Category: Uncategorized

It’s the end of January, the month everyone hates. A month of poverty, of cold, grey days and dark nights that arrive too early and drag their feet as you push them out of the door. Well, all I can say as a January-birthday-haver is just you wait. Just you wait until February sets in. February’s the real villain.

February will still trick us with warmer days and bite us with snow and floods and frost, just when we think we’re almost through the worst of it. But this last part, the most fickle, harshest month, can’t hold forever. Imbolc takes place on Saturday 1st February.  The soil is warming up. The snowdrops have started meeting in their cabals, in open defiance of the iron grey sky. I’ve seen them. We’re nearly there.

Other stuff:

• We’ll start with this. Kat Eschner put off reading Consider The Lobster for a long time, and when she finally read it, she liked it. But her essay about reading it is about so much more than just reading a book.

• Hot dogs! I long, occasionally, for there to be hot dog carts in Clitheroe. Sadly this seems to be a major city thing only, but this run-down of the most average hot dogs in New York helped me out of my cravings. For a short while, anyway.

• I had no idea the creator of Ren & Stimpy was such an asshole. The documentary about the cartoon looks like it’s going to be pretty intense, if this piece on it by Tom Grierson for Mel Magazine is anything to go by.

• This week I learned (thanks, Isabelle O’Carroll) that noisy restaurants and bars aren’t just a personal preference thing, they cause serious accessibility issues for many people. Read this Vox piece by Julia Belluz. It’s really informative and positive — it shows how things can be changed for the better.

• “…instead of swiftly removing himself or divesting, Friedman remained tied to the Spotted Pig, roping the fate of his employees to his own.” The Spotted Pig has closed. This Eater piece by Hillary Dixler Canavan expertly dissects what that means.

• Here’s something so on-brand for me it may as well be wearing a Yeastie Boys hat: an evocative, luxurious essay on the Latin American women persecuted in colonial times for mixing magic with chocolate.

• Cave diving, ice-shelf swimming, deep-sea freediving — I am fascinated and terrified by all of these things. See amazing photographs of Lewis Pugh’s swimming expedition through an ice shelf in Antarctica alongside his own words about the experience, which he did to raise awareness of the melting ice shelves. He shouldn’t have been able to swim through it. That was the point.

• Foeders! No, not vats, FOEDERS. Lily Waite has written an immensely interesting longread about the brewig world’s new favourite old thing, and there’s a lot in there that made me smile.

• Glou-glou. What is it? Why is it called that? This article by Aaron Ayscough from exactly two years ago, if you haven’t seen it before, is probably the best thing I’ve read on the subject. (Please feel free to send me your favourite writings on this controversial topic!)

• Amazing words and photographs by Nicci Peet here on two equally amazing women grinding coffee and smashing the patriarchy.

• “Heard but not Seen” is about the dissonance the author, Tre Johnson, feels when they walk into unfamiliar spaces (in this case, white run and owned restaurants and bars) and hears hip-hop being used as instant “cool” wallpaper, or as they put it: “a soundtrack to gentrification and displacement.”

• I already said this on Twitter but this interview with Hildur Guðnadóttir is a masterclass in interviewing, placing the artist firmly at the front and gently coaxing them to reveal how special they are, with a few well-researched, well-placed facts and highlights. In awe, I am. And taking notes.

• I’ve read this article a lot since it was published. Jemma Beedie talks about taking children to the pub, and how it’s a feminist issue, and how family friendly pubs are vital to communities. It’s brilliant. Read it, especially if you think children shouldn’t be welcome in pubs. “One of the most efficient ways to cut women out of society, leaving them to fend for themselves, is to ban children from public spaces. Spaces like pubs.”

My stuff: 

• For Ferment I’ve written a piece on the different types of woods used in Brazilian barrels. Originally used for cachaca, they’re now favoured by brewers in that neck of the rainforest to create unique, area-specific flavours in their beers.

Lewis Pugh swims through a gap in an
Antarctic ice shelf
Photograph: Kelvin Trautman

[CW: Food, Meat]
This week I read a tweet by someone who had been researching futuristic non-animal meat-like products for an article. They said that thinking about the texture in detail was making them queasy. The fake meat had been created so faithfully in meat’s image that its structure was exactly like that of animal muscle. For this person thinking about this in a synthesised food product is what tipped the balance from an expected texture into something grotesque.

