When people in That London ask me how long I’m going back to the Shire for Christmas and I tell them two weeks, they look at me with disbelief and ask me “what am I going to do for all that time?” My response is that I’m going back to be a drinking legend and to be hailed as ‘the Messiah of Cheshire’ but the reality is that I spend most of the time cutting up tiny pieces of paper and sticking them onto grainy print outs of C4Lf members. Here’s my recollections and review of the C4Lf Yuletide (It’s what the Anglo-Saxons called Christmas apparently – so says Tuck) season.
Friday – 14.12.2012
Arrive back in the Shire with Tone. For the last two Christmases I’ve come I’ve been back I’ve been greeted by a hearty snowstorm. No such luck this year though as it’s mild and dreek. Much to my surprise the first C4Lf member I meet is Amy ‘Seven Generations of Shire’ Stubbs in Kelsall co-op. There’s a vague feeling of déjà vu to this as when I went back to the Shire in the summer, Amy was the first C4Lf member that I met then, only this time in Jersey Ice Cream Mecca Snugburies. It turns out that she’s embarking on an exciting new career in the co-op., meaning that with El Presidente, Oli Bollington and now Amy installed in the co-op, C4Lf’s hold over Northern England’s favourite ethical retailer grows ever stronger. We gossip about the new uber co-op in Tarvin and I sign-up for the Foresters quiz on Sunday. Upon arrival back in Utkinton I help myself to a bottle of Old Peculiar from the fridge, only for it be revealed to be a commemorative bottle given to my dad for all his hard work organising the village fete. Still it’s opened now, so I polish it off.
Saturday – 15.12.2012
Tone and I head to the Deva Stadium (not the exacta it’ll always be the Deva to me) to watch Chester City (Not FC it’ll always be City to me) play Bishop Storford for my first of my three Chester games over the Yuletide period. Chester are top of the Conference North (not the blue square it’ll always be Conference to me) and have only drawn one and lost one game all season. The typically cumudgeonly Chester fans are unused to such success and now spend most of their time on Chester fan forum Devachat bemoaning the pies, which they describe as physics-defyingly having no sides. After a cagey first half Chester demolish Bishop’s Stortford 4-1 thanks to a second half hat trick from substitute Craig Curran. Tone and I head out to Tarporley for a spot of pubbing with Ben. Tone is looking forward to a glamorous Desperate Scouse-Wives style Sess in the Cheshire village that everyone agrees most resembles New York, Chicago, Texas and Alberquerque. So naturally we head to the Rising Sun.
Rising Sun
On the bad side there’s no Old Tom on Tap (as Mister Lloyd swears there used to be) but on the plus side I’m not sick all over the entrance like at DT’s curry night. I did rating systems for the Tarporely Sess but I seem to have misplaced them in my ‘filing system’. However, the Rising Sun scores heavily for its tasteful birch-based yuletide decor but it’s Robinson’s barley water does not go down well with the Tone who gets flashbacks to the string of austere Primitive Methodist pubs we encountered on the Smitstone Trail. Apart from Old Tom are there any good Robinson’s beers?
Piste
Tone hankering to fully immerse herself in the WAG lifestyle leads me and a reluctant Ben into Tarporley’s trendy ski-lodge and favourite waterhole of the Tarporley Vics – Piste. The place is heaving and we struggle to get a seat. Tone put off beer for the evening by the watery Robbies moves onto the wine...white wine no less. A gentleman at the bar tells me that he used to have hair as long as mine and as he reminisces fondly reminisces about his days following Zeplin around Europe. He also tells us that he’s one of the owners of Piste. Before I can ask him about getting more Maiden on the Soundtrack, Soul Man and the rest of the Tarporley Vics appear. Tone takes some convincing that Soul Man isn’t a heavily-tanned Ian. Ben and I have a chat about the merits of Piste’s beer. He thinks the Weetwood bitter is pretty good but I’m unconvinced by the Lady Weetwood (Cheshire Cat), fair play to them for having Weetwood though.
