Seed Blog

Building up to a big goodbye.

In the December of 2021, I sat on table six in my empty, closed bar, chairs still on tables, lights off, and had a panic attack about the state of everything. The bar was not doing well, and Omicron had been announced as a true danger to the public that morning. We had been counting on the upcoming Christmas trade to change our fortunes, having had a tough year of slowing sales and increasing costs. Things had not yet recovered from the pandemic, and we had hoped to start building our business by now, not closing it.

We got through that Christmas through endless pivoting, and we got through another one too. Now, after almost three years of Corto, the bar will close for good this Sunday the 17th September.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

How we got to this point has not been a sudden occurrence, however it may seem. Ever since we opened our doors we have been tweaking and reducing our original business plan to suit our local customer base, and changing our plans to fit with relentless external tragedies—pandemics, war, economic collapse. We stopped selling rare and fascinating natural wines in favour of more affordable, simpler ones. We changed our beer list to fit the demand of “pale ale? lager? something fruity?”

I don’t feel bitter about these changes, and I certainly don’t regret moving to suit our customers in order to stay open. But I want to be clear about the reality of opening a bar like Corto in a small, rural town—even one as permanently lauded in the national press as being the “ideal beer staycation destination”. Last week we opened and drank three bottles of Riesling worth £100 because after three attempts to drum up interest in a tasting event (which we have been repeatedly told by well-meaning folks that we should do more of) only two people came along. The world of premium and craft drinks is not what it was, or what we believe it to be. I sell three times as much basic organic Tempranillo as I do orange wine or sour beers.

None of this is surprising to me, but I had hoped to be able to bring some sort of niche to a willing audience. In many ways, it worked. In one obvious way—the fact that we are closing down—it has not. Please do not see this as a complaint. I just want other entrepreneurs with plans to open similar businesses to understand that it is not a lucrative endeavour. At all. I must see Corto as a passion project in order to feel anything other than sadness, at this current moment. We tried, we did our best, it ran its course. On to the next thing.

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This morning I watched a vlog by motorcycle racer Lee Johnstone, who suffered a serious accident while racing earlier this year, and who is recovering remarkably well. It was so good to see. He mentioned, briefly, the sort of comments he receives in passing from fans he meets out and about. I felt like while he made it sound flippant, this was one of the main reasons for making his video.

“So that’s you done with racing now then?” Apparently this seems like an appropriate thing to say to someone who had a blood transfusion at the side of the road earlier this year, whose entire life has been dedicated to racing, who spends every day recovering and rehabilitating his body in the hope of getting back onto a bike.

It struck me. People are capable of such unwitting levels of blasé unkindness. I recognised it, because we have had similar at the bar—rumours of what our plans are, and where we are going to work next. Pointed questions about our financial situation. Constant grillings about what we want, what we’re doing, and where we’re going. As Lee said in his video, folk don’t mean it to sound this way. They’re just making conversation, and they don’t really know you, so they don’t understand what’s hurtful and what is a genuinely appropriate level of inquisitiveness.

I’d ask, and I’m going to do my best to do this too as I’m sure I’ve been guilty of similar crimes, that people checkpoint their curiosity before they open their mouths. In a way, Corto has become a public interest, and it’s understandable that people feel a desire, or even a right to know what will happen to it next. But it was ours, and it always was. Our life, our bricks and mortar dream, and we are finding it hard to discuss the minutiae of it over and over again. Just as Lee must find it difficult to reply to people who, genuinely, want to know about the future of his career, I don’t know what to say anymore. I don’t have a plan. I know what I want, but it’s deeply personal, and I can’t keep sharing my heart with the world so openly. I am not ready. And I hope that can be respected.

Other Stuff

• I’ve already shared this everywhere, but Mary Oliver’s poem Breakage is healing in a way I can’t describe.

• In researching for a story I’m writing for Hwaet! zine, I’ve rekindled my love for Saint Hildegard of Bingen.

• Lee Johnston’s vlog, in case any of you were interested in watching the whole thing.

• Have I shared this poem before? Anyway, it’s still relevant. Optimism by Jane Hirshfield.

• If you’re into bikes, give the Kibosh Instagram account a follow. It’s the team I’m peripherally part of and we’re going to be selling some excellent merch soon.

• A love story for us 90s/00s kids—Nelly and Ashanti are back together 💗

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The healing power of endless curries.

I have eaten curry in some form for almost all of my meals this past week.