While I treat meat as a luxury rather than a necessity, I do eat meat, and meat and what it represents doesn’t gross me out. I’ve realised recently that these two things don’t necessarily always go hand in hand. The idea that meat is something that was once alive, now dead for your enjoyment, is something people try not to think about. Understanding that the fibrous textures of a chicken breast are direct evidence of the use they once had is difficult. It demands, immediately and uncompromisingly, that you pay attention to the fact that what you are enjoying was once living its own life. That’s a difficult thought. 

What’s been turning around in my head all week is the idea that made-in-a-lab plant-based meat substitutes could be what turn some people off meat altogether. The naturalness of tissue and sinew, which we see on a daily basis everywhere we go, when given the stark backdrop of scientific intervention suddenly becomes a form of biological horror. And the idea of this really fascinates me.

[CW: The food/meat part is now over, thanks for bearing with me!]

Other Stuff:

• The Go Compare opera singer is actually the nicest man in the world. Read this interview where he talks about online abuse, dealing with a difficult career and being happy with your life and you’ll see.

• What do you know about sperm whales? This thread on their daily grind by one of Twitter’s best people really is beautiful.

• Stained glass! We’ve not had much of that on here lately, have we? Southwark Cathedral’s website has a perfect section on their stained glass windows, with tons of info on each of them. 

• This piece on servers still having nightmares about waiting tables ten years prior really resonated. TREAT YOUR STAFF BETTER. BE NICER TO SERVING STAFF!

• If there was anyone in the world who’s article on crisp flavourings I’d want to read, it’d be Amelia Tait. And oh as luck would have it, she’s written about crisp flavourings this week.

• Reclaiming rural queer culture in the USA with trucks. TruckSlutsMag is awesome. [h/t Lily Waite]

• 11 ways women are the future of Philadelphia’s food scene. Thanks to BeerDetective who has been showing me good things about their hometown of Philly. I love hearing about good things from people’s hometowns. Please do this more.

• This Twitter thread was my favourite thing I’ve seen on there in ages. A dad showing their son how photoshop works, incorporating a love for search and rescue vehicles.

• Why is food in Berlin bad? I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been. But this article makes me feel like I’m an expert, and I love an article that makes me feel smarter after having read it.

• A story about Roberto, Helen Rosner’s bean, sausage and kale soup. I make a similar soup (without the sausage) every so often and it’s lovely to read about how something so simple and comforting has tied so many people together online.

• I feel like if you don’t know about a place, finding out what beer they drink there is a good place to start. Lucy Corne is such a champion of S. African craft beer and her first piece for Pellicle is a great deeper look into one of the bastions of her scene.

• I really loved this idea of a “wine school”.

My Stuff:

• This week I failed to hand in a short story for a competition because I got the deadline date totally wrong. I’m still really fucking angry with myself about it so every time my brain tries to show me a positive (“look on the bright side! You’ve completed a short story!”) I’m still getting even more mad. But I suppose now is as good a time as any to say — and therefore commit myself to the idea — that I’m writing a collection of short stories themed around food, drink, greed and lust. It’s still early days yet, but I’m excited about cracking on. But I’m still pretty fucked off about the competition.

• I tried to make kombucha and instead started freaking out about responsibility. And then I wrote about it for Ferment mag.

• ICYMI: I wrote about my sheepish forays into wine a couple of months ago and actually, I really like this piece. So here it is again.

Lepanto cycle (with a lifeboat)
Cy Twombly (and Andy Doe)

Three is an odd number, and so I don’t really like it. I prefer two. It’s rounder, friendlier. But three is something I use all the time in writing whether I like it or not. The rule of threes is a perfect joke format: two normal things and a silly thing. An ideal list length. A natural way of laying out of ideas. See.

This is my 30th newsletter, and totally by chance, I’ve just reached 300 subscribers. (Thank you all. You have no idea how much it means to have 300 people willingly ready to read The Gulp.) It’s made me think about the number three, and why we naturally fall on it, and why three things are better than four — unless those things are mini scotch eggs. Then four is better.

I have three sisters. I am in my thirties. Also, because it’s now 2020, I’ve been writing about beer — and therefore regularly and with some sort of direction — for 3 years. That means this year counts as three years since I went to bed and lay there in the dark and thought: “You aren’t a writer. Why not?”

[I don’t know what I should do to celebrate 30 newsletters and 300 subscribers, it seems like a big fucking deal. I’m going to open a bottle of wine and make pizzas. Why don’t you reply to this email with ideas?]

Other Stuff:

• I love Detectorists and this interview with Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook about it from a few years ago is so perfect. It really lays out exactly what it is about the show that I love so much.

