Mine Beer

Me : What breweries do they have in Froome?
Him: Well they have the Milk Street Brewery and Mine.
Me : Yours?
Him: No Mine
Me : Ah ok. Yours.
Him: No. It's a small town
Me : That figures.
Him: Yes.
Me :
Him:
Us :
Me : You said Mine. It was eh ... I was just...
Him: The Pitchfork's good.

Carling Lager

Maybe this says much about the circles I move in (insofar as I move in any circles at all) but I don't think I've ever seen anyone, not an Irish person at any rate, sip a pint all the way. The rare time you see a sip is when a pint requires transportation from bar to table without spillage. Often a quick extract is taken just before the change is handed over. A common enough sight and a small, but vital, component of pub esoterica. Pints, certainly pints of Guinness, are gulped or sometimes, by drinkers of a certain vintage you'll note, poured directly into the gullet. A fine skill taking years to train up to. This practice slows down after the 3rd or so but never reduces to anything approaching a mere sip. My goodness, no!

The good people at Carling are suggesting that their lager has a "GREAT TASTE. EVERY SIP OF THE WAY" and who is to say they're wrong about that. I don't know anyone who drinks Carling. If I did I'd ask them about the sipping thing with academic curiosity. Is it true or yet more blue-sky hooey from pony-tail sporting marketing featherbrains with fat arses? If I drank Carling personally I'll tell you this. I'd drink it really quick. Then I'd jump in front of the nearest moving articulated vehicle. That'd learn 'em.

Pommelling

I always feel that if you're going to be not funny you'd be as well, at the very least, making some sense whilst doing it. This, from the otherwise excellent Old Green Tree public house in Bath, being an attempt to warn off potential smokers whilst being lighthearted and jovial at the same time. Some people I'm sure will find this hilarious. Predictably, I am simply bound to point out the following defects:

1. a pommel is the upper front part of a saddle; a saddlebow. I've no idea what pommelling means.
2. subconsciousness is a state not immediately available to your conscious mind in which you fancy your sister, hose down an elephant and run through the office naked. Generally worth avoiding.

WHISKI

There are two acceptable ways to spell the alcoholic beverage distilled from fermented grain mash.

Whisky and, to a decidedly lesser extent, whiskey. This is wank of the first order.

Pub Quiz

Last night, entirely by mistake, we found ourselves in a pub where they were having a quiz.

"Who replaced Glen Matlock as the Sex Pistols bassist?".
Sid Vicious.

"Who, in 1982, described Mount Everest as being littered with rubbish from base to tip?"
No idea. Sherpa Tenzing?

Then, a very strange, opinionated question.
"Which musical genius sprung to prominence with Riverdance?"

An easy one surely. All around us people frantically whispering and scribbling down the wrong answer. To a question which literally has no answer.

Pubs Closing 4

This Galway pub (previously featured here) is thankfully now closed as well.

In its lifetime The Westside Tavern (prior to that called Doc Watson's for reasons unrelated to Bluegrass) was decidedly neither a restaurant nor a party zone. They did do a quite remarkable line in eau de vomit_piss_disinfectant though.

Probably not the sort of things you put above the door.

Pubs Closing 3

Despite it's glorious footballing past, in which I personally held the midfield and made nice passes, this pub also went down the tubes.

Makes me a bit sad to see this. But more for lost youth than the pub itself which, frankly, was more than a little ... what's the word ... pish.

Pubs Closing 1

Pubs closing down all over the town. A very good thing in this observer's opinion. Natural selection at it's best.

Even a "Championship" game live on the telly couldn't save this awful specimen.

Le Paradis Club

This is Galway's "Le Paradis Club". This is French for "The Paradise Club".

Actually the French for "The Paradise Club" is "Le Club Paradis".

But, presumably they didn't know that. So they called it "Le Paradis Club".

I've never been in.