When the grief first hit I didn’t want to cook, and at home we ate a lot of sandwiches, or chicken wings, if we weren’t at home. Then Tom reminded me that cooking makes me feel better, so I started to chop onions again.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My friend’s mum makes incredible curries. We ate them from the pan at 1am when I was over last, and I tried to decipher the spices she had used. I got home the next day and made a chicken and chickpea curry that fed us for three days. The sense of achievement was enough to sail me through until the weekend. Then I made chicken stock, and a biriyani, and allowed myself to eat it for every meal until I didn’t crave the warmth of it anymore. The soothing mingle of cinnamon, cumin, turmeric, clove, fenugreek, mustard seeds. The warmth of the chilli flakes. The satisfaction of using a whole chicken, every last bit. It felt a lot like love.

Chicken and Chickpea Curry

Feeds 2 for a few meals.

2 chicken breasts
2 chicken thighs
1 red onion
4 tomatoes
1 tin chickpeas
Tomato paste
3 cloves garlic
Chunk of ginger
Corn oil
Salt

Spices: Cumin, Garam Masala, Turmeric, Fenugreek, Fennel Seeds, Yellow Mustard Seeds, Black Cumin Seeds, Ground Clove, Cinnamon, Cardamom Pods, Ground Cayenne, Chilli Flakes

Rice: Basmati rice, Salt, Ground Clove, Black Cumin Seeds, Star Anise

• Fry the onion until it loses the raw smell in enough corn oil. One tablespoon is not enough.

• Fry off the garlic and ginger, and toast the spices

• Add the spices and the chicken

• Add the chopped tomatoes and cook down until they start to soften. Use their juice to loosen any good stuck bits on the bottom of the pan.

• Add tomato paste and enough salt. One teaspoon is not enough.

• Add a little water, remembering this curry will cook down and you want it thick.

• Add the chickpeas.

• Cover, and cook on low for at least 3 hours.

• Wash your rice.

• Cook your rice however you like to cook your rice, adding all the ingredients at the start with a gentle stir. I use a rice cooker.

• Serve with chutneys and raita

Other Stuff

• 1900 year old Roman swords found in a cave by the Red Sea in Israel.

• Making a Manx Babban ny Mheillea to celebrate the end of harvest

• Nigerian photographer Obinna Obioma’s Anyi N’aga (We are going) project celebrates the simple plastic bag known as the Ghana Must-Go bag and recognises its humble part in thousands of lives through carrying personal belongings and memories, becoming a symbol of migration. The hair wrap!!!

• Brussels Beer Project’s Dansaert Lambic project was the first to be launched in Brussels in years—now they are making Gueuze. Read all about it at Brussels Beer City.

My Stuff

• Still writing for Glug, you can only read those pieces if you subscribe to their wine box.

• I will be hosting an open discussion on sustainability in beer at Indy Man Beer Con with Pellicle in October. More info here.

• My bar Corto is closing down on Sunday 17th September—just two weeks time.

• I am actively looking for commissions, freelance copywriting work and other projects that might suit my style of writing. If you’d like to work with me, please reply to this email with some ideas.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Pouring one out for a real one.

It is a supermoon, and a blue moon at that, in Pisces. Today the torrid emotions of the past week or so are coming to a head, and I feel as though I’m at the eye of the storm. I haven’t had it particularly easy over recent weeks. I’m going through what could euphemistically be described as a “turbulent period of change” and what’s more—things aren’t slowing down. There’s more to come.

Two weeks ago I had a tattoo of a longbowman nocking a flaming torch inked on my right forearm as a symbol of strength, to remind me to step back from the melee and try to gain a wider picture of the battle at hand. Not easy to do when you feel like you’ve been flailing with a broken sword for months, the mud loosening your steps, arms and back tiring from the onslaught. I need a rest.

The universe has a sense of humour, I can tell, because all of the freedom and rest I have been asking for has arrived at once, in the form of both of my main jobs coming to an end. To seemingly underline the essential nature of taking opportunities when you can, a friend and Kibosh teammate died while racing at the Manx GP last week. I am being given absolutely no choice—I have to keep going.

So then, today’s full moon. It’s an important one to me for two reasons: the first that it means this period of unbearable intensity is almost over, and the second is that I’m getting to spend it with friends who also need to recalibrate, focus and strive.

