Regionalisation

We've just come back from Cornwall.

Land of Betty Stoggs, of Doom Bar and Tribute.

I used to love all three of these beers, I probably wouldn't choose any of them now if there was almost anything else to try.

Thankfully, we managed to avoid all of these during our week in the far South West and yet, the beer experience was decent, rather than good.

I really wanted to love the Crown Brewery beers and I did like them a lot, ...but love didn't come.  We revisted one of the Penzance Brewery beers - Potion No9 and it was still impossible to not enjoy it, and yet  I wouldn't have wanted to drink more than a couple of pints of it.

There were highlights, though...

The Bath Inn on the Newlyn/Penzance borders was a delightful find, along with Exeter Brewery Avocet beer.

I loved Mousehole and it's brilliant harbour - the Old Coastguard Hotel did some nice Padstow Beers and becoming reacquainted with St Austell HSD and Proper Job in the Ship Inn was grand.

So with all this goodness...why wasn't it quite right?

None of the pubs felt like the place we wanted to just huddle in a corner, watch the world and and have the choice of a few beers we wanted to try next.  But all the places that had good beer, really only had one or maybe two we wanted to try and most of them didn't really bear a third pint.

All of the local beers we drank (and it was lovely having a choice of local brews) had common features - in much the way many Sussex beers have.  That's both and good bad, since if you want something a little different...there's nothng to choose from.

Still, we had a good, relaxing time and we walked a good few miles every day. That's a good thing, right?

And we went back via Bristol and made the most of the Barleymow...naturally...

On the Booking of Tables in Pubs

ach!  Bain of my life (well, OK, that's a little over-dramatic and it's very much a first-world problem)...is good pubs allowing all their tables to be booked of an evening.

We arrived in Bristol after a flawless train journey and, coincidentally, find out that a local bunch of internet-introduced friends were planning a pub meet.  We suggested the Barleymow (obviously) and everyone was excited to fall in line.

We arrived there about 4.45 to find that all but one small table in the pub had been booked.  One booking of about 20 people and another for 15.  On a Thursday night.

I have to say we were really grumpy at the barman on duty (I'm sorry about that, I really am...it's really not your fault that your pub allows booking out of the place).  He did what he could to suggest an alternative (ie sitting outside) but we decided to pass after an inital pint (which was lovely).

So we somewhere else instead (the Old Market Assembly) which has more space but they only really had one beer on cask and had only 3 pizza bases available to people who hadn't booked.

The pizza was OK (but not as good as previous visits) and the lack of beer variety was very sad but we had a fun evening with pals we haven't seen for ages.

Now - I can't tell pub how to maximise their business model but I think I'd like to suggest that you're careful about how you run your space but if you're a pub, perhaps consider limiting the number of tables you allow to be booked so that "ordinary" drop-by punters can fill the rest of your evening eating and drinking.

The best example I saw of this was a pub/cafe/bistro in Kingsand.  There were about 5 tables just inside the door that they never allowed to be booked and as a result you could swing by and have a pint and a meal and slot into their less busy times without feeling the impending deadline of a table hand-over.

Rant over.  this afternoon we'll be off to the Moor Brewery tap.  It'll probably get quite busy but there won't be any pre-booked tables...

Research suggests...

...how often do we see/hear headlines relating the latest research on alcohol consumption and it give us a clear picture of anything?

I would contend, almost never.

The latest government campaign is suggesting that middle-aged drinkers (ie: me) have more alcohol-free days each week. 

First off, I'd like to say right here, right now that I don't think this is a lie, or is bad advice.  But I do question where it comes from and what it really means.

Is it that

a)  Really, people just need to drink less and since we can't stop them once they start of an evening, it's just better they spend some evenings not drinking at all

or

b)  Days when you don't drink certain physiological things happen in your organs that are genuinely beneficial/protective for the days you do drink.

the headline doesn't say, of course, because if it did we'd just find ways to drink as much in different ways.

Also, we see a lot of headlines about how many hospital admissions are caused or contributed to by alcohol consumption. What they don't break this down into is those caused by:

1  Saturday night punch-ups amongst annoying pissed-up young men
2  Friday night acute intoxication in non-regular drinkers
3  Domestic violence meted out by a drunk spouse
4  Road traffic accidents involving intoxicated young or older drinkers
5  Chronic conditions worsened by regular drinking
6  Primary disease caused by alcohol
7  Admissions caused by alcohol addiction
8  Other hospital admissions not really related in any way to alcohol but the person had obviously been drinking.

Then there's the "drinking more than...increases your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and liver diease by x%..."
...and this is the one that probably pisses me off the most.

Why?  Because these are from population-level studies (or meta studies...that is: secondary studies on several different sets of data from different studies) and they tell you absolutely nothing about your risk because those increases in risk are in relative risks.  If I have a 1 in 1000 chance of getting primary liver disease and my risk has increased by 5% by drinking then it's still a relatively small chance compared to other things that will kill me.

As a government I guess it's reasonable enough to act on population level information because you are concerned with the population as a whole.  But - and this is a big but...

We know that one of the biggest contributors to chronic ill health is poverty.  If we put serious money behind that then perhaps hospital admissions not only related to alcohol but other things would reduce too.

Lazy, sloppy "health" messages from a government who aren't serious about really tackling root causes isn't going to make me change my behaviour.  I'm not condoning my drinkng but I believe it conveys some positives to my lifestyle too and it's foolish to totally ignore them.

Meanwhile, I  will continue to have the odd alcohol-free day even though I notice no particular benefit from it since it's a balance kind of a thing - much like eating my greens, no?