Paddy Fahy

This story was related to me last night by my new mate, George, who hails from Dumbarton but has lived in Galway for many years.

It concerns this pub "Paddy Fahy" and it's famously misanthropic landlord "Paddy Fahy".

Soon after moving to Galway, George went into the pub for a pint. He asked for a pint of lager. There was no-one else there except George and Paddy. Paddy was watching a horse-race.

"I'll be a minute" said Paddy, not taking his eyes off the telly.

George sat down and waited patiently. It was a national hunt race and was over two and a half miles. Paddy watched on. After about five minutes George gets sick of waiting. He had a thirst on him and he wanted that pint.

"Can I have that pint of lager, please?", he ventured.
"I told you I'd be with you in a minute", replies Paddy, still fixed on the race.

Sod this thinks George. There's another pub just over the road. He walks out without saying a word. Paddy watches the horses approaching the last fence.

[roll forward several years]

George and his mates are out for a pub crawl in Bohermore. Eventually they get to Paddy Fahy's. Straight away Paddy clocks George.

"I'll serve the rest o ye ... but he's barred" he says , pointing a crooked finger at George.
"Whhat For?", blurts our hero, stunned.

Paddy ignores him and addresses one of the other lads "That one's got far too much to say for himself".

George, for the second time, leaves Paddy Fahy's silently and heads across the road to another pub.

"Too much to say for myself", he mutters in disbelief. "I've asked for a pint of lager. Twice".

Time Zone

As every school child will know, Ireland and Scotland share the same time zone. Greenwich Mean (or Meridian, possibly) Time in the Winter and British (Irish) Summer Time in the Summer. If you don't believe me, just pick a school child at random from your local school gates and ask them.

But last night it didn't feel that way. Between the hours of 8-10 I sat in my local pub and read the paper before the night crowd arrived. And arrive they did in their fine feathers at which I left. In Scotland, if you wanted to do that you'd need to be there between 6-8. So in that sense the two countries are two hours apart. In the sense of pub time zones.

A small, but noteworthy point, I'm sure you'll agree.

Change is Possible

Sam Adams. George Pelecanos. The Celtics on tv.

Change is Possible.

We Will Kill You!!!

Last night I dreamt that the Daily Record [1] were hunting me down in Edinburgh with extreme prejudice.

They had sent me an email saying simply:

We will find you
and We will kill you

I started off hiding in the Bow Bar but they got wind that I was there so I had to leave. I headed over to the Oxford. I was just having a pint of St Andrews and one of these strange macaroni pies when I sensed that they were closing in on me again. My friends must have been blabbing about my favoured bars. None of the good pubs were safe anymore. I was forced to spend all eternity drinking fizzy-keg in southside shitholes.

It was a horrible, horrible dream but when I woke up, strangely, I wished it wasn't over.

[1] That nice Lynn Davidson sent me the following email:

From: l.davidson@dailyrecord.co.uk
Sent: 06 October 2009 01:01:14
To: musters
I will be out of the office starting 05/10/2009 and will not return until
08/10/2009. However, you can always get me on 07778 133 179.
Best regards,
Lynn

So there's her number and, as she says, you can ALWAYS get her on it.

Second Pour Shite

Apologies for the belated posting on Thursday's monumental Arthur's Day. But, good things come to those who wait.

To get the "perfect" pint of Guinness the time between the first and second pour must be precisely 119.53 pub seconds. This is to allow the organisms in the nitrogen to grow the perilous N₂ compounds which, in turn, create enough energy to burn or decay back into nitrogen gas and flow into your pint.

If you were to start the second pour after 119.52 seconds or wait until 119.54 seconds, this would render the porter entirely unpotable.

Happy Birthday Sir Arthur!

The Jamhouse

I was in the Jamhouse the other night. I had a lovely evening. You might find this surprising given that the Jamhouse is almost certainly the worst pub in Edinburgh.