The Swan (aka The Jolly Cactus, aka the )
On the way to the Swan I encounter my sis Helen, who tells us disapprovingly that she can hear us coming from the other end of the high street. It’s good to get into the Swan now rather than on Christmas Eve, when for one night a year it transforms into a youth-filled hell hole. We actually get seats in the front stairs area. Ben and I have the traditional pint of TT, it’s pretty good. But not as good as the 2000 Thomas Perry golden age era. Amy joins us and we have a chat about raising Turkeys. I get a pint of Weetwood Eastgate, again, it’s okay but I’m not feeling it.
The Foresters
With the Swan closing at 11 we head on down to the late night den of inequity that is the Foresters. I’m now nicely drunk and have a chat with the landlord about Man’s Brown ale which, as part of a brown over bitter, was the first drink I ever had in a pub when I began my drinking career back in 1999. The Landlord tells me that they no longer stock it because the only guy who used to drink it died back in 2002. I comfort my nostalgia with a packet of scampi fries and then some bacon fries, no cheesey moments though I’m not that drunk. The Foresters was probably the best pub of the night good atmosphere, good clientele and from what I can remember a nice pint of Hobgoblin.
Sunday – 16.12.2013
Tone and I go on a walk up Old Pale and encounter the Tree of Shame. A tree wrapped in red wool with the message ‘Tree of shame, this tree contains all the rubbish that careless individuals have dropped in the forest. SCUM!’ The tree contains a variety of rubbish, including bags of dog faeces. When I return next I imagine they’ll be a person hanging from one of the branches. In the evening I head on down to the Foresters to join Ben’s quiz team, which is largely Ben answering questions and everyone else sitting around quietly. I manage to answer one question which is actually just correcting Ben on the spelling of intercostal muscles. Despite our initial confidence we come about third.
Monday – 17.12.2013
Chester shopping and shrine crawl. It takes me an age to spot the Chester Imp in the Cathedral. Get some Cheshire Blue from the Cheese shop. They have both Mrs Bourne’s and Appleby’s Cheshire Blue for sale. Two brands of Cheshire Blue, what an age to be alive! I go for the Bourne’s naturally.
Tuesday – 18.12.2013
Spend guilty day researching the lineage of Lord Binning. Is this what a revolutionary zine should be focussing on? Still that Lord Binning the 13th and his crop circle investigations what a card. Dodgy computer clock means I leave my dad standing at bus stop for 20 minutes and he catches festive Christmas Cold. Pop to Tarvin Church graveyard to search for the grave of the Old Man of Delemere Forest and founder of the Magic Methodists James Crawfoot. Initial search is unsuccessful.
Wednesday – 19.12.2013
Watch Chester beat a well-organised but toothless Harrogate 2-0. Sarcevic scores a spectacular Gascoigne 1996 ball juggling volley. I’m beginning to get a taste for the Crocky Trail’s ‘spitting feathers’ served in the Chester Blues Bar, mhmm grainy. I wonder to myself after my mundane Weetwoods in Tarporley, whether Spitting Feathers will replace Weetwood as my favourite beer, but then I push the thought from my mind as heresy.
Thursday – 20.12.2013
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that I’m not going to finish the C4Lf Zine in time. Not if I keep spending my day’s watching forgotten biblical epics like Lawrence Olivier’s The Robe anyway. All the articles are now in, even the belated ones from Ben, Smit and El Presidente. To be fair to Ben and Smit I had requested specific articles for them that week. The cats are slowing down progress by constantly standing on my cut-out pieces of paper. Ink supplies in the Francis archaic computer are running dangerously low. A communications error with my dad means that I don’t go to Tarporley at the correct time to pick up my dad and his mate Graham and they have to hitch a lift. Am I a bad son?
Friday – 21.12.2013
Pop into Chester again during the day to go to the Lush pick and mix (why pay extra for the box, a used Sainsbury’s carrier bag does the job) to get Mum’s Christmas present. Pop down to the new pub by the racecourse the Architect – it’s a bit pine floors and no knickers for my tastes but is already standing room only and it’s not even race day. Later in the evening Baldwin, hung over from his work Christmas do, picks me up and we head to T’House aka the Farmers Arms.