Despite the tragedies of the past months, spending time with friends is always a celebration, and I intend to treat it as such. My main contribution to the evening’s events will be the wine we drink during feasting and the extremely technical/spiritual practice of “burning shit”. I need to choose carefully. It should be wine that’s good enough to change our fortunes and lift us up. Wine good enough to offer to Hecate, wine good enough to stir our souls and clear our minds. It also needs to pair well with a vegan barbecue.

The smoke, the flames, the moon, the tears—I’m thinking quickening darkness, like the peaty waters of the Yorkshire Dales. Loose and fresh, bracken and blackberries, woody and mossy and spiced. A Syrah, Côte Rôtie almost definitely, and if I can find one with mushroom intensity and umami bacon fat richness, so much the better for our Pagan godly tributes.

Other Stuff

• Diana Al Shammari creates beautiful embroidery on classic football shirts

• Extremely weird and slightly unsettling “photos” of Working Mens Clubs

• Mary Arnold-Forster’s brutalist and modernist architecture in the Scottish countryside

• Tin Bucket by Jenny George

• Optimism by Jane Hirshfield

My Stuff

• I’ve started writing the weekly newsletter for Pellicle—sign up here

A love letter to a beer that’s been through it all with me.

In the beginning of my career as a beer writer, I visited a local brewery called Rivington Brew Co.. At the time it was a smallish place with a cult-like following of fans who turned up for regular Tap Beneath The Trees events—in lieu of a taproom the brewery used the woodland at the foot of their farm as an outdoor micro festival during the summer months. Rain never stopped them.

On that visit I drank a mug of tea in the company of their first fermenters, situated in a small outhouse a short drive away from the farm, and learned about the small team’s commitment to lab-based QC testing. I was impressed. I told Ben Stubbs and Mick Richardson, the owners of Rivington Brew Co. who had taken time out of their day to show me around, that Never Known Fog Like It was one of my favourite beers of all time. I said, with what now seems like tragic dramatic irony, that if I was ever to open a bar of my own, Fog—as it’s called—would be my permanent Pale.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Since that first visit the brewery has grown, and I’ve been lucky enough to call the Rivington crew my friends, and their flagship beer, my bar’s permanent Pale Ale—a promise kept. Fog quickly became Corto’s flagship beer too, a beer that turned visitors into regulars, that brings people out of their homes in the darkest, rainiest evenings. Those pints of hazy, sunflower-yellow beer glowing in the light cast from our big front window. An image that will stay with me long after the bar closes down.

Why do I love it? Why does anyone love one hazy Pale over another? I believe Never Known Fog Like It is the culmination of years of NEIPA experimentation. Since I began writing about beer in 2018, the desire people have for hazy juicebombs has never waned, and yet, to me, there has largely been no development in the subgenre. I try newcomers with interest, and yet nothing tops Fog for me in the specific category I’ve created for it—a comfortably swiggable beer at a warming 5.2% ABV, not sessionable to the likes of me, more a treat after a long day. A beer to look forward to. A standard, a trusty sidekick, a partner in crime.

Fog succeeds because of Rivington—because of their attention to detail, their fantastic brewing team, and their passion for getting it right, for not being afraid to tweak and improve. I will miss serving it in Corto and seeing the enjoyment it brings. But I won’t miss the beer itself. I’ll still be drinking it, from the other side of the bar, in their new taproom at Home Farm. In Preston, at Plug & Taps or Chain House Brewing Co.’s taproom. Wherever I can find it, I will drink it, and I will remember good times, and plan new, better ones.

Other Stuff

• The trees in Melbourne have email addresses so that damage can be reported. Instead, the public started writing to them.

• Ciro Pipoli documents the vibrancy of life in Napoli through his street and landscape photography.

• Pre-order Burum Collective’s zine Service, Please! and support their work within the hospitality industry.

• Mark Dredge’s profile of Matt Billing of Ascension Cider is a joy.

My Stuff

• Thank you, first of all, so much for your generosity after the last newsletter I sent out. Your tips enabled me to cover a very stressful end of month, and I’m so grateful. Your kindness was needed and appreciated. You are the best.

• Salads! One of the things in life that brings me most joy. Thank you Pellicle for publishing my thoughts and dreams on the beautiful world of salad prep.

• The profile on Rivington Brew Co. I referenced in this week’s newsletter.

• I am now in charge of writing Pellicle’s weekly mailout—how wonderful! Sign up here for even more of my words each week.

