BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Believe it or not, "Drunk people can't socially distance."

Yep, it takes a pandemic to grasp that drunks slobber, hug each other, start fights and behave abominably. Been there, seen that. To be honest, done that, myself.

If bars elect to pack them in as though the past six months haven't even happened, we can expect more of the same. It's happening everywhere right now. My loyalty to the food and drink business precludes me from calling out anyone; it's just personal with me now, and there are places I'll likely not go for a very long time into the future.

My main question about the reopening of pubs in the UK is how hard it's been for those still specializing in real ale to prepare when the actual reopening dates have changed. 

No one thinks about living beer during a pandemic, do they?

'Crystal clear' drunk people can't socially distance, say police in England in The Guardian

Police Federation chair says revellers would not adhere to one-metre-plus rules as pubs opened on Saturday

Drunk people are unable to properly socially distance, the chairman of the Police Federation has said as pubs reopened in England for the first time since lockdown.

John Apter said it was “crystal clear” revellers would not adhere to the one metre plus rule as restrictions were eased on Saturday.

Prof Chris Whitty said the pandemic “is a long way from gone” and urged the public to follow social-distancing rules as pubs and restaurants reopened.

But images from London’s Soho showed packed streets into the early hours of Sunday ...

Boris Johnson is standing by as COVID exploits the cracks in the increasingly Disunited Kingdom.

COVID exaggerates and exacerbates pre-existing conditions. The angry white males are angrier, and the cautious more hesitant. There is an inevitable bullying effect to all this. As noted on a deleted Facebook thread earlier this week, the sentence "capitalism is narcissistic" is an example of unnecessary redundancy.

Conservatism? Yeah, that too.

Boris Johnson looks increasingly like the prime minister of England alone, by Martin Kettle (The Guardian)

There have been cracks in the United Kingdom for many years. Coronavirus has prised them wide open

As Boris Johnson finished his televised address on Sunday evening, many viewers were confused by what he had just said. One thing about his message, though, had been strikingly clear. To the surprise of many of those watching, and perhaps even to Johnson himself, it turned out that the coronavirus outbreak has changed the prime minister of the United Kingdom into the prime minister of England.

Over the past two months we have all become familiar with the fact that Covid-19 wreaks its most powerful effects on those individuals who are said to suffer from “serious underlying conditions”. What is only just becoming clear is that the virus can have a similarly destructive effect on nation states and societies which suffer from their own serious underlying conditions too.

snip

When health policy was devolved in 1999, few anticipated an effect like the one that became clear this week, as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all decided to maintain the lockdown strategy that Johnson started to loosen in England. As long as differences in health policy were confined – as they have been for the past 20 or so years – to approaches to issues such as spending, prescription charges and social care, the differences between the nations, although significant, remained politically manageable at the UK level.

But when, as this week, it became effectively illegal for English people to cross the Scottish or Welsh borders to do what they are now permitted – wrongly, in my view – to do in England a significant political line has been crossed. It would be interesting to see if historians can identify the last time that English people were barred from Scotland or Wales. But we must be talking centuries. In such circumstances, it is harder than ever to know what “one nation” Conservatism now means. Which nation? And what United Kingdom?

snip

As the lifting of the lockdown loomed, the pandemic’s effect has become increasingly centrifugal. Johnson’s wish, partly under pressure from the Tory party’s right wing, to encourage renewed economic activity in spite of the continuing pandemic, has encouraged the devolved nations to move more cautiously and to differentiate themselves more sharply from Johnson and from England. But it is not all Johnson’s fault ...

Learning from Megxit: Our device-driven "bread and circuses (while we remain) supine in the face of the social and democratic collapses."

Amid this analysis of the British royal family's latest effort to confirm its own senselessness, there's a very valuable point that I wish I'd found the words to describe.

First, the pitch.

The Real Megxit Deal, by John Davis (CounterPunch)

In a move that reflects the time-worn pathologies of powerful aristocratic families, the House of Windsor has agreed to allow the Queen’s grandson, Harry, currently sixth in line to the throne, and his California-born wife, Meghan, to leave the family business (The Firm) and attempt to establish independent lives in Canada, a former colony which remains a member of the British Commonwealth. This represents their exile from the territorial, ceremonial, financial, and emotional heart of the royal family.

The gimcrack contrivance of the constitutionally constrained modern royal family was immediately apparent upon its founding in the late seventeenth century.

Now, the section with universality quite apart from the United Kingdom.

Enthralled by freshets of free entertainment enabled by personal electronic devices, and the increasing availability of cheap consumer goods brought directly to one’s attention by those self-same devices, we exist in a perfect storm of twenty-first century bread and circuses – supine in the face of the social and democratic collapses that fester under such conditions of popular disinterest, inattention and apathy.

Royalty, heads of state, captains of industry, sports and entertainment stars offer up their lives in service to the insatiable maw of those who trade information for the privilege of exposing consumers to targeted advertising. They are but the tip of the pyramid, the base of which consists of all those who contribute cat videos, personal vignettes and the like to social media. Goods routed to consumers, along global supply routes and hub and spoke distribution networks, do so only upon the initial capture of their consumers’ attention on, most often, the tiny screens of their devices. (The actual production of those goods remains largely hidden from their consumers eyes, spread across the planet, most often in areas of poverty-wages, pollution and environmental vulnerability).

In Britain's elections, as in American ones: We'll awake "to find one of these horrors in charge."

Photo credit: The Economist article.

I was asked, "How is Donald Trump viewed throughout your travels?"

To be honest, it didn't come up.

There were instances of anti-Trump in graffiti-rich Ljubljana, and a couple of folks in Slovenia mentioned Melania Trump, born in 1970 during Yugoslav times in the Slovenian city of Novo Mesto (near the border with Croatia). She grew up in a town called Sevnica and began her modeling career prior to Slovenia's independence in 1991.

It's worth noting that had Melanija Knavs grown up in any of the other communist countries in east-central Europe where the orthodoxy was more rigid than Yugoslavia's relatively less restrictive Titoist variety, she probably wouldn't have had a head start in the late 1980s. Interestingly, her father was a member of Slovenia's atheistic League of Communists, but had his children secretly baptized Catholic.

In short, I find the institution of "First Lady" very strange, and Melania far more interesting than Donald, but to each their own.

Meanwhile in Great Britain, a dismal election campaign is about to conclude, and The Economist is flustered. The Liberal Democrats won't win, and yet consider the possibilities for lesser parties in a parliamentary system to influence the outcome, an option we're denied by the American fixation with a two-party system that exists nowhere in any statutory or constitutional sense.

That's why I detest the two-party system more than any single representative of it, including Trump -- and yes, I'd almost surely vote Labour.

