, so it amazes us that no-one has realised the paradigm shift in a jar.
No artificial additives or preservatives and a shelf life of twelve years (though I reckon I’d get through a jar a week) it really is the pasty gift that keeps on giving. As the creator Vilhelm Lillefläsk says “Aldrig kommer att ge dig upp!” Which we believe translates as “Never gonna give you up”. On assumes SQUEEZ BACON is also unlikely to let you down, run around or desert you. Though you can put it on your dessert.
Nevertheless the jar does make excessive claims about its powers, including :”it’s rumoured ABBA met while eating Squeez Bacon® sandwiches?”. Now I don’t want to pour dairylea on their squeezy bacony parade but everyone knows the members of ABBA met after getting their respective bumper cars entangled at a funfair in Stockholm.
Though perhaps I could offer the suggestion of aerosolising it is as well. BACON WHIZZ…
Poptimism is back! Back! BACK! This Friday, upstairs at The Horse Bar on Westminster Bridge Road, just across from Lambeth North tube. FREE entry, 7 ’til Midnight, hopefully the first of many.
If you don’t want to miss out on future Poptimism excitement, join the facebook group, innit.
This video for The Fall’s “Wings” (embedding sadly disabled or I’d post it direct) is not only a rare promo of one of their finest songs, it’s also a forensic examination of a pub in 1983. Perhaps even the kind of pub Mark E Smith drank in (though since the song is about being adrift in time and space, perhaps not).
There’s also a TIME GRAPH about 3 minutes in to further understanding of the song.
*sorry, it’s a post about The Fall. You have to do that. It’s the law.
Late last week, as the servers holding this very site bowed under the sheer volume of user interest, a hardy band of correspondents ventured forth to a pub for some drinks, not an unusual occurrence of a Friday evening it must be said, but perhaps better needed on this occasion.
The venue for those drinks, the Lord John Russell, is always a dependable place. It’s popular, certainly, though not usually completely rammed. It has friendly staff. It has a great selection of well-kept ales — so many, in fact, that the pump handles form a formidable physical barrier across the bar. Plus, it has pies and crisps and pork scratchings and Smith’s Bacon Fries: everything you need to enjoy your pint with, in short.
More intriguingly, it now turns out to be at the cutting edge of beer innovation, for, courtesy of Budvar, it has a third mixer tap for its Budvar Original and Budvar Dark beers, entitled the “Half and Half”. more »
What am I missing here? I am a great fan of Yorkshire Tea for Hard Water, and on finding it in loose-leaf form, nearly wet myself in excitement – but upon opening the tea, you find something akin to… granules? Like Lift Lemon Tea? But they don’t dissolve! BUT, they are so powdery that they slip through any filter and strainer, leading to a well manky cup of GUNK. Wah! Sob! Cry! My life is so hard.
Loose tea is meant to be leaf tea, surely – what’s with the fine powder? Sure, if you’re having INSTANT TEA (my friend put forward the point the other day that ochazuke is kind of instant tea – but this depends if it has some sort of tea granules in it – I have always poured tea over mine, it is TEA SOAKED RICE after all and more tea has never hurt, anyway)… and it’s meant to dissolve, but this stuff doesn’t…
AM I DOING SOMETHING WRONG? Or do I need to visit Taylors of Harrogate and ask “whut up”?
Neil Morrissey’s Risky Business, the everyday tale of celeb beer brewing (and how peed off must Richard Fox be that he’s not in the title?) might be exactly the sort of programme you’d expect us here at FT to be interested in, and we are, but mainly due to our EXCITING CAMEO in said programme! In programme two about 35 minutes in, a focus group is used and there, holding forth on the palatability of their brew is Pete, with me sitting silently (in the clip anyway) behind him.
