Beer Festival: Facial Hair and Regrets

I write this the morning after the Great British Beer Festival and have a message for those people who seem to think that real ale doesn’t leave you with a hangover. I say to them, come take a deep smell of my overpowering body odour and nauseating breath, behold the dark, viscous urine I am liberally splattering over the toilet seat, admire my reddened, sunken eyes and renounce your views forthwith. The stuff may be a far more pleasant drink than your standard tinned piss that is a Fosters or Carling, but I could be told right now that I was drinking poison direct from the fangs of the world's deadliest snake and I would believe you without blinking.

I attended last night with half a mind on Oktoberfest, the world’s largest meeting of liver haters, which is only a few weeks away. It’s important to try and avoid injuries and this would be a good warm up session, a chance to loosen up the drinking arm and see if I can push on to a more beer festival acceptable C cup before the main event.

We have though been going to the British festival since we were 17, before the weight of the world and full time employment broke and raped our spirits before being acquitted in court of all charges. This is still the one annual event that has us feel that glimmer of childhood excitement, the kind you used to feel before a birthday or Christmas when you were allowed out of the cellar and the beatings would subside just long enough for you to fight the dog for spilt leftovers. Good times.

Most of the charm of the event stems from the startling eccentricity of it all. It slaps you in face from the moment you are greeted at the main entrance by an old man wearing a deer stalker and a handlebar moustache, screeching in an impossibly high pitch voice that people should not linger by the doors. This bat-shit madness is further apparent in the bizarre, invariably sexual names, given to the beers by all the ancient breweries in attendance. Old Scrotum, Titty McCockle, Old Stoat Wobbler etc etc. The strangeness of the beers is seconded only the by the strangeness of the people. For some reason all the oddest of the nuttiest mentalists are attracted, dragging their ponytailed, pot bellied, cloak wearing arses from every small village and wood cabin in the country. These are the sort of people who would normally be ostracised from mainstream society, chided for their morbid obesity and fondness for wearing 18th century clothing. At the British Beer Fest though, these men are kings. Some of the examples of facial hair you see leave you no choice but to stand up and applaud.

The auction is always one of the highlights, during which the organisers ruthlessly exploit the inebriated, highly excitable groups of men, who invariably end up bidding hundreds of pounds for a collection of dirty beer mats or a rusty tray. Last night for instance, I came away the briefly proud owner of one ticket to a tour of a brewery, to take place mid week at a place hundreds of miles from where I am going to be on the day. In a different country.

We left having sampled barely a fraction of the thousands of available beers. The worst of which was a 12% European ale which might as well have been a melted car tire poured into a glass. Which reminds me, I must go for another piss.