Blogging makes a comeback

One of the upsides of the lock-down is that several writers, who were once ardent bloggers, have returned to blogging, resurrecting blogs that were long moribund, or even deceased. With opportunities for travel severely restricted, and new beer launches either on hold, or carried out virtually, there hasn’t been much in the way of new stuff to report on.

Consequently, we have seen the welcome return to beer blogging, of writers such as Adrian Tierney-Jones, and pub landlord extraordinaire Jeff Bell aka, “Stonch.” After some fervent activity to begin with, Jeff has again gone a bit quiet, bunkered down in his lovely old pub, the Ypres Castle, in the equally lovely town of Rye. 

I can’t think of many better places to be confined to, than this ancient Cinque Port, with its vantage points looking out across Romney Marsh, as well as out to sea, and even with the pubs all closed, there are some lovely walks in the vicinity. In addition, if you’ve got a pub of your own, you can at least get stuck into some of the stock, as it would be a shame to see all that lovely beer going to waste.

Adrian, on the other hand, has been rather prolific in posting on his blog, Called to the Bar. I really like his slightly off-beat, style of writing which really shows the passion he has for beer and pubs. Recent topics have included a pub in the Vale of the White Horse, plus reviews of beers from St Austell (Proper Job), Augustiner (Helles) and Westmalle (Tripel).

Veteran bloggers, Boak and Bailey have described the latter as one of their top world beers; it’s just a pity I haven’t been able to track any down for myself. Waitrose stock Westmalle Dubel – which is a dark beer, but the brewery’s Tripel seems very elusive.

Veteran blogger Tandleman, whose output of late had been somewhat sporadic, has also made a welcome return, with posts covering a number of beer and pub-related topics. His article about beers from the past, that he particularly misses, attracted over 60 comments from correspondents, including me, all suggesting their favourite beers that are no longer available.

Kirsty Walker, who blogs as ladysinksthebooze, has written a lengthy piece entitled, The Public House That Roared. The article explores the concept of the perfect pub, as laid out by George Orwell in his well-known piece about the fictional Moon Under Water, but seen from her own perspective against the backdrop of a now closed Warrington pub she remembers with fondness from her youth.

Also resurfaced are Pivini Filosof, a translator and writer originally from Argentina, who has lived and worked in Prague since 2002. His latest piece is a series of interviews from several Prague bar owners, about how they coped with the lock-down, and their plans now that the Czech government is allowing pubs to reopen – albeit with certain restrictions.  

The above are just some of the returning bloggers who have caught my eye, but I’m sure there must be several more. Welcome back lads and lassies, it’s good to see your return to the fold. I have included links to several of the posts mentioned above, so why not check out some of these fine writers for yourselves, and see what they have to say.

Of course, we shouldn't forget all those bloggers who never stopped posting articles to keep us entertained, both pre-pandemic as well as during the current crisis. Their number is quite large, so rather than list them all out, take a look at the entrants on my blog list, on the left hand side bar of this blog. Thank-you all for keeping me both entertained and informed, especially during these troubled times.

I’ve been meaning to post some comments of my own on these blogs but haven’t had as much spare time as I thought I would. Writing this blog takes up quite a chunk of my time and there are a couple of garden projects I am working on, that take up even more.

I’ve also been back at work full-time for the best part of a month now - in a responsible and socially distanced way of course. I’m not one of those able to work from home, as much of my job involves testing or inspecting items, manually filling in paperwork and releasing finished products for sale, all of which require my physical presence. We are operating at present with less than a third of our usual staffing levels, which does mean distances of 2 metres between people, are quite easily maintained.

Yesterday (Wednesday), was supposed to be the day of the Prime Minister’s much-vaunted, "great return to work," but there wasn’t that much extra traffic on my journey into work that morning. My eight-mile drive takes me along mainly rural roads, so perhaps this wasn’t surprising, although I did notice a lot more commercial vehicles about, whilst out for my walk at lunchtime.  

We’ll have to wait and see how things unfold, but whilst the situation might be different in the big cities, here in rural Kent it’s pretty quiet. It’s really a matter of carrying on as best one can, by keeping one’s head down, not taking any unnecessary risks or putting others in danger. All pandemics eventually come to an end, as they either burn themselves out naturally, or vaccines, designed to stop their spread, are developed.

In the meantime, we will all just have to remain patient.

Up-cycling

There’s a television programme presented by a lady called Sarah Moore, and it’s called “Money for Nothing.” It used to be broadcast at roughly the same time I arrived home from work, and given the programme’s light-hearted nature, it was a good way to unwind whilst siting down and tucking into my evening meal.

The basic premise of the programme is Sarah “ambushes” unsuspecting members of the public at their local tip/recycling centre and asks if she could take their unwanted items, rather than allowing them to be dumped. She then takes the items away and transforms them into something more desirable, before returning the profit generated from their sale, back to the people who threw the items away.