Our election endorsement: Britain’s nightmare before Christmas ... A divided country faces an election that will tear it still further apart (The Economist)

British voters keep being called to the polls—and each time the options before them are worse. Labour and the Conservatives, once parties of the centre-left and -right, have steadily grown further apart in the three elections of the past four years. Next week voters face their starkest choice yet, between Boris Johnson, whose Tories promise a hard Brexit, and Jeremy Corbyn, whose Labour Party plans to “rewrite the rules of the economy” along radical socialist lines. Mr Johnson runs the most unpopular new government on record; Mr Corbyn is the most unpopular leader of the opposition. On Friday the 13th, unlucky Britons will wake to find one of these horrors in charge ...

Raw sewage railway scandal at The Brexit Roadhouse. But what does Nigel Farage think?

In order to properly introduce today's link to The Guardian, kindly allow me to rewind 32 years.

30 years ago today: (May 1987) Sarajevo, Mostar and what came after.

... I was headed for the coast on Friday, and Mostar was the next stop, three hours by train from Sarajevo. It was during this ride that Yugoslavia's mountains became a tangible, visceral presence.

One of my memories of this trip was a long period when the train stopped and sat, apparently waiting for another train coming in our direction to pass over a stretch of single track. Here's the view from my window.

I was in the compartment nearest the toilet, which in the typical European fashion of the time usually involved a foot pedal and trap door which deposited one's leavings onto the track.

However, some Yugoslav trains didn't have a commode, just a hole in the floor. Mine was one of them. It remains difficult for me to imagine squatting on a moving train, and perhaps this is why, with yet another contingent of soldiers on the train, as we sat stock still atop the high mountain pass for an hour, they marched one by one to the WC, and ...

I was very glad when the train started moving again.

That's correct. You depressed the mechanical foot pedal, the hinged door swung down, and the tracks could be seen flying past. Theoretically there was a water line attached to ease gravity's task, but not always.

From defunct Yugoslavia we skip forward to debatably "United" Kingdom of today, where I'm genuinely surprised to learn that rolling stock this old remains in use. After all, it's been a while since I greeted the right-of-way void on the continent while using the loo on a moving train.

Train firms backtrack over pledge to ban raw sewage on railway lines, by Gwyn Topham (The Guardian/The Observer)

Operators admit target to end ‘disgusting practice’ by the end of the year will not be met

A pledge to end the dumping of human waste on railway tracks in England and Wales by the end of the year will no longer be met, Network Rail and train firms have admitted.

Although Network Rail’s former chief executive, Mark Carne, said in 2017 he had secured government agreement to end the “disgusting practice” by 2019, several companies will continue to use trains whose toilets flush directly onto the track.

In 2017 the Department for Transport had said all franchises would compel firms to ensure trains had modern toilets, but several operators have now applied for exemptions. Labour said it was “totally unacceptable that railway workers continue to endure such unsanitary conditions in the 21st century” ...

Revisiting Rumpole of the Bailey.

Seven years later, the cycle has begun anew. It's back to 1970s-era London, only three decades removed from the Blitz; to Pomeroy's and Chateau Thames Embankment, the petty lawless Timsons, Soapy Sam and She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Between Rumpole's inception and Sleaford Mods, what on earth did Margaret Thatcher DO to this country?

---

Posted on 7/29/2012

The timing wasn't intentional, but just days after the 10th anniversary of the actor Leo McKern's death, the Confidentials approach the end of an epic viewing cycle.

There are 44 or so episodes in the Rumpole of the Bailey canon, and only three remain for us to watch. For the uninitiated, these are atmospheric British courtroom dramas, originally produced from the mid-1970's through the early 1990's.

Here's an overview, written in the aftermath of McKern's passing a decade ago: Appreciation: Rumpole, farewell!

I'm not sure what it means, but we've been watching British television almost exclusively this year. Maybe it's time to travel again.

"There are reasons to be cheerful. These are the dying days of a rancid old order."

On the one hand, the essay linked below by Will Sutton bears a degree of thematic unity with my column last week.

ON THE AVENUES: Unless you open your eyes, “resistance” is an empty gesture.

But it's an ideal link for posting because the Democratic Party swamp meme needs to be seen as often as possible between now and November.

There are reasons to be cheerful. These are the dying days of a rancid old order, by Will Hutton (The Guardian)

In the UK and the US, the political wind will soon change in favour of those demanding good government

Don’t despair. We may be living through an attempted rightwing revolution, but its foundations are rotten. There may be a counter-revolution, as there is after every revolution, and it will be built on much firmer ground. The charlatans may be in control in both Britain and the US, but their time is limited. Their programmes are self-defeating and destructive and they do not speak to the dynamic and increasingly ascendant forces in both our societies ...

In the UK, it's not Brexit: "It’s a much deeper crisis. An existential crisis.”

"What Brexit has shown again is our inability to think anew about what the state and the economy are for, to sketch out what a different future might look like."

It's no great stretch to suggest that Americans resemble these remarks, and best not be chortling with more of the same tired exceptionalism. I'm reminded of the recent quip to the effect that the Democratic National Committee is 100% in favor of reform, so long as nothing changes.

Britain is in the grip of an existential crisis that reaches far beyond Brexit, by Aditya Chakrabortty (The Guardian)

Nearly three years after the referendum, Westminster has still not come to terms with the grievances that drove the result

The person who is best qualified to hold up a mirror to British politics today is neither a minister nor an academic. He is not even British. No: he is, of course, Michel Barnier, the French-born servant of Brussels. In his 1,036 days as the EU’s chief negotiator, he has sat for numbing hours opposite Theresa May, haggled with David Davis and Dominic Raab and their junior ministers and faced down countless Whitehall officials. He is the outsider who knows our system inside out. So when he popped up right at the end of the BBC’s fly on the wall Storyville documentaries on the Brexit negotiations, I leaned in to listen.

Filmed in March, as it became clear that Britain would not be leaving Europe any time soon, Barnier is shown briefing senior European parliamentarians. This latest breakdown is “more than weariness”, he tells them. “There is a very serious crisis in the UK which … isn’t linked to the text of Brexit and even less to the Irish backstop. It’s a much deeper crisis. An existential crisis.”

Barnier doesn’t do florid, so his words leapt out. After almost three years with his eye pressed to a microscope trained on the British elite, here was one of the EU’s finest declaring that the real failure wasn’t this clause or that loophole. It wasn’t even Brexit at all. The UK is in a crisis as big as the country itself.

There are times when some politicians and pundits remember this, when they jerk awake to the reality that the country stands at a moment of reckoning more profound than Suez – one in which our institutions, our economy and our system of representation are all being shown up as simply not up to the job. This week is plainly not one of those times. I watched Barnier’s remarks on Sunday night, as the first UK results from the European elections began to roll in, showing a far-right party as the clear winner. I woke up to a righteous hailstorm of commentary about What Jeremy Must Say Now and Who Replaces Theresa. Such debates can satisfactorily steam up the sash windows of central London, but set in any context they seem almost recklessly marginal ...