• Tom and I are planning to set off in our van once the world ends (Corto closes). I’ve set up a TikTok to document wine and beer we experience on our travels.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’m 35 and it’s still the end of term.

Cycling in the Forest of Bowland this week I got caught up in some after-school traffic and realised I’d stumbled across the end of the summer term. The air crackled with a hundred thoughts of six whole weeks of freedom. The drizzly grey clouds that had threatened to pour down all day held off, and the sun glinted off the parked cars and damp leaves.

The end of term is the start of a new life. A regeneration into a new year of growth, a step forward. Six weeks to rest and play before the demands of the world begin again.

I remember the last day of term and what it meant. The buzz and the nerves, the change in routine. How it never came and then all of a sudden, it was there. Assemblies about staying safe and returning refreshed. Buses parked up waiting to take us home for the last time in forever. Sun—always sun.

We left the school scuffed and thin from a year of tests and tight silence, the loudness in our bodies unsure of how to escape, trained for so long to be quiet and still. A world ahead of us. A lapping sea.

Cycling past these kids, I wondered if they knew that living is not a fibre optic flash from birth to death—that their lives would forever be full of these endings and beginnings. Because life is not about books closing and opening. It is a movement in all directions at once. It is unknowable except in the precise moment you acknowledge it. It is yours. It is the constant movement of the clouds, the rippling of long grass, the smell of fire.

You might already know that this week I announced the closure of the bar myself and my husband Tom built together. It has been a hard journey through difficult and often impossible circumstances, and we don’t enjoy knowing that we are taking away something positive from the world. We are trying to look at it from a different perspective—at least it existed. The end of something is only the start of something else.

If you enjoy my writing, please consider tipping me via Paypal. I’m obviously quite hard up against it at the moment and your generosity would help me out during a very stressful time. If you prefer, my Ko-fi account is still open: www.ko-fi.com/shinybiscuit

Thanks for reading my newsletter and supporting my work. You’ve kept hope alive.

Other Stuff

• The Farmer’s Arms is an inspirational and wholesome pub in the heart of the South Lakes. Its 100m salad is an idea that makes me happy to think about, their arts and crafts events sell out weeks in advance, and this blog post about the pub’s role in Lakeland Rally’s golden era shows just how diverse a great pub’s community is.

• The poem Love After Love by Derek Walcott. Feast on your life.

• I love these sketchbook entries by illustrator Kathryn Boyt.

• If you’ve not read Rachel Hendry’s piece on wine and the TV show Succession, rectify that now.

• Vintage TdF photos for all who are celebrating.

On the top of Bray Hill on the Glencrutchery Road. During the rest of the year, it’s just somewhere to fill up the car and grab a snack. During the TT Races and the Manx GP, it’s the place to be.

From behind a safety barrier next to a petrol pump, the start line is just out of sight at the top of Bray Hill. You hear the rumble of the helicopter before the bike comes into view, and the commentators over the tannoy system let you know who you’re about to see. A split second later, the colours of your rider scream past over the brow and out of sight, down towards Ago’s Leap and Quarterbridge. You see each racer for a maximum of one second. Then, once the last is through, you wait 16 minutes or so for the first to come back around, having completed their first lap of the 37 and ¾ mile course around the island. Quickly, work it out. This year the fastest ever lap was checked in by Senior TT winner Peter Hickman this year—he did it at an average speed of 135.452mph.

The buzz of the bikes coming through and past the petrol station is only part of why I love drinking here—because drinking here is what is done. All along the spectator side of the barriers and buffers are fans with cans, dressed in racers’ merch and sponsor hats, listening to the local radio’s coverage of the race. I love the strangeness of the situation, of spending time somewhere that was never intended to be used as a space for people to linger, a place I shouldn’t really be. I like the atmosphere that strangeness creates, a kind of collective in-this-together spirit, where everyone is sound, everyone chats, everyone realises the absurdity of the situation and relishes it. 

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In-between the snapshots of racers throwing themselves at the course, I spoke to Belgian bikers about beer (what else?), a keen local photographer about his favourite shots, and showed a retired couple who’d travelled together on their bike how to find and use the live timing app. We were all friends, exactly the same types of friends you make watching football or standing together at a gig—you are all bound by the same intense, nonsensical passion, and you would die for each other. Just for the next hour or so.