I'm not even talking about the beer. The beer selection and quality is awful and aimed exclusively at the hard of tasting market. No, in a place like the Jamhouse you should expect bad beer. And you definitely won't be disappointed.

We were all having a good chat and generally 'meeting and greeting'. But would it have killed them to put the Celtic game on with the volume down?

The bar staff were utterly gormless to a man but, in their defence, in the unlikely event of them knowing how to operate the remote control, they still couldn't have put the game on. No, for it was the pub policy not to show sport. Even if we, the customers, wanted it on. Instead they had a Jamhouse slide-show showing various elements and representations of boogie-fucking-woogie.

And when you find boogie-fucking-woogie you can be sure that Jools Holland is not far away. Indeed, the Jamhouse is his gaff. And another policy of Holland's is that there must be live music (boogie-woogie, of course) every single night. So above, pictured, we see a band performing boogie-woogie to an empty hall while we all have a thoroughly lovely time drinking overpriced piss-water through the front bar.

For the way we live today.

Rab, Storyteller

Due to heavy traffic last night I didn't even attempt to get into the car. If I had attempted, of course, the chances are that I would have succeeded. What I mean is that I simply chose not to get into the car.

Instead, I put my rain coat on, left the building and started walking. Past shops, houses, trees, people. The usual kind of everyday landmarks. Soon I reached the pub and entered that place. I got myself a bottle of ale and sat down.

Soon, the room started filling up with other people. They all looked otherworldly to me. It was that kind of an evening. Then a short Scottish man arrived and introduced himself as Rab. "Hello Rab", I said. He told me he was the storyteller. "Then why are you Scottish?", I asked. "You'll need to ask my parents about that", he retorted, untroubled by the non-sequitor.

Rab then started to tell stories. He was a story teller. And a very good one at that.

We listened and watched in rapture as Rab regaled us with tales of land of sea. Of faeries and mermaids and mysterious old men with humps. None of these stories were remotely true but they all contained truths (much like this blog if I may venture). In these old tales, explained Rab, we find the historical truths of Scotland and Ireland. We believed him.

Rab asked if anyone had any questions. I asked him what faeries looked like. He told me that you could never recognise a faery because they looked just like you and me. He even suggested that they might in fact be slightly more beautiful than that even. I laughed uncomfortably and shook his hand. Then I thanked him for the stories.

"But why did you tell all these stories, Rab?", I asked.

"I'm a storyteller", he replied, simply.

More on faeries here and, indeed, here.

How To Bet Properly

On Friday night I was in the pub watching the Galway races. The place didn't have the usual feel of a Friday though. Most of the punters looked like they'd been going hard at it all week, drinking and gambling, and they had a jaded look about them.

But I hadn't been drinking or gambling all week. It seemed that with no more than a cursory glance at the racing pages I could pick a winner or, at the very least, get a decent run for my money. In the end I had three winners. I did this more or less by following jockeys I'd heard of. None of the other punters in the pub seemed to be sharing my luck. Perhaps they were making the school-boy error of following horses they'd heard of. Or worse, tips they'd been given.

Then I realised. As I looked around the pub I noticed with growing disbelief that nobody, except me, was wearing a bookie's pen in their ear. It's far too easy in life, I thought, sipping my cider, to lose sight of the basics

Blue Cattle Dog

Presumably one or the other be cool?

Cricketer's Arms

Just about to head out to the famous Cricketer's Arms for the hair of the dog that bit me.

After that we will head out to a piercing 'studio' wherein I will have a sleeper inserted into the top part of my ear. I don't know what it's called. If I get very drunk I may even choose to get the gay (right) ear pierced. All very exciting.

My cousin's mate is called Bolt 'cos he got a bolt inserted into his penis. It must be a sex thing. He's got a son called Nut, I'm given to believe.

The Crane Bar

A bottle of the best beer in Ireland. Drunk last night in the best pub in that (this) Free State.

Then, DM Stith...