Childhood is often characterised by single memories floating around, which are impossible to place in time or space. The best you can manage is a stab in the dark at when it roughly must have been and whereabouts it must have taken place. For example, I know that when I was roughly three I was somewhere in the whereabouts of Big Ben; I couldn’t place any more details until this weekend just gone when my coach drove past Westmister Bridge Road and I realised I must have been at the far end, looking over the river towards Big Ben. I also know that I was about eighteen when I had a horrific, life-altering sexual experience somewhere in Blackburn, but it wasn’t until a friend filled me in on the details that I knew exactly which room, who upon and what baked product it involved.

The smell of beer is another such memory, a vague collection of events that I’ll never know the time or place of. I was around it from an early age so there will have been a million times I played in a beer garden or my dad’s mates came back with fruity breath. The only one I can definitely place is walking along the side of the Jubilee in Blackburn, in the days when the waft of ale was pumped out of pubs like the smell of fresh bread fills supermarkets. It was a wonderful smell – I don’t remember it ever seeming anything other than absolutely genuine, like a woman without perfume. Of course, in those days the pubs were generally busy so I’m sure I’ve formed a few associations of that smell with the people around me having good times. Perhaps that’s why I never found trouble drinking beer.

All of these memories cropped up thanks to tonight’s drinks at Le Chateaux Edna, first of which is J. W. Lees John Willies, which in the pantheon of beery bitters sits up there with Boddingtons before it went tits up and pretty much anything by Theakstons. The smell just sums up beer. There are no hints of anything, no whiffs of fruits or chocolate or bloody hazelnuts – just the smell of beer like it used to drift out of pubs. This is one of the most evocative smells I know, one that takes me right back in time and to a happy place straight away.

From here on John Willies becomes a junk food of beers, luring you in with the smell and then hardly satisfying your appetite with an inconsequential taste. There’s really nothing bad about it but you just think it’s a shame it doesn’t live up to that wonderful beer garden smell. Is that harsh? Maybe, but at the same time I know full well I’ll be buying another of these, just for that smell that takes me somewhere in time.

On next to Brakspear’s ‘Double Dropped’ Bitter, which I was due to try last night until life got in the way. This beer tastes like a five year old set loose with the ingredients of a Supermarket Sweep run. I can taste so many things at once it’s bordering on the confusing, though that’s undoubtedly just my chilli-ravaged palate at work once again. At first I thought it was chocolate, but that fell way to an impression of something indistinct – a heavy, dark beer flavour, with a dubious aftertaste. If I’d bought a pint of this with 20 minutes to go before my train, I’d manage to drink it but it wouldn’t be fun.

Between them these beers have some good moments but I would only go back to John Willies for the smell of walking past a busy pub, back in the day.

Brakspear · Double Dropped Bitter · J. W. Lees · John Willies · Le Chateaux Edna

As I mentioned earlier today, my plan this week is to motivate myself to do some uni work by working until half past ten each day and then rewarding myself with a beer. If you know me in person, you’ll probably know I need to resort to this kind of thing to avoid calamitous falls into blind panic about where my next moment of fun will come from. If you don’t, well, you know what they say – whatever gets you through the day…

I become disproportionately pleased with myself when I make any sort of achievement involving beer, be it abstaining for a month or correctly identifying a type of hop based on a brief whiff of a beer across a smoky bar, so I’m happy to say that I stuck to my plan tonight and got a good chunk of work done. Two and a half books down, ten pages of poorly scribbled notes and then, finally, the Brakspear Oxford Gold.

A bottle of Oxford Gold, lovingly served on the antique bar I installed over the course of many years (a.k.a. my grandma's 1970s kitchen).

This is a very light beer, and I do mean very. The smell transported me ten miles into the country on a warm spring day as I raised the first shandy of the season to my friends and, with a brief nod, let summer commence. It is a really nice smell – it reminds me of how beer smells in those brief glory days until you’ve vomited it into a bush enough times for the association to be forever tainted by an unwelcome waft of bleach and cat piss. If I’d had to guess what this was, I’d have gone for a lager, and a damn nice one at that.