The racers bounce down their third lap. A man shouts “that’s gotta be Davey Todd” as Davey Todd passes—a statement that becomes a soundbite that defines the whole trip. I drain my can in the blazing sunshine and head inside for another four pack to share out. This is what it’s all about. 

Other Stuff

• I am a huge fan of beetroots. They cure cramps, you know. They also make great beer.

• The independent fuel stations of Britain, with some cracking photos.

• “Wine is good until it is not.”

My Stuff

• I’ve been writing a lot more recently, so I’ll be able to share pieces as and when they are published.

• Look for my recent piece on beer and cyclocross in issue 91 of Ferment Magazine

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Using music to find a way in the dark

One thing I’ve learned about trawling Youtube for playlists that can simultaneously soothe, motivate and energise me is that there are a lot of people out there looking to name and exorcise a feeling of vanishing. An existentialist fog, or a void-like breeze, that touches everything with an eerie shade of unreality. Thousands of people are, every day, searching for musical backdrops to locate and quench a feeling of disconnection—to find very specific liminal spaces in their minds, and, I think, trap them by seeing them clearly, by making them knowable. Like a made-up city in a recurring dream, by focusing on the brickwork of these amorphous sensations, perhaps they become less daunting, more comfortable. These audio spaces are hyperspecific in their descriptions: you are inside a Monet painting, the last night bus, study like Nikola Tesla creating inventions, falling asleep in the car on a rainy afternoon. There is fragile beauty in each of these curations—they attempt to pinpoint exact, personal emotions in a relatable way, and as unlikely as it seems, millions of views for each video proves that the sharper these hypodermic references are, the more they hit the mark.

Where the void (a term used in BPD circles and treatment to reference the absence of or inability to define emotion—the void can last moments or days depending on the episode) can be a black hole taking in and vaporising thoughts of comfort, in these playlists I can find ways to play with its distortion of reality. Daydreaming has always been my preferred state of being, and learning to find and clarify these powerful places in my mind has been empowering. Liminal spaces have always fascinated and terrified me—there is something so unnerving about a bus stop at 2am, a burnt out car on a country layby, the shuttered and abandoned buildings of a purpose-built retail park gone to ruin. I notice that it’s only human-created places that give me these chills. Nature is never abandoned, always busy, constant and alive. In considering this, I’ve learned to counter the void with the fields and woods around my house. In a way, these playlists have helped me take a healing step, and I owe much to their mysterious creators.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Other Stuff

• The clove tree that ended a colonising monopoly

• A history of Victorian garden graveyards

• One of my current favourite playlists—it’s actually a mix by Christian Loffler accompanied by video taken from the beach in Northern Germany near where he lives

My Stuff

I’ve not had much stuff published recently as I’ve not been in a position to write often, however if you follow Pellicle I’ll be writing much more in the coming months. I also have a feature commissioned for an upcoming issue of Hwaet! zine, and am still writing for Glug and Ferment. My book, published by Wine52, will be available later this year.

I’ve also taken the step to disconnect my Twitter account. I’m working hard to live more in the real world, and my biggest hope is that this will reflect positively on my writing. We’ll see.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Edvard Munch, and how art and nature helps me cope with BPD

I’ve spent a long while deciding whether to talk about my mental health diagnoses in any depth. After all, it’s my business. I can choose to keep it to myself. And in a way, I’d still like to, but after sending this newsletter out, I know I’ve forfeited that option. The thing is, I don’t want to talk about my mental health, but I don’t seem to want to talk about anything else, either.

I was tentatively diagnosed by a mental health professional with Borderline Personality Disorder last year. I take slight offense at the idea of there being anything known as a “personality disorder” in this life, but perhaps that’s a topic for another time. I’ve wondered for a while whether having a diagnosis changes anything at all, and the answer for me at least is, no, not at all. I still feel the same. I am still the same person. However, what it does do for me is give me a reason—and sometimes that’s all I need. Not an explanation, but a possible cause for my pain, and an understanding that some of the intense, unbearable things I’m feeling are symptoms, not flaws or truths.

Edvard Munch was inspired to paint what he felt in his soul rather than simply what he saw by a fellow artist—this led him to explore the complicated world inside himself. I’m not that interested in The Scream, however. I’ve been looking at Munch’s painting The Sun. In this I see almost uncontainable joy, a feeling so strong it almost tips over into fear, all brought on by seeing a sunset. They say he likely had the disorder himself. Makes sense to me.

