Richard Peters -in the Sai Kung Country Park

Beer and Nostalgia

July 20th, Day something...

Stroud Brewery Budding

Swaledale Cheese

Well, the chance of two beer festivals slipped by; Chelmsford would have been nice, but I was ill, and Plymouth would have been interesting, but it was such a busy time that a quick pint in a student pub doesn’t really qualify. I love real ale festivals: you go with your mates and get halves of each one you like the name of, none of which you can remember within five minutes, never mind in the morning.

Hats off, then, to a bottle of Stroud Budding! A nut-brown, nutty, light and frothy full-flavour Pale Ale. Energetic and with a mildly-effervescent effect on the mid-tongue, the superb rounding of rich barley flavours: no surprise that it received “Champion Beer of Gloucester 2006 & 2008. Named after a certain native of Stroud, Edwin Beard Budding, the inventor of the lawn mower. What would we have done without such an invention –sheep? In a word, superb!

The Swaledale worked nicely in combination, a fatty cow’s cheese, but without the intense fattiness of something like a cheddar. A local cheese might have been more… fitting, but this one worked nicely.

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Chelmsford was my home until at nine years old Mum upped sticks and we moved from a small hotel to Mayfair in London where she sent me to the Purcell School of Music (of which I've written more on another occasion). Those formative years were small-scale and domestic. Just how small-scale was brought home to me only the other day when, with an hour or two to spare, I wandered around Oakland’s Park. The scene of hundreds of walkies with Jenny the dog to “do jobs”, this place nevertheless had elevated status as a place of open spaces, learning (the museum is still there), mystery and play. I walked back looking for now-missing flower beds, paths and trees, knowing what should be there and eying suspiciously what had replaced them.

Modelled on the then-Queen’s Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, it was the proud Victorian residence of a very wealthy coal and timber merchant. Inside the museum I found the great, stuffed, growling brown bear was still upright in his case in the hall, the noisy bees were still in their hive and the giant’s breakfast bowl was now in the Dutch ceramics section. The rest had been nicely modernised and I was pleased to see that the Essex Regiment section has been updated to a more narrative style. It was there the security guard asked me to leave at 5.15. I must say I was a little lost in nostalgia for a while, but this was the kind of nostalgia you can touch and see directly and was all the more moving for it.

The Sevastopol Canon, a trophy from the Crimean war, always seemed staggeringly enormous (I was always terribly impressed with other kids who could happily edge to the end of the barrel) and is still impressive!

Plymouth, on the other hand, was the last place my mother lived and died. A noisy place, it became all the noisier with our new roles as painters and decorators. My mother’s house has been a student let for a while now, but was sorely in need of a lick of paint and a few new decorative additions. With John, my brother, and Alys, Bren and I managed to paint a good deal of it and will get it finished by next week.

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So there you go, good beer and good memories often go hand-in-hand, but not necessarily in the same place.

Red City, Red Wine

July 5^th Day 7

Café Arabe, Marrakech

Chateau Roslane, Meknes Les Coteaux de l'Atlas rouge

The great red city of Marrakech is a busy, if not mad place. I don’t think it’s possible to have a nice quiet walk down the street. Not that there’s much to see unless you enjoy street after street and row after row of scarves, leather slippers, leather pouffes, djellebas in all sorts of garish colours, tin lampshades, really, really bad paintings and silvery lady ornamentation.

Thus it is that behind the little shops (and some of them really are not big enough to turn around in) and through some unlit and uneven alleyways can be found the riads. These are literally oases of calm, the perfect antidote to the desperate pestering and exuberant adolescent haggling on the street. The riads are still.

Morocco really is a youthful society, with 30% under 14 years of age. They all want mobile phones and mopeds and they all seem to have them and often ably use both at the same time. Some of the older citizens have clearly had worse luck and it shows in their beggar’s rags and lowly occupations. Such is the vitality of the new populace that they all seem keen to establish a better future for themselves. None seem too discouraged by the meagre profits to be made selling the same old tat to the same old tourists: there’s a quick buck to be made and they’ll gladly do it.

So when a place like the Café Arabe opens its’ doors to the western crowd, those with sufficient disposable income and un-Islamic propensities to enjoy such things as alcoholic beverages and pork, the trail blazed must surely be enviably copied. Is this not where all societies lead? Maybe, but this is so very obviously a Muslim society where the mosques are crowded 5-times daily and social mores are still kept. It is difficult to imagine a British society where 98% profess Christianity and the churches are packed on a daily basis.

Still, Brenda and I arrive at the riad-cum-restaurant quite hungry for Moroccan fayre done well. We are the first to occupy the cosy downstairs dining area, the top floor terrace being full with those that like their beers cooled by the evening’s breeze. After ordering tajines, I enquire about the best wines. The waiter/sommelier obviously does not want to be modest nor boastful about something he may not have sampled. He mentions the Coteau de l’Atlas and he readily agrees: at 450 dirhams (£33/HK$398) per bottle he’s not going to pass this one up.

