Take me to the Chappel

Only 4 months late...I'm starting to catch up!

I thought it was high time I documented the wonderful 22nd Chappel Beer Festival in September 2008.

As my reader may remember, I managed to take the whole week as holiday for the 21st festival in 2007, well, I managed it again in 2008 :o)

The festival does not start until Tuesday evening so I had a lazy Monday (also my birthday) visiting Mum & Dad, where I saw my Sister & my young nephew & very young new neice (just 3 weeks old, still very fresh) , before returning to Bures & pottering around my flat, eating all the things I love to eat when I'm being indulgent(fresh crusty bread, real butter, cheese, peanut butter, chocolate) (but not all at the same time). I played a bit of pinball as the downstairs neighbours were not in to be disturbed, listened to my favourite Marillion albums & popped over to the Swan with a copy of the local paper to accompany a pint or 5 of lovely IPA before coming home to sit in my TV chair (with the surround sound speakers set up right behind me) to watch some Dr Who DVD's. All in all a marvellously marvelous way to spend a birthday, not an annoying teenage boy in sight & knowing everybody else, including Aly, were at work :o)

This however was just a relaxing warm up for the remainder of the week...

Tuesday entailed more relaxed pottering before getting the train to Chappel for the start of the main event. Despite arriving 10 minutes before the advertised opening time, I was allowed straight into the museum where a smattering of early birds were already sampling the wares on offer. A pleasantly paced evening saw 11 halves sampled, starting with the `Hunters Gold' from a local brewer I had not come accross before, the Red Fox Brewery in Coggeshall. It seems they only started brewing the previous month so I must have sampled one of their first attempts and very agreeable it was too. 10 more halves followed - Some of the half pint measures were to say the least, generous as you can see!(the two lines on the glass are 1/3 pint & 1/2 pint marks)

Wednesday was a bit of a gala day with two work colleagues also having managed to take the day off. We decided that we would get a fellow punter to take our picture before the crowds arrived. The first person we approached ran away claiming inability to work anything even vaguely technological, the second reluctantly agreed but even then held the camera as if it may steal his sole, passed it straight back & rushed off to lie in a dark corner of the goods shed. his rather blury result is shown here.

There is always plenty of food available, my favourite this year being the chilli from the butchers stall, if you got served by the right person you would get a decent portion - I was asked what I wanted with it, chips or bread & replied I just wanted the chilli & was rewarded with an extra spoonful. Not extra spicy but hugely meaty & wonderfully flavourful.

Here I am, looking alarmingly disheviled, tucking in...

Another well paced day saw another 12 brews sampled including `Drop of Nelson's Blood' from the Farmers brewery in Maldon & `Misleading Lights' from the Harwich Town brewery in, er, Harwich.

Apart from the three of us, there were plenty of strange characters present, including this chap we recognised from previous years, christened by ourselves with rapier like wit as `the duckman'

Following past experience, I made sure Thursday was a particularly laid back day with a lesurely 2 hour lunchtime visit allowing the paper to be read over 6 mellow halves.

Friday (say it quietly) was a day away from the festival. I drove back over to Stansted to bring Aly over to Bures for the grand finale to come on Saturday.

What should have been a detox day to give the liver time to recover, turned into the booziest day of the week when we took the train the other way up the line to Sudbury & spent most of the day visiting a high percentage of the 19 pubs within walking distance of the station. The day included what Aly described as `the best pie I've ever eaten' at the Waggon & Horses - if you are ever in Sudbury (Suffolk) of a lunchtime, give this pub a try, specials at less than a fiver that are good tasty home cooked food served in generous portions. Guest ales are also available.

Saturday was a marathon, from noon til last train at 22.31, 18 well paced halves, 2 plates of chilli, 1 hot dog, a portion of chips & 1 cheese burger followed by a nightcap of IPA followed by an Irish Whiskey in the Swan on the way back from the station. There was live music in the evening to stomp your feet to & in line with tradition established over many previous years, I parted with many a pound on merchandice, coming home with a lovely new celtic cross design pewter belt buckle, yet another new hip flask & an engraved christening tankard for my new neice Abigail. Alyson persauded me to buy her a rather natty pewter buckle with an Egyptian design. Only disappointment was after ordering half number 16 of the day, going to mark it off the list & finding it was half number 1 from way back on Tuesday!

