Hobgoblin

I thought I would try something a bit different and do a beer review, and because I like the advert I tried hobgoblin.

So I opened a bottle while thinking how I was going to do this and before I know it its gone, so I have to open another to review but I’m now getting distracted by ….well beer I suppose. Now I’m on to the third bottle and I really can’t be arsed to review it, buy it yourself I’ve got some more drinking to do.

A very eventful day, I completed my karate grading for yellow belt and discovered a new beer. I have promised myself a treat if I passed the grading so tomorrow I will buy myself the new Linkin Park album and maybe something a tad older like Motley Crue or Alice Cooper or something.
On a more important note, beer, it has been around a while but this is the first time I’ve tried it. Peeterman Artois is a nice change from generic lager, but not as heavy as some of the beers I have been trying recently (I have been working my way through the English ales and bitters at the local), Peeterman goes nicely with a salad (there you go; you’ve made admit to eating salads).

on this day

in 1970 Paul McCartney said that he's bought the film rights to Rupert the Bear.

in 1982 Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast is UK LP no. 1

in 1912 the Titanic set out on its maiden voyage

1849 saw the patent for the safety pin

1994, over 5,000 fans attended a US public memorial service for Kurt Cobain at Seattle Flag Pavilion

and in 2007 I had to drink a pint of guinness from a plastic "glass" in A PUB, what is the world coming to?

family outings

All metal heads want to be rock stars, it’s a given. I now formally pass my torch on to my children.
I do this for two reasons;1) I am getting to old and 2) I am absolutely talentless.

Why is this relevant? Even the coolest Hendrix/Cobain/Vicious wannabe has family; mums and dads can be such a drag on your street cred. How can you form the new Iron Maiden when your dad keeps telling you to cut your hair or you have to collect your little sister from the local catholic junior school, or worse still your mother is on your back about getting a job?

Before I got a full time job my mum insisted on dragging me shopping every Monday(it may have been Tuesday) to Asda’s in Tilbury, this I could handle and even after I started working I would still sometimes go with her just to try and be an embarrassment and to take the piss out of her friends. Family outings however where something different.

Only a few spring to mind though there must have been many more. There was a trip to Clacton organised by mum’s church, she made me dress fairly respectably (jeans and plain t-shirt) and I had to behave. After sitting on the beach for about half an hour I made my excuses(find a toilet) and left, my brother found me about two hours later wearing a sleeveless guns’n’roses t-shirt with “shit happens” stamped across it, some itsybitsy sunglasses and three and a half empty newky brown bottles. I had found a market stall that supplied the essentials and a shop selling bottle openers, what more do you need?
Needless to say I don’t think mum was impressed.
Another one was a trip to London zoo with my dad, brother and sisters. My dad was the last person I wanted to spend the day with but felt I had a duty to go(something to do with him paying for a tickets and us begging him to take us, seems to have forgotten we had asked him about two years earlier), my brother and I snuck off and spent ages trying to convince the lady in the shop to sell me some fags, I went all day with out a smoke, fucking great, nearly 19 and the bitch refused me, this after a lecture about not becoming a hippy and the usual haircut routine, stomping around a blazing hot stinking zoo, trying to be interested in a bunch of animals that I couldn’t give a toss about, and this was on a Saturday which I rarely got off work, I could have been somewhere else with beer.
Ditto a trip to the Southend air show, though on this occasion I bumped into my mates, left dad with the siblings (he can be quite understanding at times) and off we went to the cliffs pavilion to pay extortionate amounts of money for warm beer, seemed all the metallers had the same idea, it had an almost gig like atmosphere.

Its my turn now, I have the moody disinterested child in tow, though she has yet to discover alcohol, and it probably wont be long before child number two joins her.

o.t.

Not quite following the theme but I don’t care, I have just bottled my first batch of home brew wine (its white, I picked up the wrong box). It’s drinkable straight off and it’s either quite strong or highly toxic, either way it’s effective.

True to form I have bodged everything, from buying the wrong kit to not being able to get the right bottles, my kitchen looks like a bootlegger’s backroom. I could only buy beer bottles and had to use whatever was lying around, eight bottles of prime….err…..ok so I haven’t named it yet, I was thinking maybe Johnny’ swine. Any suggestions?

Jack Daniels

JACK DANIELS, just say it and the memory of the taste taunts you. That distinctive bottle in the hands of all those metal heroes, all those t-shirts and badges, lighters and tumblers, the sight of it behind the counter, out of reach and out of price range, just what a couple of seventeen and eighteen year old metallers needed to get pissed. “Thunderbirds please”, it was loads cheaper.

Just to show you how important it was:
Martin lived with his mum near a sheltered housing complex, I got to know him much better many years later but in those few encounters in 89-90 he impressed me with two things, one: the biggest collection of fantasy and sci-fi books I’d seen and two: the top of his wardrobe was covered in empty JD bottles. I bumped into him when he started going out with a girl I new from work about ’98, “hey I know you” I said, he looked confused, “you had shitloads of empty JD bottles on your wardrobe”, “yeah, I did, who the fuck are you?”

Jack Daniels, Jack or JD, it was important, it wasn’t the best, it wasn’t the strongest, but it was important. It still is. It was my luxury tipple up until 1995 when all the dope smoking dance music tossers started drinking it, I moved on to scotch. People still insisted when I asked for whisky on getting me JD, it started to piss me off. My little sister still bought me a bottle every Christmas until last year when I said I’d prefer a single malt or at least a scotch of some sort, I said I don’t really like JD anymore. It was terrible, I missed that bottle so much I’m still a bottle out of sorts, maybe I’ll go buy one tomorrow and try to redress the balance.

Sorry Jack, I promise to make it up to you