The important thing to note about the Morrissey-Fox Blonde is that it may be the most tasteless ale I’ve ever had. It makes Discovery taste like Westmalle Triple, it’s about half a step above tap water in the complexity stakes. Before arriving at the focus group (which we knew was being filmed but not why) I had two theories, either it was going to be some sort of celeb beer or that it was ALCOHOL-FREE ALE and for about the first five minutes I honestly thought it was the latter, it has that slight bready taste you get from kaliber. more »
Never ones to miss the chance of a lovely headline or two, our friends at the Football Supporters Federation had this round the blogs by last night, well done them! I’ve seen some ridiculous measures in place to allow clubs to observe this outdated law, at Dartford they pull the blinds down in the bar at 2.50pm just in case, because it happens to look out over their lovely ground and its pitch. Having attended several rugby matches at Vicarage Road last year, it’s just so much more CIVILISED to have a pint of guinness in yr hand with yr pie…
Following Newcastle United chairman Mike Ashley’s Ashburton Grove appearance in the Toon end with pint in hand, the Football Supporters’ Federation is looking for any fans ejected and/or prosecuted for drinking in sight of the pitch this past weekend to come forward.
Drinking alcohol is sight of the playing area at professional football matches has been banned by law since 1985. The same activity is perfectly lawful at all other sporting events. If you’re a fan of rugby league or rugby union – no problem. Likewise cricket, American Football, speedway, horse racing. Even tiddlywinks as far as we know. Breweries and distilleries are a major sponsor of football.
We know of many supporters who’ve been banned from attending matches for three years for the “crime” of having a tipple whilst watching the game. Why? There are plenty of laws that the police can use to prosecute people who become abusive or violent though alcohol consumption. Being drunk in a public place is a criminal offence.
Why should the law abiding majority of football fans be singled out? If you’ve been ejected, banned or prosecuted for drinking in sight of the pitch, particularly this past weekend, get in touch with the FSF NOW at: info @ fsf.org.uk or on 08702 777777 (Mon-Fri office hours).
Apologies that this is a month late, I only learnt of Nick’s death from cancer earlier this week, although obits did appear in the guardian, independant and mojo as well as on Quietus (although there seems to be something up with the main article).
The first time I saw Earl Brutus was at Glastonbury in 1998. MyPete had been raving about them for months having seen them in Amsterdam. After four days of torrential rain, spirits were low and, to be honest with you, I didn’t get it. Lots of shouting, sampled glam drums and a funny Japanese bloke who didn’t really seem to do anything. Everyone else was buzzing but I was just a bit confused. It was only when I saw them a second time, at the Attic in Cheltenham a few months later (and then every three or four months after that, well, MyPete booked the bands you see), that it clicked into place. There was lots of shouting, sampled glam drums, and a Japanese bloke who didn’t seem to do anything and it was ASTONISHING. A bunch of grizzled, rather scary-looking blokes making an almighty racket and central to it all, Nick screaming lyrics about army boys, suicides with stars in their eyes and asking us to show him our minds. The one thing that brutus gigs never were was boring, shambolic often yes, but visceral and communal. Watching non-believers faces as we punched the air, joining in with the terrace chant choruses, trying to keep up with Sun-Yu’s drinking speed (the main thing he did, i soon realised, was drink lager). Given that the post-britpop landscape was such a graveyard of plodding sub-travises and ska-punk it was only Earl Brutus and Arab Strap (more grizzled old men getting pissed) that seemed to do anything for me.
The last time i saw Earl Brutus was the weekend of the jubilee in 2002, at the ICA. As we sat in the bar we saw the huge crowds of people being marshalled away from the palace as a fire alert or bomb threat or something had caused the whole area to be evacuated. Safe inside the 10 foot thick walls, we were left alone to continue with the gig. I never quite worked out why they’d been booked for this gig, they were supporting the Parkinsons and hardly anyone else seemed that botherd about them, but, down the front, the hardcore had come out of the woodwork and the band didn’t disappoint they were the same drunken, shouty, visceral, idiot genius they always were.
I missed the “re-elect ken” gig they did in 2004, but always had half an eye out for them when looking through the guardian gig guide. Surely, i thought, one day they’ll be back, nearly every other chancer from the era has reformed, but now, I guess not.
Here are some shamefully underwatch youtube clips. Thank you Nick. more »
As deliberate foodologists we cannot wait for the arrival of 