The T’House is fairly quiet for a Friday night. When I was last in the T’House in November I’d told the Landlords Graham and Jo that if they got in a barrel of Weetwood Ambush then I’d come in to T’House everyday that I was back. They remonstrated with me that I’d have to drink eight pints a day to get through the barrel before it became undrinkable. However, I was adamant that if they got the Ambush in I would do this. A quick scan of the bar reveals that there is no Ambush only Eastgate and Weetwood Bitter. Jo shrugs explains to me that she forgot about my request. My disappointment is mixed with slight relief as God knows what effect that amount of Ambush would have had on me. Although only 4.8%, Ambush can have strange effects on man, rumour has that the Weetwood head brewer Rodger secretly laces it with Thujone – the psychoactive element that’s also used in absinthe. As we all remember, it was an Ambush bender that led to El Presidente being barred from the Olive Trancer back in 2003. Having Eastgate in T’House still seems unnatural to me as everyone knows it’s Eastgate for the bottom of the village and Old Dog for the top but I must try and move with the times.
El Presidente hasn’t arrived yet so rather than go stand in the backroom and sit through endless darts and page 3 spot the difference we go into the lounge bar area. Hardman and Andrea soon join and eventually also El Presidente, who has what he calls ‘the lurgie’ and disapproves of our choice of seating. We discuss the plans for Christmas Eve this year, numbers look good as Baldwin, Hardman and Andrea are all game so we decide we’ll attempt a direct assault on Chester. El Presidente offers us his traditional lift back from Tarporley to Kelsall. He can’t join us for the early day sess as Christmas Eve is the busiest day of the co-op year
Tuck arrives and we do the quiz, it’s Christmas themed and I can remember some of the questions from last year. We manage to list all the reindeer and remember the names of three wise men. We’ve only ever won T’House quiz once before and that was with pub trivia quiz Ben on the team, however, this time on an Eastgate high I’m pretty confident we’ll win. When a controversial answer to the question: ‘Which Island in the Indian Ocean is known for its large totemic head sculptures?’ is announced to be Christmas Island, some of the other teams remonstrate that the answer should be Easter Island. I somewhat obnoxiously shout out that “I think you find Easter Island is in the Pacific Ocean not the Indian Ocean.” This annoys some of the old men in T’House, who audibly refer to me as a ‘long-haired freak’ within my vicinity. “This is why you’re not allowed in the lounge area”, El Presidente tells me. Ahhh Cheshire it’s good to me back.
Despite my know-it-all smugness we get beaten by the Village Idiots by three points...how do those guys at the bar know so much about Christmas? As part of the new regime last orders is 11.30 on a Friday, however, you can buy as many pints at that time as you want. So everyone gets two pints of Eastgate in and then covers their pints to avoid what be a frankly devastating oystering. We manage to hang on in T’House until one, outlasting everyone else until we take pity on a yawning Jo and head on out into the night.
Hardman’s notes for the evening taken from the ratings book:
Being of the rating of Public Houses of the Cheshire Area and perhaps beyond.
Veritable Public Houses and other establishments of historical or popular interest of which we intend to visit as part of our Festive Sojourn into the City of Deva.
In the particular order (except the given below)
1. Plumbers
2. Queens Arms
3. The Boot
4. Horse Shit & Fuck
5. The Eagle
6. Bill Smiths motors
7. New Orleans
8. Albion (early)
9. The Architect
10. Handbridge
11. Ship
***
Shrines
1. St Werburgh
2. Nemesis @ the amphitheatre
3. Roman Garden
4. St Johns
5. Laser quest
6. James Robinson’s Grave
***
Votes for next outed celebrity paedo
Rolf Harris (verified)
Craven
Cyril Sneer
Henry Kelly (going for Gold)
Keith Harris
Daniels (Helen) & (Paul)
Dusty Bin
Bruce Forsyth
Mallet’s Mallet
***
“THIS IS THE WAY WE BO!”Was it Christmas or was it New Year? (Hint: It was Christmas)
TBC
No comments:
Post a Comment