That’s the thing about BPD. The strong emotions swing both ways. You live tiptoeing around the void, but you’re also occasionally blessed with blinding, life-changing sunlight.

(Thanks in advance if you feel like reaching out to me but honestly, I just wanted to write this and I don’t have the energy to have conversations about BPD or my health right now. I’m doing well, and I am going on a short holiday next week. I appreciate your concern, but honestly: All is good.)

The Sun – Edvard Munch

The unspoken unease of lingering in public houses during a time of financial crisis.

It’s become second nature to me to think about my local pub as a place to go when my own house has become stale of inspiration. However, I am going less. Like everyone else in the country, I have higher bills to pay, and sadly this means a lower budget for random pints on a rainy Tuesday. I read today that Great Britain has the highest gas bills in the entire world. What a proud moment for my nation.

A pint of cask costs around £4.70 where I live, give or take any drink-it-dry offers or cheaper prices in clubs I’m not a regular in. If I stay for the afternoon with my notebook with just one pint, because my budget for that day was a fiver on random spends, I’ve started to feel something I never used to experience: guilt. It’s self-imposed—nobody at the pub is willing me to buy more. But I know, as a patron and a bar owner, that it costs so much more to keep a pub open right now. That I am potentially (although, sadly, not usually, given how quiet pubs are these days) taking up space a more voracious spender could be using. And that while this didn’t used to matter—all were welcome—it’s become so much more of a pertinent issue.

In Ruby Tandoh’s latest piece for Vittles Restaurants as Living Rooms, she discusses the use of chain restaurants as places to exist, and her own experience of a local MacDonald’s  reminded me of this piece from 2016 which I come back to a lot: McDonald’s: you can sneer, but it’s the glue that holds communities together, by Chris Arnade, a writer who covers addiction and poverty in America. When we have no public spaces to utilise, when our homes aren’t the ideal space for us in that moment, we turn to what we have. And what we have is MacDonald’s. Pret A Manger, Wetherspoons. 

Yes, Wetherspoons. I’m a former employee and I fucking hate that guy. But I can’t deny that Wetherspoons offer something most pubs do not—anonymity. A strange USP, when pubs in their best incarnations are places of warm, personal hospitality.  But it’s this detachment from life, this formation of a pub-as-liminal-space that makes a Wetherspoons pub so welcoming to many. Ruby Tandoh mentions a friend in her Vittles essay, who talks about not having to “perform gratitude”. About using up space, sitting for a while with amenities and warmth and quiet, without guilt. I can understand this. There are no spaces in our urban areas where we can sit in comfort. Hostile architecture has seen to that. If we want to do anything in a town centre other than move forward and consume, we need to pay for the privilege. Wetherspoons are loved—almost definitely so—by many for their low prices and unpretentiousness (however the one on Blackpool seafront has gleaming Chesterfields, a fake library and poetry on the walls). But I don’t think it’s just the low prices people like. It’s the fact they don’t feel they will be judged for paying them.

What judgement is this? The same shame I feel when I don’t stay for another pint? It’s internalised, my friends. Your friendly local publican is only asking you how you are because they want to know. They’re taking your empty glass because they’re about to put the glasswash on, not to passive-aggressively point out that you’ve finished. If there is any one place you are not being judged, it is your local pub. And if you are,

it’s only by Ken, and he drinks Tetleys and got abducted by aliens on Scammonden Dam.

Katie Mather’s The Gulp is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Other Stuff

• Pellicle’s first story about cider in 2023, by Helen Jerome

• Matthew Curtis on the price of a pint, for Get ‘Er Brewed

• I really liked this post on Insta by Beak Brewery—a transparent look at how they brew their IPAs, why they have changed the way they brew them, and what that means.

• Some venues in Manchester’s Gay Village have long been accused of racism (well, as long as I’ve been going out), this past week more allegations have been made against bar owners and door staff. This piece from Vice in August last year and this Tweet thread from last weekend are your starting points to learn about this if you’ve not already heard about it.

• Phil Rosenthal eats a Gregg’s sausage roll.

• Why do people like Guinness? By Boak and Bailey.

• The Hand on Heart report on Brewdog’s Affected Worker’s Platform is now available to view.

Lonely Pubs, from a series by John Bulmer

I like this one because you can see someone going inside. It’s still a pub.

Lose the pub, lose important conversations.