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: "Millennials haven't killed pubs – pubs just haven't kept up."

St. Radegund Free House, back then.

So here we are at Pints&union in li'l 'ol Nawbany, trying to emulate (if not copy outright) the soulfulness of the institution of the British pub, even as the British pub is the subject of incessant existential debate -- and in fact, has been for decades.

Are pubs doomed?

Theirs is a different culture; more specifically, it is a different licensing and taxation regimen. As can be gleaned from the following, there also are the cultural markers; prices are one thing, and potentially adjustable, but all is lost if coming generations decide to refrain from drink entirely for health reasons. 

What of cask-conditioned ale, that most glorious of beers when done correctly? It's almost exclusively British, and always fragile in modern economies of ease and scale.

The author's conclusion no doubt is true. There's be something new and different arising from the ashes of what came before. But when it comes to pub culture, it's a dialectic I'll be seeking to circumvent, even if I'm not British.

Millennials haven't killed pubs – pubs just haven't kept up, Devarshi Lodhia (The Guardian)

Rising prices and social diversification have scuppered the institution, making the boozer less of a priority for the young

From mayonnaise and diamonds to cinemas and golf, it seems no industry is safe from being killed off by millennials. Now pubs look to be suffering the same fate, closing at an alarming rate with net numbers down by almost 700 this year alone – and piling yet more misery on the Great British high street.

The most obvious reason behind the sharp decline in pub numbers seems to be the cost of going out. The average pint in London costs upwards of £5, while the national average of £3.60 is 60p more than most people think is reasonable ... and it’s not just financial reasons that are putting people off, the reality is that fewer young people drink, with research showing that 25% of people aged 16-24 described themselves as “non-drinkers” while between 2005 and 2015, the percentage drinking above the recommended limits had dropped by 15%. Often this has very little to do with cost, with most of my friends who don’t drink choosing to do so for their physical and mental wellbeing.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: "The world's most 'hand-crafted' beer is cask ale."

Totnes 2013. This guy cared.

The excellent beer writer Jeff Alworth sets the record straight.

No other brewing genre requires the time and effort required to render proper cask-conditioned "real" ales -- but boy, when done correctly, there's nothing I'd rather drink.

THE WORLD’S MOST “HAND-CRAFTED” BEER IS CASK ALE, by Jeff Alworth (Beervana)

Pete didn’t say it, but I will: cask ale is not just the most important symbol of British brewing, it’s also one of the hardest to make beers, the craftiest beers, and, when it’s made and served properly, the best beers on the planet. Nearly everyone seems to hold cask in contempt, even while they fall in love with Bavarian kellerbier (a poor man’s cask beer) and hazy IPA and rustic saison. If I were English, I’d be swanning around bragging about making the best and most difficult beer. The problem is, that’s not a very British thing to do, is it? Well, take my word for it as a braggy American, it is the hardest to make, and the most hand-crafted.

My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Of course, doing it correctly is not something that we can take for granted. The excellent British beer writer Martyn Cornell explains.

Almost nine out of ten pints of cask beer sold in Britain are sold after the cask they came from has been open for at least three days. According to CGA, almost 90 per cent of cask ale brands sold at below the rate of 18 pints per tap per day required to maintain quality. The typical cask of beer is still on sale seven or more days after it has been opened. This is exactly the same as making a sandwich on Monday, and still having it on sale a week later. The bread will be stale, the filling long past its best. Anybody buying that week-old sandwich is unlikely, after trying it, to buy a sandwich from you again. Cask beer is a perishable product: it loses its best qualities very quickly, certainly within a few days. Most pubs ignore this, and as a result most cask beer is sold a long way off from peak condition.

Cornell sees part of the problem in pub landlords and managers who don't drink cask-conditioned ale. He believes concern is merited.

In the past five years, cask ale sales have dropped by 20 per cent, while the overall beer market has fallen by just over nine per cent. At that rate of decline, cask ale will effectively have vanished in a few decades. Meanwhile “craft” beer, defined for the purposes of this argument as non-mainstream keg beers made by small brewers, has leapt from nowhere ten years ago to six per cent of the on-trade beer market in 2018. I drink “craft” beer in a pub occasionally, but I do not believe I will ever have a pint of “craft” as wonderful as the very best cask ale can be. If cask ale disappears, then to misquote Hilaire Belloc, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the best of England.

Here in New Albany at Pints&union, the one genre of world brewing I'd like to do the most is the one I cannot do at all: cask-conditioned "real" ale. America's not built for it, and I regret this almost every single day.

We also aren't configured for stargazy pie -- but at least it's remotely conceivable.

Is anyone at Hull & High Water reading?

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Whether sheep stealer or highwayman, he was hanged just the same at Cannards Grave.

How this for a pub sign?

Bud Light drinkers used to feel this way when they wandered by mistake into the Public House. The illustration comes from a 1972 book called British Inn Signs.

Where five roads meet on the A37 near Shepton Mallet (Somerset) is a gruesome sign of a man hanging from a gibbet.

The back story takes on a number of versions, which are considered in this modern update.

The Story of Cannards Grave

To the south of Shepton Mallet is the oddly named Cannards Grave, where, according to legend, the ghost of 17th century publican Giles Cannard still walks.

Tom Kennard, often called either Giles, or Tom the Taverner, was the landlord of a public house which stood on the crossroads between the Fosse Way and many other roads to the West Country. Opposite the inn stood a grim reminder of the relative lawlessness of those times, a gibbet, on which smugglers, highwaymen, bandits and other miscreants met their end ...

It looks as though there's still a pub on or near the site: The Highwayman, Cannards Grave, although the first review expresses annoyance.

Was not impressed with this pub. The beer (St Austell) was cloudy and didn't taste good. Changed it for the other one on, can't remember what it was, and it was the same. The Landlord or Manager said it had recently been changed and was the top of the barrel! Top of the barrel?? Real Ale isn't served from the top!!

A glorious St. Austell cask ale, mishandled?

That might well be a hanging offense.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Cask ales are the indigenous, tasty, beery glories of the British Isles (article from 2009).

Beryl Cook.

It's been a year since I profiled the Dolphin Inn, a Plymouth (England) institution, where I've enjoyed pints of cask-conditioned Bass in 2009 and 2013.

THE BEER BEAT: The Dolphin, one of my favorite pubs in the world.

Pints & Union will be opening soon, and several readers have asked if we'll be pouring cask ale. The unfortunate answer is no, although there might be the occasional pin or firkin from somewhere hoisted atop the bar and dispensed by gravity.