But, of course, we’ve all had a beer that smells like mana from the Gods only to reveal itself as a Chimera of tastes, smells, feels and lingering effects on the gut, the majority being so utterly repellent that you cannot conceive what strange chemical reaction is at play to produce such a wonderful first smell. I normally experience a variation of this at beer festivals by getting a beer that stinks at first but I still swear to at least give it a try, at which point it doesn’t actually seem that bad – until I’m half way down, and then the true smell of this foul multi-headed beast emerges from the bowels of the pint. You just know this is the one that you will pay for the day after.

No such problems with the Oxford Gold though. The taste is quite nice, in a fairly unremarkable way. It’s very refreshing, ideal for a quick pint in a beer garden, and having just had the last mouthful it’s got a bit of zing on the side of the tongue. There’s a feeling coming back to me of that crackling sweet that you used to dip sherbet into at school – an odd feeling of wondering what’s going on in the tongue department. All in all, not bad at all though and definitely ample reward for tonight’s work.

As promised, for supper I tried a little cheese and crackers. The people on telly keep going on about five a day, so I’ve tried to cover everything – apples, cheese, cottage cheese, bread and beer. I needed the piece of toast to stodge it up a bit – those crackers are gone in one and then what do you do? For tonight’s cheeses I’ve gone for 300g of Morrison’s Value Mild Cheddar alongside 200g of Morrisons 99p Offer At The End Of The Aisle. I can report back that both are quite cheesy, with the 99p tasting especially cheap. Cottage cheese on toast is a mixed bag but do be sure, readers, not to attempt apple on toast. I enjoyed my late supper in the fine surroundings of Le Chateaux Edna and can heartily recommend a table/settee here to all fine diners.

Fine dining on a Tuesday night, Blackburn style.

Brakspear · Le Chateaux Edna · Oxford Gold

This is what I will be doing this week.

Like any science, social science – the study of people – can make discoveries based on observing repeated patterns. Unlike astrophysics and neurochemistry it falls down somewhat when confronted by the sheer erratic lunacy of human behaviour, where 2 + 2 can equal 4, 5 and ministrone to different people. Nonetheless beneath this madness runs a steady tide of predictable behaviour which we can learn from.

Using this power they call science I have, then, been able to observe the repeated pattern of me

1. knowing I have something to do,
2. knowing I have plenty of time to do it in,
3. therefore proceeding to fill this time with journeys to supermarkets to buy beer and cheese.

This pattern has not failed to emerge again today as I know I need to spend most of the next three weeks doing uni work, but it’s not quite urgent enough to stop me doing everything else. I’ve just managed to temper it a little by giving myself a reward to motivate me to work – if you like, treating myself like a child, a donkey or a plantation worker.

This is what I want to be doing this week.

And so this week, to help me get through the ceaseless, crushing feeling of boredom and impending death I feel when I know that I’ll just be at home after work every night, I’ve picked up four bottles from Morrisons to get me through each night. One for Tuesday, one for Wednesday, one for Thursday, one for Friday. I have a lot of reading to do each night, chapters from six books on the New Right’s impact on welfare provision (1979-1990), so I’m aiming not to open a bottle before 10.30pm each night. That’ll give me an hour and half to enjoy the bottle and a few crackers and cheese – which I read so much about beer lovers enjoying too, as well as Matt earlier this week, I thought I had to give a try – and then give a brief write-up. If I can do that each night, I’ll get all my work done and the cloud of lonely ennui which hangs over my head will take a kick in the balls from my beers to keep it at bay.

I’ve got four to try, as I mentioned – Joseph Holt’s Maple Moon, J. W. Lees John Willies and Brakspear’s Oxford Gold and Bitter. Not the most inspiring bunch ever but as I discovered today while looking through Morrisons selection, I’ve already tried most of them so I’m down to the ones I’ve skipped over in the past.

Look out for tonight’s first report at approximately 11.30pm, unless science proves itself right again and I neck all four by half eight.

Beers · Brakspear · J. W. Lees · John Willies · Joseph Holt · Maple Moon · Morrisons · Oxford Gold