The plague strikes again

They say that lightning never strikes twice, and whilst we know that saying isn’t strictly true, we also appreciate that occasionally it can. With this in mind you can perhaps understand my reticence at discovering this morning, that I had contracted a dose of Covid, for the second time this year. It’s actually a little more than reticence that I’m feeling at the moment, although as there is nothing, I can do about the situation I find myself in, any anger or annoyance I might have felt, has quickly turned to a sense of acceptance.

I’m not quite sure how Covid came knocking on my door again, especially as I’d been suffering from a particularly nasty head cold, since the end of last month. Mrs PBT’s had also been affected, and we are both of the opinion that we picked it up onboard the Queen Victoria, during our recent cruise. I’m sure I mentioned this before, so I won’t bore you apart from saying that whilst in the past we may have laughed at people from China and Japan wearing face masks, they are almost certainly having the last laugh.

Just over a week ago, my company dinner and Christmas party took place, and when a handful of staff members failed to turn up for work the following Monday, rumours regarding Covid began to circulate. There is now no legal requirement for people to report a positive Covid test, and no mechanism for notifying such a result to the NHS, following a self-administered test, and as a company we can only rely on the conscience of our employees to do the right thing.

The right thing, of course is to follow the UK Government guidelines for the affected person to stay off work until they feel better. A five-day minimum period is suggested. Our employees know that the company will pay them for this period of absence, so there is no need for them to turn up, until they feel better. However, we do know that at least one of the absentees did test positive for Covid, and I did spend some time talking to this person at the party.

The source of the outbreak is actually irrelevant, especially if we are now going to regard Covid as being in the same vein as other respiratory diseases, such as influenza and the common cold. It was the latter that I thought I was still suffering from, and I even attributed the loss of my sense of smell, to blocked sinuses. We still had small number of Covid lateral flow, test kits at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, so I took a test. It came back positive, more, or less straight away, which provided the rather obvious explanation as to why I couldn’t smell anything.

Mrs PBT’s also took a test, and fortunately, she recorded a negative result, which she repeated this morning. Matthew, who had gone out straight from work last night, on a date, also returned a negative result so, as back in February, I am the only household member affected with this ailment. At the moment, it just feels like a continuation of the head cold and blocked sinuses, I’ve had for the past three weeks, and fortunately I don’t need to go anywhere, although we did miss yesterday’s invitation to join neighbours, down the road, for mulled wine and homemade sausage rolls.

Most of the food, and other goodies for Christmas is coming via Ocado (other home delivery services are available), but I will have to venture out on Friday to collect the pre-ordered turkey from Sainsbury’s. We were lucky to source a fresh bird at all, as outbreaks of avian flu are said to have decimated many flocks of turkeys over the past few weeks. I’ve also been stockpiling beer over the past few weeks, and no doubt more bottles will turn up in my Christmas stocking, but I think I will be going stir-crazy if I don’t set foot outside the house, before then.

A five-day quarantine period will see me through until Wednesday, and then I should be able to venture into shops AND pubs, once again. According to my dear wife, going into overcrowded pubs is responsible for my predicament, but I soon put her straight on that, as apart from the Little Brown Jug nine days ago, I haven’t been in any public houses – crowded or otherwise! I must record my disappointment, and annoyance with this comment, as it’s the sort of remark my mother (who was definitely not a pub-goer), would have made. She did try and qualify what she said, by including shops, and crowded trains (are any trains running?), amongst her list of “no-go” places, but as far as pubs are concerned, I really wish I’d been able to venture into the Nelson Arms, in Tonbridge, recently.

The pub has been running a “tap takeover” for the past 10 days, showcasing a dozen cask ales from Green Jack Brewery, who are based in Lowestoft. This location makes them the UK’s most easterly brewery, and they are an award-winning outfit as well. Their Trawler Boys Best Bitter is a former CAMRA Champion Beer of Britain, and Green Jack’s Baltic Porter, is one of the best examples of the strong export stouts, brewed originally for the Baltic trade.

I’m obviously gutted to be missing these excellent beers, although this is not the first time that Matt, landlord of the Nelson, has featured them. I believe in the past, Matt has hired a van, and driven up to Lowestoft and back, to collect the Green Jack casks, and if he combines the trip with an overnight stay, it makes for a nice little, pre-Christmas break.

Well, use the time wisely Paul, catch up with the blog, and start working on those travel plans for next year. I’ve already drawn up a list of pubs I want to visit, or in some cases re-visit, making use of my old git’s bus pass. Further afield, the government and the unions really need to sort out the mess on the railways, as it is difficult to plan ahead for long distance trips, especially where it involves the purchase of advanced tickets. 

Finally, whilst I am certainly not in favour of compulsion, it wouldn’t hurt, especially at the moment, if people were encouraged to wear masks in crowded indoor situations – including pubs, of course, those well-known pits of disease!