In this column and the one following it on Saturday, it is my aim to provide some background about cask ale, which might help to explain why we won't be installing hand pumps at the start. In short, economies of scale are out of whack.

However, on a positive note, it appears that ales from the British Isles might be poised for a comeback. If so, anything is possible.

What I really need is a local brewer of applicable size to supply the goods, maybe a homebrewer ready to ramp up to a commercial system of 2 - 3 barrels (some homebrewers already brew more), resolving to supply a local pub with two or three firkins of bitter a week, with the remainder available at the barn tasting room. 

In the following essay, which I wrote for Food & Dining Magazine in 2013, the principle of cask ale is explained. The text in red marks obsolete information. I'll pick up the story tomorrow.

---

Hip Hops: Real English Ale (2009)

At the Dolphin Inn, a delightfully non-refurbished Plymouth harbor pub located a few yards from the very spot where the Mayflower left England for America, thirsty visitors queue to drink draft Bass Pale Ale served in a rigorously traditional and characteristically English manner.

The firkin, a keg of unique and purpose-built design, lies slightly tilted on its side in a cradle at room temperature. A wooden peg (spile) faces skyward, filling a hole that had been punched at tapping. A faucet, tapped into place with a rubber mallet, protrudes horizontally from the firkin. The onrushing ale is borne on a gravity trail, pouring from the opened faucet into a waiting pint glass, cool but not cold, with minimal yet sufficient natural carbonation.

Perhaps the only nod to modernity is the use of stainless steel, rather than wood, to fabricate the firkin. Otherwise, it is likely that Plymouth’s publicans were filling tankards in like fashion almost four hundred years ago as the Pilgrims prepared for their voyage to the New World by loading their own barrels of ale onto the Mayflower.

The Dolphin decants its Bass in this simple, old-fashioned way, unpasteurized, and without the forced-pressure C02 system to which the world has grown accustomed, because the ale itself is naturally carbonated, or cask-conditioned, in the firkin by means of a secondary fermentation.

Although comparatively few English pubs follow the venerable example of the Dolphin’s gravity-pour method, many of them continue to vend one or more cask-conditioned ales with the help of a beer engine, colloquially referred to as a hand pump, or a hand-pull. Their firkins are stored in the coolness of the cellar, where they are tended and prepped for serving. When ready, the ale is pumped by the barman into eager pint glasses.

“Cask-conditioned” ale also is referred to as “real” ale, and those ales conceived, brewed, packaged and served in this natural manner are the indigenous, tasty, beery glories of the British Isles.

Disturbingly, real ale almost became extinct during the 1970’s, primarily because both then and now, conditioning ale in a firkin and serving properly at a pub is thoroughly old-school -- time consuming, labor intensive and absent the sexiness of mass-market commoditization, the dictates of which demand industrially produced, cost-effective “dead” ales and lagers in conventional kegs, bottles and cans.

Thanks in large measure to the advocacy of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), one the modern era’s most principled and effective consumer lobby groups, real ale’s decline has been reversed even though many older brands and breweries have disappeared. A vibrant new generation of smaller brewers committed to cask-conditioning has stepped forward to keep tradition intact, enabling us to consider “living” ale as a symbol of pre- and post-industrial life. It’s the way beer was done for thousands of years, and now, in the new millennium, real ale once again tells the story of slow food, green living and an appreciation of natural virtues in food and drink.

Historically, the stylistic range of England’s brewing output is relatively narrow: Mild, Bitter, IPA, Stout, Porter, Old Ale and Barley Wine still suffice to summarize most of what you’d expect to see at the pub, although these days there are Golden Ales and the occasional seasonal Wheat appearing in summertime. Apart from the rarer Old Ales and Barley Wines, the alcoholic strength of English ale tends to be lower than one might expect, perhaps averaging around 4% abv.

Indeed, the English on-premise brewing ethos checks in at reasonable session strengths. In practice, probably 75% of the cask-conditioned ale pouring at any given time in England is Bitter, which is subdivided into designations that again pertain primarily to alcoholic strength: Ordinary, Best, Extra Special and the like. Alcoholic strength and rates of taxation are intertwined; consequently, expect to pay steadily more for a pint of ale as it escalates in alcoholic content.

At their finest, balance is the watchword for all English real ales, especially those quaffable Bitters, and cask-conditioning is more than a way of drinking. It’s a way of thinking. Flavors are subtle and even simplistic, yet unmistakably rendered. The malt character is rich and sweetish, with a touch of fruitiness. The classic English hop varieties are elegant, packing less of a bitter punch than their American cousins. The overall package is thirst quenching or contemplative, depending on one’s mood.

From start to finish, real ale requires effort and thought, especially for the publican charged with its care. Whether dispensed by gravity feed or hand pump, the clock begins ticking when the firkin’s seals are breached. Oxygen, the prime enemy of freshness, enters the firkin to occupy the head space as its volume is depleted. The carbonation recedes with time, and the ale becomes entirely flat. Oxidization produces unpleasantness, and the ale goes “off.”

There are two ways to avoid this outcome.

One is to drain the vessel promptly, with it being widely held that once tapped, a firkin has two days before deterioration makes the contents undrinkable. For a pub doing a good trade, this certainly is achievable.

But if the firkins turn over too slowly, or if the publican desires a degree of certainty to assist in what can be a coin toss, there is another way: A gadget called a cask breather, which is a nipple inserted into the spile hole and attached to a tank of CO2. As the ale is pumped out, small bursts of CO2 are drawn inside the firkin – not enough to push the liquid as in conventional kegs, but merely to occupy the head space and keep the liquid fresh.

CAMRA opposes cask breathers on traditionalist grounds. However, if the firkins can’t be turned over with predictable speed, it makes more sense to use a breather.

Cask-conditioned ales and the English pub are synonymous, and most readers of this publication are American, prompting the obvious question: How can one experience the joys of real ale in the States?

Some genuine English-brewed, cask-conditioned ales make their way to the United States in firkins, primarily through the good offices of the B. United International importing house’s cask ale program. I’ve sold firkins from B. United for many years and have had few problems, although there are two potential drawbacks.

First, by tradition, most English cask-conditioned ale is low gravity and low alcohol, which renders it fragile for shipping long distances. Consequently, B. United’s cask ale program is seasonal, with firkins sent stateside only during cold weather months.

Second, transport costs translate into steep prices, and while this may be the norm for all imports, it simply doesn’t always make sense to sell a pint of 3.7% ale, however wonderful, at twice the price of other drafts. Remember also that the more slowly a firkin moves, the greater chance of spoilage, and the greater need for a cask breather.