The Chateau Roslane Coteau de l’Atlas is full-bodied, being an obvious blend of Cab Sauv, Merlot and Syrah. It’s made to French standards (and this was premiere cru) and aged for 5 months –one or two too long for my palate.

The wine was well served and immediately soothed the palate. No rough edges. Overwhelming blackcurrant and blackberry notes really ticked the wotnots. It went very well with the warm aubergine salad starter and even better with the lamb and vegetarian tajines mains. At this point, however, the wine began to oxidise rapidly and mid-way through those mains the oaky tannins were very marked. By the time we’d finished eating I was struggling and Brenda was on the water. I wouldn’t say it was a bad wine by any means, but it had to be drunk rapidly to enjoy the full mid-range flavours. Best in youth? Possibly, but I drank some excellent Tunisian wine in restaurants in Tunis and Sidi bou Said and was excited by the feeling of the North African stuff most of which, I’m sad to say, stays home.

And so a lazy stagger back through some dark, empty medina alleys brought us to the intense quietude of our very own sleepy riad –us being the only, but quite grateful guests.

Bikinis and Stroud Brewery Tom Long

July 2^nd Day No 4

Centurion Vintners, 16 George St, Stroud, Gloucestershire 

Stroud Brewery Tom Long

Website Hype:

3.8% ABV

Silver at SIBA National Beer Competition, Champion Bitters (up to 4.0%)

Amber session beer with spicy citrus aroma. Good body for low ABV. 

Tom Long, 3.8% is an amber coloured bitter with a spicy citrus aroma. This beer won Overall Champion for the West of England and Wales, 2008 in the Society of Independent Brewers Awards.

Highwayman

Tom Long is named after a mythical highwayman hung at Tom Longs Post on Minchinhampton Common, near Stroud.

Another derivation of the name is found in the Canting Dictionary [thieving slang], 1736. This is a collection of words and terms, both ancient and modern, used by Beggars, Gypsies, Cheats, House-Breakers, Shop-Lifters, Foot-Pads and Highway-Men.

TOM-Long, tedious; as Come by Tom Long the Carrier; of what is very long a coming.

Having wearily traipsed around Stroud disappointed after a-lookin' for a decent bikini (a market opportunity for sure), Brenda and I found ourselves walking in circles; "Had we been to this shop? Were the ones in here only for teenagers? Can we manage with what we have?" Bikini shopping certainly ain't what it used to be...

Of course, although I have a fine figure, the bikini is for Brenda (just in case you were wondering).

"Shall we get a drink?"

"Oh, yes!"

"In a pub or shall we take home?"

"Hmmm... How about we look in here?"

And so we enter Centurion Vintners, an oft-visited place of wines and spirits, some of which I haven't found elsewhere. I asked for anything local or even English. The proprietor answered that they normally carry these, but didn't even have a bottle of Three Choirs because the weather last year was so bad there was a meagre crop and very little worth bottling. Ah well...

And so we went in search of skimpy lady parts coverings and returned with a half-gallon of Weston's Herefordshire Perry (a treat for the kids, ya know) and three bottles of Stroud Brewery's amiable beers. Brenda remarks that we have often gone shopping for her only to return with things for me!

Eeny-meeny... I opened the Tom Long first, named after a notorious legendary highwayman hung at Minchinhampton Common near Stroud. As all Stroud Brewery's beers are organic, have a Warranty of Origin and contribute their brewing waste to feed local Tamworth piggies, I feel a certain sense of self-righteous eco-warrior coming over me, but I shake that off with the first taste.

The un-chilled ale is nut brown, clear with a heavy hopped aroma. The head is soft and does not hold for long (a good sign). First tasting is dark with long and rich spicey maltings, so much so that Brenda's sister said she didn't like it. Probably one best served beside the fire on a miserably wet winter evening. The beer achieved a silver and gold medal. Not a bad beginning.

The brewery has excellent business ideals -not wishing to sell to supermarkets because they appear to stamp their increasingly negative mark on everything in this country, and encouraging local pubs and businesses. Below is an extract from their website:

Stroud Brewery - we'll sidestep the supermarket 

The man behind a leading Stroud brewery has pledged that none of his beers will ever appear in major supermarket chains. Greg Pilley, who owns Stroud Brewery, is making the stand because he claims cheap supermarket beer is the biggest threat to the traditional British pub, as well as being a chief cause of binge-drinking.

"It may mean that I miss out on a big market but I've made a conscious decision not to sell our beer through the supermarkets," he said. "I do not wish to undermine my core business, which is the local pubs. These places are often the hearts of villages. I want to see that tradition continue."

Worthy indeed.

Because the memsahib and meself is off to Morocco (ooh, what a palarva), I have yet to sample the other two in the trilogy, the Budding and Woolsack. I fear their careless consumption before our return.