Brewery closures continue apace, and there may be more to come

Not surprisingly 2022 has been a bad year for the UK’s brewing industry, with the combination of sky-high energy prices, high inflation, rising interest rates and supply chain difficulties all contributing to the closure of over 60 breweries. The number is still rising, and includes some pretty big and well-respected names, and at the moment we don’t know where or how, it’s all going to end.  As I've written before this wasn't how we were supposed to have come out of COVID, in fact many pundits forecast a booming economy against a background, of “bright sunlit uplands.”

Now we've heard these promises of a sunny future before, most noticeably from the opportunists, political careerists, and spiv hedge-fund managers, who brought us the failed experiment that is Brexit. Now, after dismissing very real concerns from those who could see the very real dangers from us cutting ties with our closest neighbours, in the world’s largest trading block, the UK economy has tanked, trade and investment are down, whilst company failures and bankruptcies are up. “Project Fear” has definitely become, “Project Reality!”

Aside from Brexit, one of the main driving forces behind these negative events has been the illegal, and totally unwarranted, invasion of a peaceful country (Ukraine), by its larger neighbour – Russia. Led by gangster, war criminal and former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin, a man who thinks he’s Peter the Great - Ivan the Terrible, would be a much more appropriate moniker, the war in Ukraine has been responsible for rocketing energy bills, supply chain disruption, destruction of property and infrastructure on a massive scale, plus the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. (I am including the deaths of combatants, on both sides here, as a large proportion of the Russian forces will have been unwilling participants in this debacle).

Ten months on, and the conflict shows no signs of ending, despite Ukrainian forces having given Putin and his rag-bag army a well-deserved kicking. It seems that we never learn the lessons from history, because once again, a crazed dictator (think Hitler, Stalin and all the others), has been allowed to wage war, on a peaceful country, bringing misery and destruction on its inhabitants. One man is responsible for this and, as history has shown, it always is a man, because women have far more sense.

The repercussions from both these events, continue to exert their negative influence on the UK economy, but the situation has been made far worse, by one of the most inept governments in living memory. Can you imagine any other responsible western administration crashing its own economy for some warped economic fantasy centred around massive tax cuts for the super-rich, financed by massively increased borrowing? The reputation the Conservative Party once had for careful management of the nation’s finances and responsible government, went out the window with the reckless budget of Liz Truss, and her hapless chancellor, Kwazi Kwarteng.  

Britain today is not a happy place, and it is against this background of rising prices, broken supply chains, falling demand caused by consumers tightening their belts, that we are witnessing this round of bankruptcies and brewery closures. Some of these involve large and long-established companies, but most concern small and often quite recent start-ups. It’s got to the stage that hardly a week goes by without news another closure or two.

I thought it would be interesting to discover exactly how many breweries have closed this year, and fortunately the good people at Beer Nouveau, have done the research, and published the full list, here on their website. There are some real surprise, including Truman’s (the re-launched company), Box Steam, Slater's, and Linfit, to name but a few, but there are also much larger concerns, such as Jennings, Caledonian and Dark Star, where breweries have been closed by larger, parent companies intent on making cost savings.

The closure of Jennings and Caledonian is particularly sad, given their long pedigree and 19^th Century origins. The same also applies to Truman’s who, at one time, were one of the largest, and most famous breweries in Victorian London. Their Brick Lane Brewery, in London’s East End, closed in 1989, but in 2010, a new start-up acquired the rights to the Truman name, and brought back some of the beers. Unfortunately, the revived brewery closed in June 2022, as a result of the pandemic.

The closure of the other, mainly much smaller breweries is also sad, especially as many are start-ups, where people have poured their hearts, souls and very often their life savings as well, into getting these new ventures off the ground. It’s true to say that not all of these companies operated from a sound financial basis, and some may have been living on borrowed time. It’s also true that for the last decade or so, industry observers have been predicting a fallout in what was seen as a very overcrowded small brewery sector.

Some of these closures then, should not come as a total surprise, but what was unforeseen was Putin’s warmongering and reckless gamble in Ukraine, which has compounded the weakness of the UK economy. I don't think anyone is sure how this is going to play out, although the best short-term outcome would be a defeat, and total collapse of Putin’s Russia, followed by the return of peace and stability to Ukraine. However, even if the war ended tomorrow, there is a massive task ahead in trying to rebuild Ukraine’s shattered infrastructure, housing stock and economic base.

In the meantime, it's a case of the rest of us sitting tight and offering as much help and assistance to the Ukrainian people as we can. As for the closed breweries, some of these will be missed more than others, but each closure represents a lost opportunity, a lost dream, and a sense of failure for the people involved. The only crumb of comfort, is this cull, may have thrown a lifeline to those breweries that are still trading.

They are said to number over 2,000, a figure that would have been unimaginable, back in the 1970s, when the Campaign for Real Ale first set out it stall. I’m sure that many of you will have treasured favourites amongst the rich portfolios of the remaining breweries, so until better times arrive, not just for the brewing industry and hospitality trade, but for the world in general, let us raise a glass or two to the brave and hardworking souls behind all brewing companies, both past and present, who have given their all in making the lot of the beer drinker a better one.