• This piece on two unique souls making wine in Catalunya by Lucy Lovell really captured my imagination (Spain, wine, of course). It’s sunny and fun and free, but it’s also packed with juicy info and has tons of details to geek out on. Loved it.

• A frank and moving piece about anxiety and how writing about beer has become a way to battle through it.

• Did you know that garlic isn’t as beloved in Italy as it is elsewhere in the world? I didn’t. This piece by Danielle Callegari looks into “the great garlic divide”. (I just made a huge batch of marinara sauce and if I paid attention to classic sensibilities, I used about twice as much garlic as I should have. Oh well.)

• I watched this BBC 4 documentary over the weekend because it was too grim to go outside, and it was perfect. Tales of Winter – The Art of Snow and Ice.

• I’m obsessed with photographs and paintings of New York at the moment, and trying to trace how its layout and buildings have changed over the years. These beautiful paintings of the city from 1910-1920 by Samuel Halpert, a Polish immigrant, really took me by the hand. I love the perspectives, colours and shapes he uses, and the sense of fun in some of his work. It’s a totally different feeling to the serious black and white photographs that (to me) show an unwelcoming, intimidating city of change and skyscrapers.

My Stuff:

• Not much to report this week — I’ve got something I’m really proud of on an editor’s desk at the moment, and a few other things in my drafts pile. (I use the American spelling. I’m not sorry. “Draught” is such an ugly word, I don’t like it at all. It looks like I should be pronouncing it “Droauuft” and no. I won’t.)

City View — Samuel Halpert

The thing I love about the idea of “manifesting” is that really it’s just thinking really hard about stuff you want, and occasionally saying it out loud to yourself while you potter about the house.

I’ve been seeing New Year’s Resolution speak bleed into the often manipulative world of self-care and motivational meme accounts online all year. Feeling sad? Have a bath (do I have to?) and write down five things you’ve achieved this week (five???). Anxiety flare-up? Keep a diary (oh great, another task to feel guilty about not doing) and make a list of everything that’s making you anxious (why? What a terrible idea!) and how you can solve those problems (omg you can’t). 

New Year can be super stressful, especially if your future is uncertain. Tom and I have a year of uncertainties ahead of us and that’s turning some cogs inside me, especially now we’re over the threshold of a new year. No self-help podcast or Instagram posi-post can help me now. So this year I’m manifesting in a different way. Of course I have career goals — I’m still me, come on — but the main things I’m putting out there as my serious 2020 energy are health, resilience and strength. So if you see me out and about and I’m muttering under my breath, this is what I’m doing. I’m probably not cursing anyone.

Other Stuff:

• This, on “nostalgic” dining and reactions against delicate food, modern ingredients and New Nordic by Jon Bonné is really interesting, and the illustrations are delicious too. 

• I learned so much in this, a beautiful story about how preparing osechi brings a Japanese-American family together to celebrate traditions handed down from their great grandparents.

• (I got both of these links through reading Emily Wilson’s brilliant newsletter Some Meals Considered. Sign up, you won’t regret it.)

• How the Cats musical has kept Faber publishing independent and solvent.

• You’ve probably read this already, but please read it again. The Guyliner’s Hogmanay Kiss. It’s an annual tradition.

• Dog walking created an unexpected support network for Rachel Charlton-Dailey, and that’s another good reason why dogs are great.

• The Pellicle Positivity Report is a great read if you’re interested in what we, the Pellicle people, enjoyed about 2019. I reveal my favourite beer of the year in it, FYI.

My Stuff:

• I wrote this silly thing about being a crap Kombucha parent and to be honest, I just want to write more silly things now.

Ladling chicken broth into heirloom lacquer bowls for ozoni.Credit…
Hilary McMullen for The New York Times

I love watching food travel shows. They’re obviously ideal for a bit of escapism, and the best ones teach you something about local food and drink culture alongside gratuitous shots of bountiful market stalls. Unfortunately they’re inherently problematic too; you can’t show everything about a particular country, or even a region within an hour or so. Something’s going to be simplified, something’s going to be missed, something’s going to be sensationalised for effect. There are some great ones, and some terrible ones, and I’ll watch them all, hearing over and over again about the wonder of food in context, looking at flights on Skyscanner as the presenters crack crab claws by the glittering ocean.

