It has taken a while to write this piece about beer – my life in beer. Truth is, I have been off the beer. I have been on the wagon. So to write vividly about pints and pints of delicious, foamy, ice-cold beers on this beautiful sunny and warm day in July felt like a torture. Or a punishment. I have been off the sauce for a bit. No real reason. I’m not giving it up for good. Just call it a cleanse or a reset. Time off. I occasionally do this to myself. I have a hard deadline to meet. Time to ground myself, stay home, clean my room. Take a break. Drink tea and read books. Retreat from the noise. Abstain from merry-making and crapulence. Take a breather from distractions. Take myself away from everything that makes my heart over excited and my head giddy, all of my happy places and favourite people. Isolate. Meditate. Hydrate. Detox. I’m not sure how long I’ll be sworn off booze, not really – there are never any rules to this. Maybe when I get this book done, I’ll hit the town or throw a party, but for now here we are. How does this dry spell feel? Mostly I feel a bit boring, yes that’s the word, and I feel dull, if you want to know the truth of it, I feel a bit ordinary. Straight-edged. I feel so serious in my head. Put it this way, I’m definitely not going to do anything risky today, or say anything outrageous, or do anything silly or dangerous, or laugh hysterically until I pee my pants a bit. Nope, not today. See, when you’re stone-cold sober you’re so predictable, you know what you might do or be or say – no delightful surprises, no impulses to dance on a table or start a food fight. That’s the thing with dry patches – they’re so . . . dry.
I remember always being happy with a glass of lager or cider in my hand on a summer’s day. Beer has always been the easy option, the cup of soft froth, the festival pint, the sociable choice, the beverage for light playtimes, for lunchtime drinking, a signature drink, the perfect pairing for bunking off. Generally speaking, a cool beer is the drink we’ll choose when we don’t wanna go too mad and over the top and lose the plot and our house keys and phone and one shoe and end up singing in a graveyard at the full moon and weeping for all the ghosts we have awoken with our caterwauling. Spirits awakening the spirits, beer not so much.
My beer life begins in my school-days in Hastings, yes, I can pinpoint that that’s where my love began. It was easy to get served at this tiny little corner shop off-licence by the train station. As teenagers we were forever friends. It was the 1980s and I seem to remember our booze cost just one pound. Do you remember the old one-pound notes? We’d go halves and share a packet of ten B&H which was about 70p. Then we’d take our booze haul to the beach and sit by the Hastings pier and kick our shoes off and have the loveliest lazy afternoons just being kids, talking and drinking and smoking and singing and laughing and snogging each other. Looking back, it was a truly wonderful time. Those beers and those kisses tasted of sea salt, bubblegum lip-gloss, vinegary chips and freedom.
My next happy beer memory: Inter-railing around Europe when I was sixteen. What a thrill it was to leave the small-town of Hastings and then travel all the way to Amsterdam. How exciting to arrive and sit in a coffee shop bar and drink a beer. I recall being fascinated to watch how they served it, how they smooth the frothy foam off the top like ice-cream. What joy it was to drink and smoke and giggle and get lost around the canals. How lovely it was to be sixteen and exploring the world like this. Ah yes, those were very happy beers. Travelling by train, all the faces we saw, all the cities we visited, and all the beers we drank, watching the changing terrain and sky through the speeding train windows. Sitting in a booth, closing the door, and hoping we’d have the whole carriage to ourselves, sharing picnics of bread and cheese, crisps and beers, the soft gliding motion of European train wheels, as we watched urban industry, factories and windmills, blur into a glorious backdrop of rugged mountains, tulip fields and rivers, and the ever-changing landscapes of Holland to Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Corsica. There was no internet in those days. Of course, we got lost. We often had nowhere to sleep and always ran out of money. I remember how we laid our towels out on the sandy beaches or slept on a park bench. How we’d drink beers and snooze under the stars. How we would make friends with other travellers, share stories, songs, poems, tobacco, cheap beers and wine. How from such a young age we learned early how beer is perfect in different settings. How the sunset beers in Spain came with tapas, the breakfast beers in France came with croque-monsieur, the beers in Corsica came with skinny-dipping at sunrise.
Then to London and working in Soho: and how good did those first beers taste? Delicious. I was just twenty and already a regular at the Coach and Horses. I drank pints every evening sitting on the kerb outside that boozer before going to gigs. Most of my friends were artists, actors, musicians, poets, writers, record and film and theatre types. It seemed everyone was busy, being and doing and making exciting things. The early 1990s – oh the music, there was so much live music then, so much dancing, so much buzz and fizz and fun. I feel like there was a time when I knew everyone in Soho. I recall how friendly it felt, how I felt safer back then, how I would often jump on the back of the milk float for a lift home. If I had to pick a highlight for you of those very early Soho beer memories, it would be how lucky I once was to stand in an audience and watch the beautiful Jeff Buckley singing solo at a crowded, hot and sweaty 12 Bar on Denmark Street. I think that gig changed my path; I think it stirred something in me to make my writing my life. How electric that era was. I remember all those beers we drank in filthy illegal bars under porn shops. I recall playing pool down there, always a fag drooping out of my mouth and swigging bottles of Peroni or Mickey’s Big Mouth like I thought I was a hustler. All those legendary hilarious nights of supping beer and revelry in the late-night bars of Hanway Street. Then of course all those wicked and messy nights of beers in the magic of the Colony room, beautiful faces and places all fading now. What the hell happened to Gerry’s? All changed. Not the same now and the beers don’t taste the same.
It would be hard for me to pick a favourite beer of a lifetime. As I write this, my mind is coughing up memories of a lifetime of happy beer moments: Bintang in paddy fields at Ubud Festival in Bali, Kingfishers and spicy curry on Brick Lane, Pabst and quesadillas in Brooklyn, Tyskies and pierogi in Krakow, Red Stripe and jerk barbeque in Jamaica . . . Martha, remember that afternoon of drinking Mahou we once shared in Madrid? I still think about that most perfect buttery tortilla. How lovely that time was.
I have focused on lager memories and forgotten to speak of my love of Guinness. How that particular ruby-dark beer is a meal in itself and a whole other magic world. My deep love for Guinness began in the Irish pubs of Camden and Kentish Town and sharing forever times in Filthy McNasty’s with the poet Jock Scot and Shane McGowan holding court. The taste of Guinness gives me nostalgia for good times and so much laughter in Cushendall, Cork, Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh. Did I ever tell you of the time I accidentally fell down a well in Cork? Ha! I didn’t spill a drop, there I am at the bottom of a well, a full pint in each hand, and I didn’t spill a drop . . . But all of that, as they say, is another story.
As I write this I’m drinking a pint of deliciously expensive French Earl Grey tea, which boasts hints of bergamot and spice and lemon peel. It smells amazing. I take it black with a spoon of honey. There is a perfectly blue sky as I finish writing this for you today. My roses are in full bloom and jasmine scents the air. The snails sleep under the lavender. When you asked me to write of a life in beer I immediately reminisced about some of the happiest times of my life, hazy afternoons celebrated with beer, lazy days, easy laughter . . . for surely, after all, that is the point of beer. I look forward to my next one with you, whenever it might come.