Couple of little errands yesterday afternoon and a passably sunny day (for one of the errands was using up film in a vintage camera) meant we tootled out through Temple Church and found, to our joy, it's now open for public access.
Pictures duly taken, and architectural details noted, we headed to an Amazon locker to pick up a couple of little parcels. From here, whilst there are in theory several possible pub destinations...in practice we usually go to LHG.
We grabbed a couple of pints of cask beer (theirs) and settled in. The number of punters was perfect, as was the beer (pale, hazy, modern hops, 4% ish).
We were also delighted to see XII by Tiley's on the bar. At 6.2%, definitely not a cask beer to start.
Often, when we go to the pub we don't have a huge amount to talk about since we often are in the same space for the day so we already know what's happened. However, for some reason we were pretty talkative (for us, that is) and, looking back, we covered a lot of range...
- how the monthly monitoring of work targets was going and where some clarification ws needed (I think we nailed it and the monitoring is well underway today)
- Whether a particular track was Lou Reed solo or Velvs (no firm decision)
- How Nico (solo, not on teh Velvs album) had an interesting but strangely monotone delivery style.
- How, now we know some B&W film qualities better, might specify how we use particular brands also, how some cameras really can't hack 36 exposures but that 24exp often isn't avaialble.
- How the selotape roll I'd picked up from the Amazon locker was the perfect size for the project the engineer had in mind and how he was looking forward to putting it to use
- Also noting that when we arrived, the bar staff were chilled and at 5.25 when the rush started we watched them step it up a notch.
Then it was time for another pint. He asked me what beer I wanted. I just gave him a specification (measure, abv, characteristics) and he joined the queue.
He came back with a spec-meeting beer for me and he had the Tiley's. The conversation continued:
- How the staff member charged with opening the bi-fold doors (like others before them) seem to struggle a bit with it.
- How the Tiley's beer was very traditional and perfectly pitched. So good that he wanted to contact his "old man" friends and tell them to come immediately to try it (one lives in London, the other in Surrey so it wasn't very practical).
- How we were put in mind of the Moor project to replicate a traditional Fullers ESB recipe (great on cask, less so in a can)
- How Steeley Dan's name came about (something about a Naked Lunch reference but that might be apocryphal)
- Whether I'd make a better job than him of getting my 35mm film onto the developing reel whilst maintaining a tail of film which would allow reuse of the cartridge.
- How much we were keen to develop the two films we have (we haven't done them yet, but I'm going to get onto it in a moment).
- The fact that we needed to make pesto when we got back and how nice it would be to have some small frozen blobs of it stowed in the freezer.
- How "Cabin Pressure"'s episodes are named alphabetically (Abu Dhabi, Boston, Cremona, Douz, Edinburgh, Fitton...you get the gist)
- How "Herc" in Cabin Pressure is Mr Gently Benevolent (and Mr Giles, and the Gold Blend Bloke and Murray "one night in Bangkok" Head's brother
...and it went on.
In all this nonsense, people came and went at the other end of "our" table. Each smiled at and waved in in a jolly fashion. After the third, it was time to leave but, in truth, I could have sat and nattered nonsense for longer.
Today it's all been a bit full-on compiling monitoring stats so I think a game might well be in order to take minds off it.
But first - I need to spool up some 35mm film ready to be developed.
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