Over Christmas there will be hundreds of re-runs of fake-kitchen how-to cookery shows and they’ll encourage me to write out shopping lists of ingredients I’ll never buy. There’ll be thinly-premised travelogues stringing together cheese eating and wine drinking: I’ll watch them too. Because deep inside the cold mashed potato structure of every perfectly-lit food programme is a sliver of truth. When people travel and eat food, those are the best times. Things happen to them. They say stuff they believe is meaningful with a mouth full of spaghetti. They get emotional about dips. They hold a bottle of beer, enlightened by knowledge they’ve received telepathically, transmitted to them by a bowl of broth. I relate. Hard.

Whenever I see a remotely poignant moment of honesty on a TV show, it’s usually when food, and a tiny bit of exhaustion, is involved. Speaking of which, I can’t wait for Christmas dinner.

Happy Christmas!

I hope you all have a wonderful and restful Christmas week and don’t get stuck behind too many tenner-wavers at the bar! I’d like to say that I’ll definitely be writing up a newsletter for next week, but I don’t for definite that I’ll be able to, or want to for that matter. 

If you enjoy reading this and you want to buy me a Christmas drink (I’m on the sauce as we speak, actually) you can do so via www.ko-fi.com/shinybiscuit, or find me at The New Inn. Thank you very much for reading this newsletter and supporting my work, and see you in the New Year (probably)!

Other Stuff

• Travel down to the very bottom of the sea. I lost a lot of time on this. It’s incredible. And so very, very spooky in a really real way.

• Do you like learning in-depth things about foods you take for granted? Me too! Everything we know about chocolate chips is wrong.

• No, Eoghan doesn’t pay me to put his pieces in this newsletter but he seems to write one every week and I always like them. So here is his latest, where he takes us all on his Trans-Siberian Express honeymoon. Don’t worry, it’s not awkward. You don’t have to sit next to them.

• Look at these amazing procrastination gingerbread houses.

• Cheese triangle labels from the 40s and 50s! That’s it!

• Do you like beer writing? Then here’s a collection to get stuck into. Boak & Bailey’s own “best of 2019”.

• I woke up nervous and scared about going to work on Tuesday. It happens fairly often, even though I quit my job almost two years ago. This piece on burnout couldn’t have come at a better time.

• A lovely piece about those wooden duck ornaments, you know the ones, by Caroline O’Donoghue.

• I had no idea about the urban folklore around this ridiculous, potentially incestuous advert but this article about it is…. *kisses fingers*

• Soleil Ho and Ruth Reichel — two of my biggest heroes — talking about the changing role of food writers.

• A great piece by The Cider Critic James Finch about where cider is now and where trends might be taking it.

• Super interesting insights into the human brain, via the super interesting topic of Arctic exploration.

• There is nothing on the internet more soothing than an official website for a nature reserve. Walthamstow Marshes is a perfect example.

• The incredible, sad story of Letizia Battaglia — the woman who photographed the mafia and lived.

• “…stories that cover the emergence of new culinary trends in gentrifying cities without acknowledging the traditions that are already in place do more than just erase these stories from the public narrative. They tell people who are already being displaced that their experience never mattered in the first place.” — Mariana Viera has lived in North Hollywood all her life and she wants her panaderías back.

My Stuff

• All of us Original Gravity folks were asked for our best beer memories of 2019. I wrote something super nice about mine and Tom’s wedding, and it also includes bonus witch marks.

• Fancy a lol? I found an interview video a student made of me while I was on an Alumni panel thing at my old uni.

• Maybe this is a long shot but if you’re at an Accrington game in the near future, you can pick up a copy of the latest edition of Raw Milk. I’ve written about beer for it and I’m super proud to be involved!

• Reminder that I’m making zines — email me at katiematherwrites@gmail.com with your full name to reserve a copy.

“My father’s collection of 1940s and 50s cheese labels“
by Julian Tysoe

There’s something about tiny little model houses that makes my heart feel warm. I get the same feeling looking at the painstaking detail of that sweeping rooftops-of-London scene at the start of Muppet’s Christmas Carol, or the Jolly Pocket Postman books. Like an aching nostalgia for somewhere I’ve never been.

I don’t imagine myself there — I think of the alternative lives that could exist inside those warm yellow windows; the people who might find a place like this and call it home. The best model homes have suggestions of lives being lived inside, just out of sight. In a local department store near my house there’s a Christmas display of perfect festive homes, shops, a cobbled high street, churches with little stained glass windows and even a couple of pubs. A train chugs around the town’s perimeter every minute or so — I suppose I am jealous of their transport links — and a hot air balloon with two little people inside, one holding binoculars, dangles over the pond where locals are ice skating. My favourite tiny buildings have silhouettes of people sat around dinner tables, or dancing, or drinking a beer. I like thinking about who they might be and what brought them to such a perfect little place. It’s incredibly soothing.

