When did pubs stop selling beer? When did ‘bitter’ start to mean cold fizzy shit that has to settle, like Guinness? Why don’t bar staff know what ‘light ale’ is – and even those that do, why don’t they know what a ‘light & bitter’ is? It’s a way to give John Smiths pisswater some body and taste, that’s what it is!
Every Tuesday, on my way to choir practice with Tottenham Community Choir (yay!) I walk from Seven Sisters to West Green. Some weeks I am early and fancy a pint, but of the four pubs that I could walk past on my way there not one of them sells beer. Well, not what I call beer, anyway. They have lagers galore – Czech, Danish, German, Polish, American – but no beer. And whereas I quite like a pint of lage at certain times, at other times there’s nothing quite like beer. The Palmerston tried selling beer for a while (they had Abbot and Old Speckled Hen on tap) but apparently not enough people bought it and the barrels went off. They also had bottles in thefridge (which is a debatable practice – beer should be chilled but not cold) but even that is no more.
So sometimes I go without, and sometimes – like last night – I have a pint of John Smiths. And it’s ok – but it isn’t beer.