To experience the characteristics of English-brewed, cask-conditioned ale, it follows that the most dependable introductory option is to shop for English-brewed, bottle-conditioned ale, often from the same breweries. It’s the same concept in single-serving size. As with the firkins, a bit of finishing sugar goes into the bottles, and a mild secondary fermentation provides the necessary carbonation.

When scanning store shelves or beer menus, know that familiar brewery names include Fuller’s (specifically, its 1845 brand), O’Hanlon’s, Cropton, Coniston, and Young’s. Generally, English these ales are exported in 16.9 oz bottles, and will bear “bottle-conditioned” in plain sight on the label.

Nowadays in America, the freshest and best real ale emulates the English tradition, in that it is local or regional in origin, and hasn’t traveled very far before tapping. Look to the ranks of America’s burgeoning craft brewers, and find out whether the nearest brewery offers cask-conditioned ale. An increasing number of brewpubs have a beer engine and are eager to promote real ale and to educate the drinking public about its virtues, and more microbreweries than ever before are supplying real ale to pubs and restaurants that have hand-pull capability.

In 2009 in the metro Louisville area, cask-conditioned ale can be found at these brewpubs: Bluegrass Brewing Company (St. Matthews only), Cumberland Brews, and New Albanian Brewing Company (both locations). Beer bars that serve cask-conditioned ale include the O’Shea’s family of pubs (O’Shea’s, Flanagan’s and Brendan’s) and the The Pub at Fourth Street Live. Not all of these establishments are able to keep real ale flowing at all times, so before dropping in, don’t forget to phone to see what’s on the hand-pull.

My final bit of advice to those who find themselves smitten with real ale: Save your nickels, dimes and frequent flier miles. The best cask-conditioned ale is local, and in England. Buy CAMRA’s annual “Good Beer Guide,” pack light, and head into the countryside from Heathrow or Gatwick.

Order a pint of Bitter and a Ploughman’s Plate … and slow down.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: London's "Gay Hussar" restaurant faces extinction, and one reason is that booze no longer animates British politics.

The Gay Hussar may be closing.

Last orders at the Gay Hussar – the left’s hotbed of plots, gossip and goulash, by Rebecca Smithers (The Guardian)

For 65 years, the Soho restaurant has been the place where Labour lunches. But next month might see it shut

The Gay Hussar is among the most celebrated restaurants in London but its fame rests not so much on the quality of its chilled wild-cherry soup and its goulash, but on its reputation as the beating heart of political gossip.

The Hungarian restaurant in the centre of Soho has played host to generations of politicians, many drawn from the left, including Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot, Tom Driberg, Ian Mikardo and Barbara Castle. It is also rumoured to be where the Tory wets fruitlessly plotted the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s.

But after 65 years as a hotbed of political plotting, backstabbing, deal-making and gossip, it is due to close its doors for the last time in June.

It's always fascinating to consider an eatery or watering hole with a back story ranging far beyond everyday food and drink, but first things first. In the present context, a "Gay Hussar" describes a merry, carefree light cavalryman, with the adjective "gay" reverting to its original use.

Gay meaning ‘homosexual’ became established in the 1960s as the term preferred by homosexual men to describe themselves. It is now the standard accepted term throughout the English-speaking world. As a result, the centuries-old other senses of gay meaning either ‘carefree’ or ‘bright and showy’ have more or less dropped out of natural use. The word gay cannot be readily used today in these older senses without arousing a sense of double entendre, despite concerted attempts by some to keep them alive. Gay in its modern sense typically refers to men (lesbian being the standard term for homosexual women) but in some contexts it can be used of both men and women

Times (and words) do change. Hussar originally described a specific sort of Hungarian horseman of the 15th century, and the term later was adopted by cavalrymen of a similar model, irrespective of national origin.

The etymology of "hussar" is muddled. The word may date to ancient Rome; at the very least, the Hungarians borrowed it from nearby Serbia, where a "husar" was a type of medieval brigand, often conducting what we'd now call "guerrilla" warfare against the Ottoman Turks.

Much later there was a popular Hungarian operetta called The Gay Hussars, written by Emmerich Kálmán, which probably accounts for the name of London's Gay Hussar restaurant, where the only beer on the menu is Czech Budvar -- but we always can make do with Bull's Blood wine from Eger.

Speaking frankly, my mouth waters while reading the menu of Hungarian dishes. What I'd give for a properly rendered töltött káposzta (cabbage roll) at this precise moment. Significantly, the author of The Economist's "Bagehot" column does not share my favorable view of Hungarian cuisine, explaining the probable demise of the Gay Hussar by reference to an alarming social trend.

Last orders for political drinking

Waning interest in booze is transforming British politics

 ... But the restaurant’s imminent death surely has something to do with the decline in political drinking. Few people went to the Gay Hussar for the food. Hungary’s is not one of the world’s great cuisines and the Gay Hussar’s rendering of it was more faithful than inspired. Nor did they go for the comfort. The tables are cramped, particularly upstairs, and the corridors are higgledy-piggledy. They went for the booze—or, more precisely, for the intoxicating mixture of drink and gossip, alcohol and plotting, that once made British politics such a joy.

Drink has certainly not disappeared from public life. The Westminster village is about to embark on a long cycle of summer parties (last July David Lidington, a Tory MP, blamed plots against Theresa May on “too much sun and too much warm prosecco”). The summer season will be followed by the even boozier party conference season. Drink still has the power to change the course of political history. Ed Miliband introduced the current system for electing the Labour leader because a drunken Labour MP, Eric Joyce, assaulted four other fellow drinkers and the party’s attempt to replace him produced fears of vote-rigging by unions. If Mr Joyce hadn’t got so sloshed, Jeremy Corbyn might still be on the backbenches, and Labour might have campaigned much more vigorously for Britain to stay in the European Union.

That said, today’s Westminster looks like a temperance meeting compared with the Westminster of old ...

The conclusion is unspeakably melancholy.

The saddest reason is the rise of a professional political class. Drink provided a link between politics and society. The Labour Party recruited MPs and activists from working men’s clubs that existed in large part to provide workers with cheap drink. Ministers routinely let their guard down when they demolished the ministerial drinks cabinet with their civil servants and advisers. Today, both Labour and the Tories recruit their MPs from think-tanks and ministers keep up their guard at all times. The decline of political drinking has snapped yet another link between the political elite and the people that they are supposed to serve.

Apologies for this rock-pop digression into my British musical tastes.

Of course, these lists are contrived click bait, but Mojo does them better than most. The first brief video snippet includes a fleeting glimpse of the Kaiser Chiefs, a band I greatly enjoy. There are so many more: Suede and Waterboys receive honorable mention, and what about Travis and the Charlatans? Simple Minds? I remember reading somewhere that Squeeze wasn't huge in America, either, apart from the hit song "Tempted" and the early 1990s greatest hits CD.