I like this article where they try to understand why tiny things are so appealing to us, but in a way, I also wish nobody was trying to undo the magic. Let me have my little worlds, where there’s always a light on in the window somewhere, and someone’s always baking a cake.

Other stuff

• You don’t know Jack about Monterey Jack, but after this brilliant piece by Rachel Wharton, you’re gonna be up to speed.

• A gorgeous short read by Hollie at Globe Hops about the ritual of the Christmas Day pint.

• MiMi Aye has a laugh that made me smile in the torrential rain when my Primark bags disintegrated on Cathedral Square in Blackburn. Listen to her on the Lecker podcast and let her brighten your day.

• You have to gaze at these beautiful, exquisite miniature landscapes made by Plymouth-based “needle painter” Victoria Rose.

• Modernist gingerbread houses. Because the only thing more perfect than a miniature house is an edible one, and the only thing still more perfect is one originally designed by Philip Johnson.

• Sign up for something fun — be a Manchester Beer and Cider Festival 2020 volunteer like me next year!

• A hop farm in Brussels? Of course I’m gonna like that.

• Adventuring and hiking from the perspective of a dog, all while pondering the deepest of questions — who is The Good Boy?

• I read The Guyliner’s Guardian Blind Date posts almost every week (sorry I miss it sometimes Justin) and this revisit of a classic blind date is a joy because THEY ARE GETTING MARRIED!

• Remember what I said about Amelia Tait? Well, to prove her greatness even more she’s written about how Muppet’s Christmas Carol is the greatest film ever made. Out of all the other films. For GQ.

• Organised crime. Tax evasion. Contraband. The off-the-books world of oricchiette in Bari, S. Italy.

• Finally, I want to share the lyrics to the song Just Go On from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt because it makes me really emotional and DON’T LAUGH okay, it’s just a realistic but ultimately uplifting little song and I think about the chorus pretty much every morning. “They say life’s too short, but they’re wrong/It’s so long!/And sometimes the only way to go/Is to just go on.”

My Stuff

• I had the immense pleasure of chatting to Dick Withecombe and Cath Potter about cider, politics and everything in-between for this piece published this week by Pellicle.

• I have started making my zines. If you don’t know what I’m talking about here’s why: I received a commendation at the Guild of Beer Writers’ Awards last week for a number of articles I submitted. I’ve decided to make a zine out of the pieces, plus an additional BONUS piece I couldn’t submit because it was published outside of the time frame. They will be £5 plus £1.00 shipping, and you can pre-order one now if you like by replying to this very email (or if you prefer, email me at katiematherwrites@gmail.com) telling me your full name so I can keep a note. Thanks!

Hometta-style gingerbread house — uncredited.
Via Present & Correct.

I made a playlist this week of all the songs that remind me of being 16 years old. I don’t usually like being reminded of being a teenager, they were difficult years for my whole family, but there’s a lot of election stuff in the news at the moment that’s bringing it all back to me anyway, so I thought — what the hell. Dive in.

I’m back in my old bedroom, in a small council bungalow in Aberdeenshire, miles from anything and anyone. I’m sat on the silver carpet (chosen by me to replace rotten lino from a discount flooring place in Montrose) playing Final Fantasy IX on mute, which was given to me, along with the PS1 I’m playing it on, by a friend from school. A copied disc spins in my CD player, the repeat button flashing to let me know that it’s not the whole mixtape I’m replaying, it’s Signals Over The Air by Thursday, track 2, the song I’ve been holding on to like a liferaft for the past few hours. My hands are cold because although the meter’s got a few quid on it, the house only has storage heaters, and when mine’s on it smells like burning hair. I’m wrapped in my duvet, engrossed in an ice cave level, and the hi-hat and snare counts us in again. 

I know I was rarely alone in this house, but I can barely remember being anything but. We were helped into this emergency life by friends and neighbours, my mum’s colleagues, my friends at school. We weren’t alone, but I felt it, so deep down in my bones. The wide window that looked out from my bedroom over the dark stubble of winter wheatfields and a distant line of forestry commission pine trees didn’t try to console me. I could see the nothingness for miles and miles. How did this happen to us?

It’s not the poverty I remember. It’s the loneliness. Money isn’t just about bread and milk and fish fingers in the freezer. Money stops people associating with you. It turns a simple gift into pity. It leaves you stranded in a council house a 12 mile walk from your nearest friend’s house. It’s a writhing pit of shame in your stomach. It’s the question “how did this happen to us?” Because you never think it could happen to you. Until it does.