Money for Nothing’s running time of 45 minutes allows the three things that Sarah has saved in each episode, to be showcased. She uses several designers and craftsmen and women, in order to cajole them into transforming the junk into something useful or even desirable, and I have to say they produce mixed results.
It does rather depend on what the presenter picks up in the first place, as there’s a world of difference between starting with a pile of old planks, compared to something like a divan or chest of drawers; but you get the general picture.

As a way of up-cycling it’s good to see what can be done, even though some restorations allow very little wiggle room for a profit to be made. You also have to think that, on occasion, there are people out there with far more money than sense!

Sarah comes across as slightly scatty at times, and the army surplus battledress tunic she wears, might warrant a visit from the fashion police. She’s nobody's fool, even though she does annoy Mrs PBT's, and I’d go as far as saying she’s a very clever lady. She’s certainly got a nice workshop housed in a converted barn, attached to her property, which allows her to carry out her up-cycling and restoration projects.

During the current lock-down, I’ve been doing a bit of up-cycling myself, although rather than hanging round tips (they’re closed anyway), I’m restoring pieces of my own junk. I started with a revamp of my trusty old Spear & Jackson garden fork.

The garden fork was a present from some friends of my parents, which was a gift at my first wedding, over 40 years ago. Several years ago, the plastic handle cracked, but rather than throwing it away, I left it in the shed with the intent of one day replacing it. In the meantime, I purchased a succession of replacement forks, all of which ended up with bent or broken prongs.

One of these forks was manufactured by Wilkinson Sword, so it should have been OK, but the way in which the prongs were braised together, rather than being forged in one piece does leave them vulnerable to stress fracturing, especially when used to lever out a stubborn shrub or tree root.

The solution was to remove the plastic handle, that was riveted onto the shaft of one of the broken forks and transfer it to my S & J one. First I had to drill out the rivet, and that’s what took the time, but once removed it was relatively easy to swap it over;  although I did have to turn down the top of the shaft in order for it to fit. The result, a tried, tested and much used garden fork, restored to full working order, all for the price of a bit of my time and a lot of patience.


Next came an old wooden shaving mirror, which son Matthew has his eye on. That involved a quick and easy repair, with the replacement of a couple of screws, to prevent the mirror housing from spinning round on itself. Now all that’s needed is some paint to give it that slightly distressed look. Mrs PBT’s has some chalk paint on order and has kindly offered to apply the finishing touches - I'll say that Sarah would be proud of her!


This easy restoration was followed by my office chair; the one I am sitting on in front of my computer, typing out this blog post. The seat part of the chair was in a bad way, with the black  plastic, “leatherette” covering starting to flake off, leaving small, but annoying, black specks all over the carpet.  Despite me being responsible for the bulk of the vacuuming in the Bailey household, Mrs PBT’s was becoming increasingly annoyed with these flakes of thin black plastic, so when a solution presented itself, I jumped at it.

Eileen had thrown out her own office chair a couple of weeks ago, as the gas-lift at the base, along with the swivel coupling, had both broken. The chair was relegated to the summer house and it
was only whilst tidying the place up yesterday that the solution struck me. The base of by chair was fine, so I would swap over my flaking old seat for her nice intact one. The only proviso was were the fixing holes in the same place?

Fortunately, they were, and the result is a revamped chair that doesn’t shed black flakes all over the carpet. The irony is that this is the second time I’ve swapped over sections of office chair to create a good one, as a few years ago it was the base of my previous one that had failed. Matthew had discarded his previous chair due to a damaged seat section and was buying a replacement. As at present, exchanging parts was the way to go – so it’s good that bases, and seats appear to be modular.

Finally, we come to compost making; an activity forced on me by our local authority suspending the collection of garden waste, due to Covid-19 restrictions. Until last year, the collection of garden waste in Tonbridge & Malling was free but switched to a “paid for” service to allow the authority to implement a range of other recycling services. 

Along with around 40,000 other local residents, I signed up to have our garden waste collected, and all was running smoothly until March, when the service was suspended due to staffing issues associated with Coronavirus. So, just at the time when everything in the garden was putting on a furious growth spurt and needs pruning or cutting back, the means of disposing of the cuttings and other non-compostable woody parts, was taken away.

My garden waste bin was already full to overflowing, so I had to find some other way of dealing with the excess plant matter. The solution came in the form of two plastic compost bins that I’d bought from the council at least ten year ago. Apart from occasionally dumping my grass clipping in them, along with the occasional bucketful of weeds, I’d more or less stopped using these bins, once the free garden waste collection kicked in.

Now, faced with nowhere to store all the woody stuff, I turned to the bins with the aim of creating some extra space. Transferring material, with the aid of my revamped garden fork, from one bin to another, revealed a layer of nice, friable and well broken-down plant matter at the base of each  container – compost in other words.