All in all a rather wonderful week with many brews sampled, some new, some old favourites. 48 halves sampled, being 47 different beers, and every one a decent brew with none needing to be poored away onto the cinders. The countdown to 2009's 23rd festival has begun...

I'll end this post with a serving suggestion taken from a packet of Tesco Mince Pies.

A Point to note for fellow connoisseurs of the serving suggestion is the fact that they have taken the trouble to vary the photo on the side of the packet (still labled with the holy words `serving suggestion').

The main suggestion seems to be to fold a checkered vinyl table cloth & pile the pies attractively towards the back, whilst taking a bite out of a fourth pie & placing this to the fore, together with the actual bite, off the cloth & on the table. Some crumbs from the biting are visible on the cloth. A final festive flourish is the placing of a sprig of holly behind the pie pile. The secondary suggestion on the side of the packet sees the holly sprig moved to the right & 2 of the pies from the pie pile removed.

I am unsure whether this is meant to denote the pies having been eaten, after all, given the choice, most guests would probably leave the pie with the bite taken out til very last if choosing, or whether this is a seperate display for the final 2 pies in the packet (6 pies in a pack). the bite taken from the pie seems very very similar to that on the main picture so my best guess would be the former. In which case one would need to ask the question `how the devil do I serve the last 2 pies?'.

Any way, til next time, take care, serve well & stay alive.

In Memoriam...

After the last post & at the risk of turning this blog into a rather morbid & depressing obituary column, I feel I do have to mark the passing of two icons that I have grown up with.

Firstly, farewell Woolworths, the final shops closed their doors for the last time over the New Year. Founded in America in 1878 it became one of the first shops to have its goods on shelves available for selection by the customer, rather than behind the counter to be gathered by the shop keeper. The first British shop opened in Liverpool in 1909. This first store seems to have been a kind of forerunner to the modern `Poundland' type chains, with all items priced at sixpence.

It marked over a century of service by being named in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest department store chain in the world in 1979.

It has been a shop that I would wander through at least once on most weeks during a lunch break, either in search of a specific item (anything from cotton, shoe insoles, light bulbs, seeds or curtain hooks to DVD's or mobile phones) or just to see whether there were any special offers that would induce me to an impulse buy.

Unfortunately, it was unable to make it a century in Britain & the next generation of kids will need to get their pick`n'mix elsewhere :o(

The final few weeks really were rather undignified, with hoards of customers stripping the stores of any stock & taking advantage of the closing down sales. During the final week, even the fixtures & fittings were up for grabs whilst in at least one branch, staff sold the red T-shirts off in aid of the staff leaving party.

I must compliment all staff on their own dignified behaviour during this period. Being told you are losing your job must be difficult to take at the best of times but to happen over the Christmas / New Year holiday period must be doubley depressing. Despite this, all the staff in the 3 local branches I have visited in past weeks were unfailingly polite & cheery & I take my hat off to them & wish them all well in the future.

The second sad passing I was sorry to hear of was that of Oliver Postgate who died aged 83 on 8th December.

Together with puppeteer Peter Firmin, he produced some wonderful childrens programmes which provided a constant backdrop to my own early years. Series such as the Clangers, Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog, Pogles Wood & Ivor the Engine have a uniquely innocent home made British feel to them. Filmed in stop motion photography, the puppets & scenery were hand made by Postgate, Firmin & their families. The Clangers for example were knitted & dressed by Firmin's wife & the sets constructed & filmed in a barn next to Firmin's house.

These programmes remain vivid within my own memories - the `Marvellous, mechanical Mouse Organ...', the mice making chocolate biscuits from butter beans in the toy mill, their weekly `We will fix it' song, the pompous proffessor Yaffle (...just a carved wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker), the Soup Dragon & the Iron Chicken, Idris the dragon in Ivor's boiler, Nogbad the bad & too many more to mention. Postgate himself voiced many of the characters & his honeyed tones are also a firm childhood memory. I have recently passed videos of the Clangers to my sister to show to my young Nephew (coincidently also an Oliver). I hope he will be as facinated & enthralled by the tales from the Little Blue Planet in Space as I was in the early 70's.

The world enters 2009 a poorer place.