I'm delighted to report that my CD collection includes discs from 7 of the 10 bands mentioned in the Mojo video. The * means I have all the group's albums.

10 Supergrass*
7 Kasabian*
5 Stereophonics
4 Manic Street Preachers*
3 Pulp
2 The Jam (and Paul Weller)
1 Stone Roses

Here's the sequel, with a twist.

Some of these are big favorites, too, with Blur and The xx meriting honorable mention.

9 The 1975
8 Florence + the Machine
6 Muse
4 Oasis
3 Arctic Monkeys
2 Coldplay
1 Radiohead

For me, I've always liked rock and pop music from the UK and Ireland. I've liked it more than American music of the same genres. It's okay if you disagree -- just be musical about it.

THE BEER BEAT: England, or one man's heightened cholesterol panic is another man's nostalgic repast (2013).

Having just now introduced an eager young student to the delightful concept of stargazy pie ...

 ... with pilchard heads gloriously intact, I found myself hungry for English comfort food and daydreaming about Real Ale, and with the pantry barren of Marmite, made do instead with kippers and my last bottle of Fuller's ESB.

The words of Inspector Morse, classic British television police crime solver, popped into my head.

“The secret of a happy life is to know when to stop – and then go that bit further.”

I was plunged into a reverie about our last trip to the United Kingdom in 2013.

---

The very least I could do during two weeks spent in England’s lovely West Country was to ingest my gout medicine each and every morning without fail – preferably washed down with a pint of cask-conditioned Bitter from one of those nearby pubs nearby dispensing it, but in a pinch, grudgingly conceding the utility of mere water.

Yes, I know: Fish do IT in THAT. The solution? Eat more fish, especially with chips ... or, a genuine pasty.

Somewhere a health fanatic reads and brays with dismay, but have no fear. It’s only despairing, defeatist clatter of the sort Winston Churchill wouldn’t have countenanced, even after his morning bottle of champagne, and these naysayers are inaudible to me — fully muffled by the cacophonous sizzle of a traditional English breakfast frying atop the stove, even the waxy tomato from Tesco’s, because it is destined for maximum exposure to hot oil just like all the rest.

Queue the Elgar, and consider this partial list of foodstuffs joyfully consumed during my holiday, including both local “English” fare and widely available culinary options borrowed from elsewhere.

Anchovies fillets (fresh)
Bacon
Baked beans
Bangers and mash
Black pudding (i.e., blood sausage)
Cornish pasties
Crab sandwiches
Egg rolls
Falafel
Fish pie (not Stargazy pie, alas)
Gajrati (regional vegetarian Indian)
Haddock and chips
Pie, mash, eel and liquor (the latter is gravy)
Pizza (loaded)
Smoked salmon
Spanish tapas
Steak & kidney pie
Thai red curry
Yorkshire pudding

Alas, I digress. Generally it is my custom to entertain and inform in purely fermentable measures of prose, and yet during this most recent English holiday, I found it quite unthinkable to separate the culinary from the ale-mentary.

Overall, ways of the new were not my objective, and I did not search for top chefs flashing their own branded apron and sauce wear. Rather, my task was to focus on the glories of the much maligned traditional English table, and to accompany them with the products of classic native ale-making.

---

Mission accomplished. First, let’s review the liquidity to be found in a reference volume.

Just after purchasing plane tickets, and before any other arrangements had been made, I purchased the essential book for ale hunting in the United Kingdom: “Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) Good Beer Guide,” edited by Roger Protz, and fully revised for publication each year.

CAMRA is the beer world’s oldest and most doggedly pervasive consumer protection society, founded in 1973 for the express purposes of espousing and protecting cask-conditioned “real” ale from the intrusions of modern times. What exactly is cask-conditioned “real” ale? CAMRA explains:

Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation. It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide.

Just know that traditional cask-conditioned ale is a living entity. It is pre-industrial, “slow” beer at its finest, predating every advance in ease of packaging, and preceding all processing shortcuts undertaken for the sake of modernity.

Consequently, as a product requiring training, thought and effort to maintain and dispense properly, real ale and the pub where it is consumed are inextricably linked. In America, the “coldest beer in town” merely signposts the triumph of refrigeration. In England, the best pint of real ale within walking distance of a bus stop is stirring testament to the publican’s commitment to craft.

That’s why CAMRA’S beer guide is vital. The organization’s local chapter members serve as diligent boots on the ground, studiously analyzing ales and pubs on a daily basis. Their intelligence gathering is the heart of the book, making it the top source of information for the visitor who cares less about his bed and breakfast than finding pints of fresh ale.

Which pubs are tops at tending their firkins? What do they usually pour? Do they serve snacks or meals? Are they hosts for discourse in their community? The book provides these answers, and many more.

My first visit to Devon and Cornwall was in 2009, and four years later, there have been changes in the pub scene. Owing to regulatory, political and societal factors too numerous to recount, pubs in the UK are diminishing in number, and that’s a bad sign. At the same time, there are more breweries now at work than at any point in a half-century.

Dozens of newcomers are brewing classic ale styles — Mild, Bitter, IPA, Stout and Porter – alongside newer variations, and they’re supplying local pubs. There may be fewer venues, but the range of choice probably is greater. Session strengths (below 4.5% abv) remain the norm, and while I might drop names (St. Austell, Skinner’s, Summerskill and Bridgetown), it wouldn’t matter, because none of the beers brewed by these excellent breweries are available anywhere close to Louisville.

This is as it should be. They await your arrival, over there.

---

On a sunny Sunday in July, my wife’s cousin drove us from the city of Plymouth to the Dartmoor National Park. In Merrivale, surrounded by rolling, sparse uplands and freely roaming sheep, we dined at a venerable establishment called the Dartmoor Inn.

I enjoyed roast beef with gravy, cabbage, vegetables and Yorkshire pudding. Two pints of well-tuned local Jail Ale from the Dartmoor Brewery in nearby Princetown completed this time-honored Sunday Roast.

Frankly, I gloried in the ambiance: Dark walls, wooden beams, a low-hanging ceiling and a fireplace, with humps, stoops and irregular measurements, and overall, minimal space for a heavyweight like me to navigate. The roasted meal was deliciously overcooked, and the ale’s ideally balanced malt and hops kept my palate sharp amid the meat and butter. It was the embodiment of a lifetime’s fascination with BBC News, “The Last of the Summer Wine” and maritime gin rations.

But what of the calories and cholesterol?

Whenever healthfulness began encroaching, I merely reached for another custard tart, found the closest CAMRA-listed pub, and waited for the feeling to pass.

Brew, Britannia.

THE BEER BEAT: This is why the classic British-style pub CAN and DOES make it in America.