Please do not vote for the Tories next week.

Other Stuff

(You made it through the darkest part — It’s pretty much all uplifting beer stuff from now on)

• Lily Waite manages to make Manchester sound incredibly romantic in this wonderful piece about Marble brewery for Good Beer Hunting.

• I really enjoyed this by Matt Curtis on the potential of a beer release saturation point in the near future(and the virtues of a good pint of bitter) in Fement mag so it was nice seeing it gaining some attention online this week too.

• Oh look, ATJ has written something amazing about Orval, one of the greatest beers in the world!

• It’s so easy to take cask beer for granted but it’s quite exotic and glamorous elsewhere in the world. I’m really enjoying reading about Adrián Materos of Cerveza Rudimenteria’s experiences learning more about English cask. English version | Spanish version.

• This piece by Boak & Bailey caused a lot of conversations this week. I have a complicated view on the topic of gentrification and I wish everyone did. It isn’t always bad. Or good.

• Thank you to Evan Rail for sharing this brilliant piece from the NYT about a historically important currywurst stand in Berlin.

• Beautiful, familiar paintings of brutalist architecture by Frank Laws. They’re of homes in East London, but they could easily be anywhere, and that’s what I love about them. Also, the first line has given me a word to describe what fills my head every time I leave the house: Sonder.

• A really insightful group of interviews with members of i-collective, a group of indigenous chefs and activists across America, who hosted thanksgiving dinners to “celebrate the resilience of their people and tell their stories through food.”

• A really fun read about the new A Christmas Prince film. A lot of people are trying to skewer the humble filmed-in-Canada, set-in-a-made-up-European-principality Christmas film but I wish they’d just watch and enjoy them like this.

• Marissa Ross has written “I was 18, clenching everything from the armrests to my ass as I experienced my first full-frontal male-nudity on the big screen” in an article about Merlot, because of course she has. I nearly spat out my impy stout.

My Stuff

• I received a commendation from the Guild of Beer Writers awards this week, which was lovely. I shared the pieces I submitted to the awards in a previous newsletter, but I’ve decided to create my first ever zine out of them. There’ll be more information, and probably a pre-order link, in next week’s newsletter.

• I got a few reads this week for my piece on how beer festivals become. Read it if you want advice on how to start an event from the people who run your favourite festivals.

• Still proud of my local football and local beer piece. Even if you don’t like football might enjoy it — I know precisely fuck all about football and I loved researching and writing it.

MONUMENT I — Frank Laws

This week’s newsletter is almost late and I’m sorry about that. I’ve been booking as many copywriting jobs as I can to make some money before Christmas, and it’s meant that instead of working on my book or the articles I want to finish before the end of the year, I’ve been writing about teeth whitening and lingual braces and the best places to shop on Northumberland Street.

Being a copywriter is something I didn’t know I was until I’d been doing it for about five years. I went into marketing pretty much immediately after graduating (as it turns out, the inverted pyramid really is the ideal way to write marketing copy.) I remember seeing a joke on Twitter and realising that I wasn’t a writer at all; I hadn’t written anything I’d cared about in years. I was actually a copywriter, and I wasn’t enjoying it either. “An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, the best bar in town, a bar near me…” It was like seeing a penny at the bottom of a dark, algae-thick pool. It was a decent job, and I was doing a version of the thing I wanted to do, but I was lying to myself if I said it was fulfilling my dreams. 

Every now and again I rely on copywriting to dig me out of financial holes. Writers don’t say thing like this in the hope you’ll find their poverty compelling. At least I hope they don’t — I certainly don’t. Being paid to write is hard. There are a lot of writers. There isn’t a lot of money to pay for their words. When you do get money for your words, they become something else, and you have to work even harder for them to feel as smooth and weighty in people’s hands. So by flipping that shiny little coin over to its grubby, riverbottom side, I can find work I’m not proud of but that pays the bills. And I wanted to share this thought because it’s easy to think everyone is doing better than you. Stop. Everyone is working through something just as much as you are. Everyone is reaching for something they want.

Other Stuff

• First up, something insanely geeky and therefore amazing. Lars Marius Garshol shares from his Twitter account this week: “An Italian guy was so fascinated by the Stjørdal, Norway malt kilns he decided to make his own. Excellent video, with extra photos/footage from Jørund Geving in Stjørdal“

• A very thoughtful and well-researched look at Liverpool’s changing restaurant scene from Alice Burns for Liverpool Guild Student Media. 