This has now all been transferred to the one bin – hard work, by hand, leaving the other bin for the soft stuff and the local authority bin full of pruning’s, clipping and other woody material, ready to be taken away next week, when collections restart.

I don’t know whether composting counts as up-cycling, as basically it is a process that encourages the breakdown of plant material but, as with my other proper up-cycling examples, I do feel I am doing my bit for the environment. And if that helps in these troubled times, then so much the better.

Local enterprises deserve our support

I was watching Countryfile the other weekend, and one news story particularly caught my attention. It concerned that stalwart of rural life, but it wasn’t the local pub, or even the church, instead the feature was about the village shop. Apparently, the local store is experiencing something of a renaissance during the state-enforced self-incarceration we’re currently enduring.

So rather than spend ages queuing up outside a supermarket, and then attempting to dodge all the ditherers and those who don’t understand the concept of social distancing, people who live in rural areas are instead flocking to the village shop, in their droves.

The programme devoted quite a lengthy feature to praising the virtues of the local farm shop, and the benefits this brings in terms of local employment and helping farmers and growers to sell their produce.  It rightly claimed that local shops offer a more sustainable way forward, in terms of reduced food miles and carbon footprint, whilst at the same time helping to boost the rural economy.

I have seen evidence of this in the village where my company is based. The local shop, which is also a sub-post-office, has provided a first-class service throughout the past six weeks of lock-down, offering a lifeline to the local community. From my company’s point of view, it also provides milk for our staff tearoom, as well as filled rolls or snacks for those fancying something different for lunch.

I spent my teenage years in a small village, a few miles outside Ashford, having moved there with my parents at the age of 14. There were two shops in the village when we first arrived, but by the time I had left home and completed my stint at university, both had closed. One shop was primarily the village post office and food store, whilst the other was more of a general store, offering hardware and other goods, alongside food. It was also a newsagent, offering newspapers and magazines, either for collection or home delivery.

For several years prior to leaving home, I worked as a paperboy for the latter enterprise, getting up at the crack of dawn and going out in all weathers to deliver papers. We had to make up our own rounds, which was a little daunting to begin with but, as with all things, fine once you got the hang of it. During the winter months it was dark when I started my round, most of which was accomplished by bicycle, given the spread-out nature of the village. My bike was specially adapted, having been fitted with wide “cow-horn" handlebars, which formed an ideal place in which to lay my sack full of newspapers.

The shop didn’t offer Sunday newspapers, which meant a well-deserved lie-in. It was also a welcome relief to us paperboys, (there were three of us covering what was a widely spread out village), given the bulkiness of papers such as the Sunday Times, Observer and Sunday Telegraph and their accompanying supplements.

We didn’t escape scot-free as there were local newspapers to deliver on a Friday. It was often necessary to split the delivery of these cumbersome bundles of newsprint; especially when shoving them through those narrow, vertical letterboxes, that seemed all the rage in the early 1970’s. These poor excuses for a proper letterbox became a real pet hate of mine, during my time as a paperboy.

I digress, but I look back on those days with fondness, despite the often-harsh weather conditions us lads worked under. I am also grateful to my father for not only ensuring I dragged my sorry carcass out of bed in the morning, but for cooking me a breakfast – normally French toast, before I set off on my round.

Back to local shops, and living on the edge of a town, means we have access to several enterprising farm shops which have also come into their own during this pandemic. Matthew and I visited one close to Hadlow the other weekend. It is owned by the nearby Hadlow College; one of a handful of agricultural colleges, and a significant local employer.

Because of so-called social distancing, we had to queue to get in as, like most retail outlets, the shop operates a one out, one out policy. This did leave me feeling somewhat rushed, and meant I probably missed quite a bit of what the shop had to offer.  I was pleased to pick up a bag of flour for Mrs PBT’s, a couple of bottles of beer from Canterbury Ales (not exactly that local), plus a rather nice loaf of bread from produced by local artisan bakers, Plaxtol Bakery.

 It was only when I got home and realised it was priced at just under £2 that I thought wow; but it was worth every penny, such was its texture and taste. Sometimes it really is worth paying that bit extra in order to receive a first-class product.

So, will this trend of shopping local continue once this crisis is over? I’d like to think that it will, but we shall have to wait and see. However, if you’ve got the time – as those who are not working or self-isolating have at the moment, then it really is worth the extra effort, to support businesses that are at the heart of the local community.

Finally, as beer is one of the main focuses of this blog, it should go without saying we should also be supporting the valiant efforts of local breweries and pubs that are offering take-outs or even home-delivery. Having been forced to close by government edict, the survival of many of these businesses is at stake.

The more enterprising of them have diversified into supplying beer, and sometimes food, so that customers can at least enjoy a decent beer in the comfort of their own homes and gardens. Supporting these enterprises will help secure their future, post Covid-19, and will go a long way towards ensuring our treasured pubs will be there to welcome customers, once some semblance of normality returns.