I saw this article a couple of days ago, and it was strange, because the author was being attacked by the usual IPA-powered-cyber-know-nothings for not grasping the craft beer revolution, or some such nonsense.

Swift's modest proposal, and all that.

Beer is crucial to the notion of a British pub, but it isn't the real point here, although it's worth noting that if there is any single aspect of a British pub which genuinely is elusive in the States, it's the tradition of cask-conditioned ale. More on this another time, but it should suffice to say that excepting the proximity of like-minded small breweries, we lack the proper supply chain for it.

Galling -- and true.

Another caveat: As the Belgians made clear a long time ago, there are Belgian ales, and there are Belgian-style ales; the former come from Belgium, and the latter from elsewhere in emulation of them.

Logically speaking, there cannot be British (or Irish) pubs in America. They can be British-style and Irish-style, which is why so far during the short life of the Pints & Union project, I've taken great pains to clarify that inspiration is being derived from British pubs.

We're building a pub, not a Disney cookie cutter.

What Farrar addresses are American societal norms. He actually is hitting the center of the target, because of course mainstream American culture won't ever grasp the timeless virtues of pub culture in the British sense. We're too ephemeral and appearance-driven for this.

Fortunately, the American mainstream is mostly irrelevant in this context. My experience informs me that there is a niche for this sort of establishment, and in the end, a niche is nothing more or less than undervalued terrain for providing a specialized service and making a living from it -- I won't be gauche and use the term "market segment" or the like, which is verbal Viagra for business fetishists.

There'll surely never be a British-style pub on every American corner, but precisely because this is true, there is plenty of niche demand for one on a random corner, every now and then.

Pints & Union will be located at 114 E. Market, at the corner of the street and an alley. Now we need only complete the beginning, and the hypothesis can be tested.

THIS IS WHY THE CLASSIC BRITISH PUB WON’T MAKE IT IN AMERICA, by Jesse Farrar (Vinepair)

I’ve recently been re-watching “The Cornetto Trilogy.” It’s a terrific series of farcical British genre spoofs from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. One thing I love about the series is the feeling that I’m getting a small taste of authentic British culture, a great deal of which comes from ubiquitous scenes set pieces anchored to a corner pub. In “Shaun of the Dead,” the neighborhood pub, The Winchester, functions almost like a character, and “The World’s End” — the 12th (!) pub on our heroes’ epic pub crawl — actually, literally, speaks. Clearly, Pegg and Frost are infatuated with pubs. In a 2013 Vulture interview, Frost says of recreational bar-hopping with Pegg, “We used to go every Sunday! We used to walk down into Camden at 10:30 a.m. on a Sunday and spend the day. We’d mooch around and get Thai food and sit in a pub all day.”

That’s something you’re not likely to hear an American admit, and although it rarely needs to be said, it’s a concise example of what makes our culture so un-Continental. Whether it’s our history of temperance that’s shamed us out of being proud barflies, or the mere existence of the horrendous term “barflies,” the implication that a post-adolescent adult could spend “all day” in a bar borders on an a priori insult in American English. After all, who wants to spend more than a handful of daytime hours in a “dive,” a “club,” or a “bar & grille”? Even our crude imitation of British whistle-whetting culture, the “gastropub,” sounds more like something with a copay and a waiting room than it does a pleasant outing with friends, and what’s more, it rarely tastes better ...

LIVE TO EAT with SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Gustation and the gustatory delights of Indian cuisine, not excepting chicken tikka masala.

I've always considered Indian food (as opposed to Indiana food) a gustatory delight, although to be fair, brain sandwiches remain an option when you're in Evansville -- and in truth, I'll eat just about anything.

Gustatory is an adjective, from the noun gustation.

gustation [guh-stey-shuh n]

noun

1. the act of tasting.
2. the faculty of taste.

Origin of gustation

1590-1600; < Latin gustātiōn- (stem of gustātiō), equivalent to gustāt(us) (past participle of gustāre to taste) + -iōn- -ion

If tasting engenders enjoyment, it is attacked with gusto -- also deriving from gustation.

Gusto ˈɡəstō

noun, plural gustoes

1. hearty or keen enjoyment, as in eating or drinking, or in action or speech in general: to dance with gusto. Synonyms: enthusiasm, delight, relish, zest, spirit, fervor.
2. individual taste or liking: The boy is an imaginative charmer, with a gusto for storytelling.

We often come across this quote by Frank Zappa, as taken from his 1989 book, The Real Frank Zappa Book.

Every major industrialized nation has A BEER (you can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need A BEER).

In like fashion, it is my belief that New Albany can't be a Real City without an Indian restaurant, which isn't necessarily to say a curry house, although this distinction might matter if you're a resident of the United Kingdom.

While reading this explanation of the similarities and difference, I was struck by the convergences between the experience of Indian food in the UK and Chinese food in America, where generations regarded the chop suey house as a cultural exemplar (see BOOK REVIEW: Chop Suey – or how Chinese food came to be taken for granted in America).

Allow me to conclude by saying that we need Indian food in New Albany. It needn't be gourmet-level or rigorously authentic; we can build up to it. We're starting from zero, and a curry house with chicken tikka masala works for me. If a pub might be attached to it, all the better.

What's The Difference Between A Curry House And An Indian Restaurant?, by Maanvi Singh (NPR)

"I hate the term curry house," says Ranjit Mathrani, who co-owns Veeraswamy restaurant in London. "We are not a curry house."

Veeraswamy has been around since 1926 — it is London's oldest surviving Indian restaurant. Founded by Edward Palmer — the great-grandson of an English general and an Indian princess — the restaurant served not quite Indian food, but an Anglicized version of it, catering to an English clientele that craved something a bit spicy, but not overly so.

But when Mathrani, along with his wife, Namita Panjabi, and his sister-in-law, Camellia Panjabi, bought Veeraswamy in 1997, they completely overhauled the menu, making it their mission to serve what they call "real Indian food" — dishes you'd actually find in Indian homes.

"Our starting point is that the term 'Indian food' is actually only a lazy way of people describing the food of a continent," Mathrani says. India has dozens of distinct cuisines, he points out. "It would be like describing French, German, Italian and Spanish cuisines as 'European food.'"

Don't even get him started on Brits who like to say they're "going out for a curry."

Of course, Mathrani is correct in pointing out that the concept of an Indian curry is an entirely British invention. "And it goes back a long way," says historian Lizzie Collingham, author of Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors and The Hungry Empire. All the way back to the 1600s, when British East India Company merchants first encountered it ...

Jason "Sleaford Mods" Williamson on the next royal wedding: "A rosy, Walt Disney-esque illusion as we sing along to the cries of these psychopaths."

Jason Williamson is the singer of Sleaford Mods, and as far as Andrew Fearn's t-shirt is concerned in this clip from earlier in the year, Louis CK hadn't yet been exposed.