• This great piece by Ed Yong about how he actively began fixing gender imbalances within his stories was sent to me by David Sun Lee. It’s something I think about and discuss with people a lot,k but I know I can still do more — not just with gender imbalance but by promoting minority voices more in my work across the board. This is me promising to so. As David said when he sent it, “It’s on all of us!” 

• Andrew Dickens interviewed Jeremy Corbyn for Penguin about books, reading and how vital our libraries are (and how he will save them) and it is wonderful.

• Art of the Score interviewed Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (Bad Seeds, not that one) about the jusic they’ve made for film.

• Something unfamiliar and bizarre in its mundanity, so obviously I really enjoyed getting into it — “Big Calculator: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class“.

• Mel C — the best Spice Girl — frankly discussing her life with Laura Snapes, one of the best music journalists in the world right now. 

• We expect beauty from Pellicle and the standards keep rising. This by Hugh Thomas on the Faversham Hop Festival is, frankly, amazing, and Grace Helmer’s illustrations are just as evocative and beautiful and heartstrings-tugging.

• Jay Raynor’s review of Live Seafood on Ashton Rd, Manchester. It’s a good one.

• Jeff Alworth went to Brewery De La Senne and Yvan de Baets spoke to him about yeast as though it was the darling love of his life. Because it is, of course.

• Hat tip to Evan Rail: This piece on Tokyo denim in the NYT had me totally enthralled.

• This really was interesting, I know I say that about everything, but it really, really is worth a read. Especially if you love language, numbers or both. (I only like language.) “Why You Might Be Counting In The Wrong Language” by Aanand Jagatia.

My Stuff

• I’m really, really proud of this piece I’ve written on local beer and lower league football giving communities a combined sense of identity. It’s also called Home Turf, which I love because I like the word “turf”. 

• Amphora. What are they? Why are they? I spoke to a few experts because I was genuinely interested, and then I wrote about it. Which is how I wish all my articles went.

• I’ve got two articles in the Pellicle in-tray at the mo. Expect one to be published in the near future. As I said before, they’re raising standards all the time over there. No pressure. No pressure at all.

A section from Grace Helmer’s illustrations for

Hugh Thomas’ Faversham Hop Festival piece
— originally published in Pellicle Magazine

I feel like I’m on the cusp of something at the moment. Like I’m waiting for something to happen. The nebulous forms of life goals collect and disperse inside my head constantly, their colours and shapes taking different forms as they drift and merge, getting louder and brighter at night when I’m trying to sleep.

We have plans for our life, Tom and I, and they’re creeping up on us. Soon we’ll have to make decisions and take leaps. Maybe we’ll have to ask people for help — the scariest thing of all. But everything is always about work. Career. Direction. Meaning. This is what happens, I guess, when two Capricorns get married.

I am going on holiday tomorrow with an old friend, a long weekend away, to somewhere hilly and rainy and ancient, with no internet, a log fire and an orchard full of tiny sheep, windfallen pears and peach trees. I’ve been hanging a lot on the thought of this holiday and how separate from real life it will be. On the first night I want a blank, starless sleep. After that I want to go full Crow Crag — rant in local tearooms, shout into the indifferent overcast valleys, drink from the bottle, detach. I can’t wait.

Other stuff

• In this week’s Red Hand File newsletter, Nick Cave said: “…I sometimes wonder if anyone actually listens to my lyrics, and whether the enormous amount of work I put into them may in fact go unheeded.” Highly relatable because of the gloomy, “does anyone care” part, of course, but I laughed because it tiptoed between being honest and being vain.

• Nicci Peet has had her excellent Diversity In Beer project featured in Vice. Having her work seen outside of the Bubble is a huge, huge deal.

• I really liked this by Matt Curtis on how sour beer “recovered from the brink of extinction“, especially looking at how these trad Belgian beers have inspired some of the most exciting brewers in the UK.

• I love Slow TV (oh my god, shocker) and I remembered the extremely interesting but supremely soothing Retreat: Meditations From A Monastery this week. No dialogue, just shuffling, beekeeping, weaving, chanting and the occasional shake of a thurible. Here’s the Pluscarden Monastery in the Moray highlands.

• Radio is important for independent scenes to thrive. That’s something I really believe in. This piece from The Guardian back in July looks at indie stations in the north and how they survive without the same level of funding or sponsorship of London-based stations.

• You’ve probably seen it but this interview with Amy Sedaris about her essential things from the NYT is hilarious.

• Lost Industry Brewing aren’t a brewery I’m super familiar with, but after this interview, I want to be.

