Hello,
its with some mild shame that I confess that I went out for a mini pub crawl, by myself , ON A MONDAY. Yep, that's right, a blummin Monday. Less than 24 hours after the presumably libatious revelry of the weekend had dissipated, big lad was slaking in a public house like it was, erm, Tuesday or something.
The thing is though, irrespective of my own guzzling patterns, Monday isn't exactly a daft choice for a beer and a wind down is it? Its a school night, granted, but I'm not talking about a raucous descent into crapulence here, just a refreshing pint or three and a bit of banter.
A chap standing at the bar next to me ordered two pints - one was for his friend who was arriving shortly as it turned out, before knowing which it was suggested that this was reckless Monday behaviour. As he pointed out though, Monday is by far the most depressing and unpleasant day of the week. And he's right. Back to the grind, into your work attire or uniform (possibly out of a uniform, I'm not here to judge), away with the careless slouching and on with the tense frustrating pressure of another day on the treadmill. Its enough to drive anyone to drink.
To be honest though, this post serves not as a defence of Monday drinking, nor really an exploration of what drives us to it, instead its intention is only to illustrate how far I am willing to go to drink somewhere quiet, what I did whilst doing so, and ultimately, the failure of my recipe for uninterrupted contemplation.
Its a fact well known to the staff at DAda that I really am not a busy pub kind of drinker. Even if I am with a friend, or two or three, I can't really be arsed shouting to make myself heard through the shimmering fart cloud of badinage and high spirits. And if I am alone, this desire to keep myself all to myself, or at the very least to have exclusive ear bending rights over the bar staff is all the more overwhelming. Nothing disappoints me more than a throng. Does this make me a miserable twat? Well, that depends on whether I share my solitude willingly, and I don't think I'm best placed to comment on my sociability....
Anyway, to avoid unnecessary annoyance, I have found myself at least two regular haunts that have a bit of a reputation for being quiet and one which is sufficiently large to be quiet in places, midweek. I have then homed in on Tuesdays as an ideal retail blind spot, and following recent disruptions to my plan, I have moved to Mondays.
Despite the above justification of why people drink on Mondays, I would still be amazed and somewhat despairing of large groups of people choosing to drink on a Monday. So cue their being an event on at utopia of solitude number one on Monday night. Gah!
What must I do to avoid these mass inundations! Can I now only go out at the end of January, through the first third and last week in February, the first and last of March depending on when Easter falls, the third week in May, the last week in June, not at all in July and August, the first week in September, the middle of October, the end of November and beginning of December?
Well, I hope not, because the above list features far too many times of the month when the reason everyone else isn't going out is the same reason I wouldn't be - lack of cash!
In the end of course, my Benedictine inspired search for silence is rather absurd and is no more likely to be enjoyable if I find it, as demonstrated by the fact that on Monday, having been frightened off my bar perch by incomers, I also went to the Sheffield Tap, which I don't think I've ever found quiet at 8.30 PM.
And for the record, heres the important factual bit : in DAda (for it is they) I had a fantastic couple of pints of Dark Star Espresso plus a half of Bear State on Keg, and at the Tap, from an unrivalled range I sampled a half of the Art Brew Green Bullet on cask, a half of Magic Rock 8Ball on keykeg, a half of Cromarty Brewing Brewed Awakening, which I tried on cask previously and is fabulous by either method of dispense, and a fantastic Tapped Ale from the Pivovar Taps in house "Tapped" brewery.
This was the real reason for going I concede, not so I could tick the bugger off on some damned list you understand, but just so I could put paid to my anticipation and also review it, after a fashion. My notes, which I recorded laboriously and inconveniently in a text message, read "orangey with pleasing dry hoppy bitterness and lemony edge". It sort of does it justice, but a far better description would have been - excellent.
And that's good, because so often you wait ages for a new brewery to start producing and everything is a bit last minute and not quite how it should be. Well ironically, the brewery that hit the ground running when it launched, Magic Rock, provided the most disappointing beer of the night, whilst the Tapped and the not quite as new Cromarty were outstanding highlights.
So I'll leave you now, as I'm off to build a pub in my cellar, in the search for ultimate exclusivity, which should be one of its obvious features - given that I don't have a cellar.....
Now wheres that trowel?
Wee beefy
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