Now, prepare for brutal honesty as Jason considers the British royal family in the context of current events.

Nottingham doesn’t need you, Harry, by Jason Williamson (The Guardian)

The royal couple’s visit was probably as far north as they dared go to publicise their already overhyped nuptials

Did the Windsors’ PR look at statistics for which area of the UK holds the highest number of bloodless cap doffers? Is Nottingham full of them? The doughy-eyed apologists.

Perhaps this was as far north as Harry and Meghan dared go. To be honest I’m surprised they made it past Luton. And for what? To re-announce an already heinously over-publicised wedding engagement that will extract millions from us when it hits its big day? I’m assuming the convoy of Range Rovers didn’t have to experience the growing number of homeless people who are slowly being exterminated by the subzero temperatures, helped along by the guiding hand of this eternal austerity.

Previously:

Sleaford Mods: "Our shows are a bit like resistance in motion."

"Sleaford Mods have taken charge of Britain after staging a coup against the government."

THE BEER BEAT: A pint of bitter, please, because it's The Dubliners at the The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, 1977.

In which three fascinating Anglo-Irish topics collide amid my frequent references to the adjective "elegiac."

It's the mid-1970s lineup of the Irish folk band The Dubliners, performing on a throwback British television show called The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, depicting a fictional working men's club -- a form of private pub with ale and stronger drink, in addition to indoor recreation (snooker, darts), or a haven for what Americans would refer to as blue collar workers.

The WMC’s original purpose was to provide the Victorian working man with a controlled environment in which to socialise and drink. Over time it has morphed into a lingering bastion for traditional community activities. It provides an affordable way for local people to meet, enjoy live entertainment and play games (in The Telegraph, below).

I've written about The Dubliners many times. During the band's most fabled and productive period in the 1960s and early 70s, it was the Rolling Stones of traditional Irish music.

The American roots magazine Dirty Linen, contrasting the Dubliners and the Clancy brothers who emerged around the same time, wrote: "Whereas the Clancys were well-scrubbed returned Yanks from rural Tipperary, decked out in matching white Aran sweaters, the Dubliners were hard-drinking backstreet Dublin scrappers with unkempt hair and bushy beards, whose gigs seemed to happen by accident between fistfights."

Jim McCann performed only briefly with The Dubliners, whose best known members were Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew, but McCann committed to vinyl the definitive version of Carrickfergus, and he sings it here. For me, it produces goosebumps.

I think the frozen/mushy pea jokes are funny, and to hear an Irishman (McCann) pronounce the word "shunters" sublime.

Wheeltappers and shunters are railway workers. They were commonly employed by steam railways in Britain and elsewhere, but still are found both on British railways and in Eastern Europe.

The name of the programme thus echoes that of the many social clubs set up by railway workers in the 19th century, many of which are still in existence (known as British Rail Staff Association clubs), even if they no longer have a direct connection to the railways.

Working men's clubs still operate, though they're fast becoming archaic.

Last orders for the Working Men's Club? by Hannah Marshall (The Telegraph)

The number of working men's clubs in the country have halved in the last 30 years. Hannah Marshall investigates why these great British institutions are worth saving.

Off Barking Road in London's East Ham, just past the shops that always have their shutters down, a square, concrete building sits within a sprawling housing estate. Go inside this inconspicuous space on any Friday, Saturday or Sunday and you’ll be met by an unexpected sight: families of several generations grouped around tables —grandparents, parents, children, cousins, nieces, nephews — enjoying live music and socialising. Follow through to the sports room and a group of young local men will have congregated to play pool or darts and watch the football on the TV. This is the East Ham Working Men’s Club and it’s a place where everybody knows your name.

The Dubliners completed a 50th anniversary tour in 2012 and called it quits. The band's last surviving original member, banjoist Barney McKenna, died before the celebratory concerts even were finished. Far-off 1977 was the final year for The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club television series, and much like fraternal orders in the US, recent decades have not been kind to the prospect of the continued existence of working men's clubs.

Speaking personally, while it isn't a direct analogy with working men's clubs, my wife's cousin belongs to a private club in Plymouth, for centuries the Royal Navy's main port city. Most of the members are from working class family backgrounds as stevedores, shipyard employees, bricklayers and construction workers.

The first time we went there in 2009, there was no real ale, but by 2013, the pendulum had taken a swing. The Fort had a cask-conditioned bitter from Skinner's in Cornwall (Betty Stogs, perhaps), and it was delicious.

To be sure, if I'd have found myself in a working men's club in Sheffield or Newcastle at the age of 17, with cask ale and an Irish band playing, I wouldn't have understood any of it.

Now I do, and that's why we all fantasize about time travel. It's making me salivate just writing these words, and there's not a hand-pumped bitter in sight.

THE BEER BEAT: "One hundred years ago, Britain nationalized hundreds of its pubs — and invented a better drinking culture."

Photo credit.

Simply stated, speaking as one who is fascinated by World War I and British pub culture and the notion of prohibition, this is a worthy digression to which I'll be returning.

In the interim, it's a pleasure to be introduced to the writing of Phil Mellows, and for more on the topic: The Carlisle Experiment – limiting alcohol in wartime, by Roger Kershaw (The National Archives UK)

Absolutely compelling stuff, this.

Nationalize the Pubs, by Phil Mellows (Jacobin)

A hundred years ago, at the height of World War I, the British government faced a dilemma. As the slaughter on the Somme reached its climax, a vast munitions factory had been built on the border between England and Scotland, on an area covering more than fourteen square miles. Some 12,000 workers, plus thousands more builders and a military guard, were drafted into the area.

Most were billeted in townships near Gretna on the Scottish side of the border, but only a short train journey from Carlisle, a city in northern England. With little else to amuse themselves, Carlisle’s pubs became a home for the workers and their unusually generous pay packets, every evening swelling a native population of just 50,000. At Boustead’s, a watering hole near Carlisle station, they would line up 500 whiskies along the bar, ready for the first after-work customers off the train.

By the summer of 1916, convictions for drunkenness in the town had soared six-fold. But, of course, it wasn’t disorder that primarily concerned the authorities. When future prime minister David Lloyd George, then munitions minister, declared that “We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and as far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink,” he was referencing the widespread view that the effects of alcohol were threatening production.

Outright prohibition was on the agenda for a time, something which was to come to pass in America only four years later with a constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcohol. But by the outbreak of the First World War the temperance movement in Britain had passed its high-water mark. In 1908, the House of Lords threw out a licensing bill which had proposed closing 30,000 of the 96,000 pubs in England and Wales.

But war had sharpened the drink question once more — and something had to be done. Against this backdrop, the Carlisle Experiment, as it became known, was born ...