Tom and I play cards and drink pints in our local pub about two or three times a week. We go because it’s a comfortable place to be, and because it’s nice to feel remembered and familiar somewhere—and also at the moment because the lure of a proper fire is irresistible. We also go to The New Inn because often, the conversations you get drawn into take you by surprise.

Now, our local has something of a reputation for having certain regulars who repeat jingoistic balls from certain newspapers verbatim, but walk away and you’ll find people worth speaking to. Like the man in khaki and combat boots, with his shiny antifash badges from the 1970s, always rolling a tab, ready for the class war when it comes. Or the fella with Bedlington terriers and a fantastic selection of metal tees—we got chatting when it turned out that, yes, he was actually wearing a Sólstafir shirt. There’s the guys who teach us how to play dominoes, and the guy who drinks red wine and likes to talk about films. These are some of the people I know in passing at the pub. Pubmates.

But today’s newsletter isn’t about them. It’s about Tom—another Tom—and Phil, two men I’ve seen in the pub for more than a decade, but never chatted to before.

The pub was quiet, except for one man, revving himself up about immigration and benefits. He had many opinions, loud ones, formed from facts he’d only half-remembered. My Tom could tell I was about to get involved and gently nipped my arm. It means—it’s not worth it. It means—this man is not worth ruining your pint over. Across the bar, a man in his 70s bides his time while his pint settles. The politician asks nobody in particular whether they think a well-known local businessman ever had any handouts. When nobody in particular answers, he agrees with himself that this is because he set up his business through sheer hard work, adding that he never took any handouts. The man across the bar clears his throat.

“Have you asked him about that?” he asks.

“Asked who?”

“[businessman’s name]. Have you asked ‘im? Whether he had any help setting up?”

Without waiting for an answer he took his pint back to the lounge, and we followed him. I wanted to know what he knew about this businessman.

Our quiet afternoon pint became an hour-long discussion about the distance between people’s understanding of what working class means, and what it is. We spoke about benefits—”I’ve been on ‘em. He ‘as (pointing at other Tom, who tells us he’s in his 80s.) There’s no shame in it. It’s what they’re there fuh.” We spoke about the retirement age and the state pension—issues close to their lives, but they were incredibly sympathetic to our generation too, who probably won’t even get to retire. Then we talked about the strikes. We talked about how frustrating it is to hear people wilfully misunderstand the point of strike action and unionisation. To hear people side with the Tories against the rights of their friends, neighbours, fellow workers—themselves.

Tom and Phil left for their teas, and we made a move too. On the way home I waved my arms like the two-pint revolutionary I am, telling my Tom how important it is to have common spaces for people to freely share ideas, to congregate—and the more that these places, like pubs, are restricted, taken away, closed down; the more the hospitality industry is left to wheeze on without support, the more suspicious I get.

Use your local pub. Drink there, enjoy it. But also, if it so moves you, use it for action too. Even if that action is only sewing the seeds of an idea. Even if it’s just showing somebody else that they are not alone in their thoughts. Pubs are powerful. What’s more—they are ours.

Other Stuff

• Steph Shuttleworth on pubs and brass bands. Yeaahhh, the north!

• Manchester’s entangled beer and wine scene, studied by Rachel Hendry.

• The TT Races have made a miniseries called Between the Hedges and I am loving it so far. Even if you don’t care about racing, the excitement of some of the riders still is just… It’s really sweet.

• MORE Rachel Hendry, in the form of her newsletter J’adore Le Plonk. This week: Bacchus. Sexy? She thinks so.

• A very good interview about poetry with poet Kevin P. Gilday.
  ”…poetry is so obsessed with keeping that door shut…it likes to be this insular little community where everyone feels very special about what they’re doing.”

• RIP Tom Verlaine. Patti Smith remembers him in a beautiful obituary.

• Nine ways of looking at a pint of Guinness, by Ana Kinsella.

• Funnily enough, Diageo announced this week that Guinness is the UK’s biggest selling beer (h/t Roger Protz.) If the figures can be independently verified, I wouldn’t be surprised—they’ve got the marketing, the consistency and the weight behind them to squash competition. What did surprise me, however, was the weirdly common response (on Twitter) to this news of “but I never see anyone drinking it!”
  Lies. Saying you’ve never seen anyone buy a Guinness at the pub is like saying you’ve never seen a Labrador. Have you never been to a wake? The social club with your granda? A bog-standard pub? Out drinking with me?

Evelyn Dunbar — A Land Girl And The Bail Bull, 1945