• More monk stuff — must be the time of year for it. This, by M. Carrie Allan on Chartreuse looks at the secrets behind its recipe, and how the Carthusian monks who make it square its popularity with cocktail making hipsters with their faith and devotion.

• This by Boak & Bailey about the Dog and Bell in Deptford is wonderful. I want to go there.

• When I read Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker, she says repeatedly how important it is to smell everything in order to truly understand your senses and the world around you. Maybe that’s why I absolutely loved this olfactory map of Brussels by Brussels Beer City aka. Eoghan Walsh.

• Francis Bacon on the differences of earths.

My stuff

• I’ve been busy working on a few chunky pieces I’m really excited about this week, but nothing published yet.

• I’ve also been suffering really severely with anxiety this week, so I wanted to say to anyone else who suffers, take care of yourself. Know when to stop. Rest.

• I read (and hugely enjoyed) Normal People by Sally Rooney and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh this week which may have something to do with my somewhat altered mental state.

Lighters in Dum Dum lollipop wrappers – Amy Sedaris

Since I never made it to galleries, and when I did I felt as though I shouldn’t be there, I never saw much art throughout my teens and 20s. I never interacted with art. Even the word was fairly meaningless to me. I never thought about artist interpretation, or style, or choices. I thought people were born with a talent for deciphering the hidden messages behind the paint; you either got it, or you didn’t. Some people understood art. I didn’t. I assumed it was because art was not made for someone like me.

I’ve always liked certain pieces — I like Monet’s studies of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament for eg. — but I’ve only ever used them as Facebook headers, or phone backgrounds. I felt guilty about this. Like somehow I should be appreciative in a more respectful way.

I’ve decided I was wrong.  If the most accessible way I can be inspired by great artists, and express myself through their work, is through a photograph of a painting on Instagram, then that’s what I’m going to do. Looking at and trying to understand art has become something I do every day now, because of Instagram. I’ve gone from thinking art was unfathomable and for other people to enjoy, to appreciating it every time I scroll through my updates.

There are gatekeepers at the entrance of every possible hobby, but when I look at paintings on my phone and get lost in the intense detail, or the beauty, or the abstraction, I feel like I’ve been shown in through a side entrance. In front of the non-judgemental glare of my phone screen I can soak in the textures of brushstrokes, or spend a moment experiencing deep feelings about light. Here I can learn and look and experience without feeling out of place.

(Kindof related, huge coincidence: This week I saw that the National Extension College announced they will be running an online History of Art A Level starting in January 2020. I signed up immediately.)

Other Stuff:

• Ashley Rodriguez at GBH shared this by Victoria James at Eater on how the lack of diversity in wine buying is affecting the industry and, ultimately, pushing more diverse winemakers further into obscurity.

• This thread introduced me to Fayum portraits of Egyptian mummies and I have been transfixed ever since. (More on them here.)

• Sorry but Rod Stewart was on the cover of Railway Modeller magazine with a ridiculously intricate model train city this week. I’d been talking about model villages a lot this week, so I found it really weird for this to be trending this week. “I find beauty in what everyone else sees as ugly – rugged skyscrapers, beaten-up warehouses, things that are very run down.”

• This piece by Hollie Stephens about McSorley’s Old Ale House in New York has compounded the issue that I need to go to New York.

• “In Star Trek I saw a future worth investing in” — a really, really, REALLY great piece about how Star Trek has been saving fans’ lives and giving people hope for decades.

• From the Ladybird Shell Guide, 1955: “Between the mild days, November frosts strip the coloured leaves of the shrubs and climbers of the Headrow so that all the fruits of early winter show more vigourously against a paler sky”

• This review of “Tropical Malady” by Tash Aw for his new column on Asian cinema in the Paris Review is especially fascinating to me because he talks about how confusing it is that forests to him mean danger, but in Europe, they are places of “manicured… rustic pleasure”. 

• The first paragraph of this really hooked me, because it’s so completely different to my own experiences of beer. It might be about bar food in the Bay Area of San Francisco, but it shows what we could have in the UK and Ireland too. Or what we might want to avoid.

My stuff:

I was shortlisted for the British Guild of Beer Writer’s Long Live The Local award for writing about pubs this week, which I am very chuffed about. I thought this week I might share the pieces I put forward in my submission to be considered for this prize.

• A Sense of Belonging

• What Makes a Pub Great

• Pump Country

• Maybe We’ll Stay In

• The Knack of Snacks

Fayum portrait of unnamed man, artist unknown. 
More reading: John Berger on the nature of
Fayum paintings.