Ain’t he cute ?
Seven pints later, he looked like this;
If that doesn’t put you off real ale, nothing will. Now you know the truth. I only give BRAPA lifts so I can plough the rich seam of blog material he leaves us.
Not that I looked any more fresh-faced after two diet lemonades and a half of mild.
I picked him up at St Neots, a town I used to visit every Thursday to pick up an elderly family friend for her weekly Old Folks Club (not a CAMRA branch meeting). With his dodgy knee he doesn’t like to talk about, Si was walking a similar pace to dear old Ruth.
That’s the itinerary; bar the emergency loo stops on the hard shoulder of the A428. First stop, Comberton.
Five minutes from the city centre, and one of the less “Prosecco and Pashmina” of the South Cambs village. We used to bring our boys to play in the Three Horseshoes pub garden during its last stint in the Guide.
As you can see, it was bustling on Saturday lunchtime.
The highlights, pub apart, are the pond and the pies, both of which we resisted.
How good it is to see a village pub free of cars.
Actually, the lack of lunchtime trade was a little disconcerting, though the bulk of custom is wet, we were a bit surprised to hear. It’s been bustling at night as a youngish population come back from late night shopping or the Abbey Stadium.
Just one other customer for Si to compare bad knees with today.
My lemonade gave me a headache, I sank the dregs of a pint of local brew that Si has raved about (Dreg scoring A-) and I contemplated how long these pumps would last in the dying days of cask. Longer than you might think.
I have many photos of this pleasingly unmodernised pub, but the memory is of a quite brilliantly friendly Landlady who convinced Si he needed his own PA, and the scary photo of Poppy we took for Mudgie.
I also got the sort of history of the famed play area that you normally receive from the volunteers at the entrance to St Simon’s Church.
I always make polite conversation with the Landlord if it’s not too busy, but the emergence of the good book, the horrible green marker pen, and THAT T-shirt tend to draw out even the most reserved of staff when BRAPA is around.
I think we may have been offered a tour at one stage. What we really wanted was the gossip from the Ladies Conservative Club meeting to share with Maidenhead later.
Anyway, 473 words and still in the first pub. Must shoot, back at a National Pub of the Year Finalist later.
retiredmartin 
“Scary photo of Poppy”.
Whats the scary bit, the cat or the reflection?
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WTF is he wearing? I dream of meeting characters like that in one of them ‘local pubs for local people’.
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He makes me think of a straw coloured 4.1 per cent ale from White Horse Brewery.
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I think it’s his special ‘Nutter attracting’ coat
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Seeing the picture of those Tory ladies reminds me of this fact: Jacob Rees-Mogg is younger than Kylie Minogue.
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But two centuries or so behind Kylie in outlook!
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What are Kylie’s views on Australia joining the EU, now they’ve joined Eurovision?.
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That’s scary
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What, Simon or the cat ?
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And what’s a miniature white car doing in the butcher’s window ?
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I haven’t seen her of late to ask, Martin. But if the UK can join some Pacific trade zone, then presumably there’s nothing in principle to stop anyone else joining the EU. It would probably be the sweetest way for NZ to get their revenge too. What a woolly scarf that would be eh?
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The Honourable Member for the Ninetenth Century younger than Kylie Minogue ?
Never !
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Seven pints, eh? The fickleness of youth; or should that be the fool-hardiness? No wonder he needed an emergency pee stop on the way home.
I’ve never met the young fella, but “cute” would not be a word I’d use. Obviously far more stamina than me, although looking back on my coach trip to Romney Marsh the other week, I came close to consuming a similar amount of beer as Si, and could well have equalled him, had I been a little less restrained.
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You should.meet up. He’ll be in Kent by 2023.
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I certainly won’t miss him if he turns up wearing that sort of attire!
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For what it’s worth, I’m a yellow marker pen bloke. Don’t colour in the counties either, just the towns/villages. Does this make me a heretic?
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Yes.
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Ah well. The bonfire awaits.
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No. Yellow is a nice subtle colour, and certainly beats green and pink!
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If I had a policy on banning people that would be a banning offence. Yellow ?!!
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I hope the pet portrait lady doesn’t charge for her efforts !
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Generally a very scary post – couldn’t decide if Si’s second photo or the cat was the scariest…
Never been to Cambridgeshire…
…not likely to now – if this is the effect it has on northerners…
Ofo – I love it – right on trend for calling things silly names made up of letters that don’t really make a word. What’s wrong with calling it a bike anyway…? I suppose it could be a graphic representation? You know the ‘o’s are the wheels and the ‘f’ is the frame….;)
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There are four competing hire-bike businesses in Oxford at the moment. Hence, we have red bikes, yellow bikes, blue bikes and green bikes. They are dumped everywhere and are a total menace.
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At least they dumped them in the canals in Manchester so you can’t see them.
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It’ll never catch on…
I was listening to a news report on the TV the other day of a similar bike hire set up in Southampton – the owner was explaining how having the bikes nicked and set on fire, is all part of his business day… ..;)
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Ofo is the initials of what I say when one of those yellow bikes whizzes past my ear WITHOUT RINGING THEIR BELLS !!!
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I knew there’d be a perfectly rational explanation…:)
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“Seven pints later, he looked like this;”
So much for the beer goggles effect. 🙂
“Si was walking a similar pace to dear old Ruth.”
And in the photo above you might even say he looks a bit like her. (LOL)
“She’s not drinking Cloudwater, is she ?”
For a second I thought that was Si after a change of clothes. But then I realised he hadn’t had seven pints yet. 😉
“Matt fell off here, aged 2”
That looks like either an elk wearing a funny hat or building come to life with its own arms.
“Must shoot, back at a National Pub of the Year Finalist later.”
Be still my beating heart (and no, not from looking at those lovely lassies).
Cheers
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Oh, and let me note that I’m merely poking fun at Si. Personally, I don’t think he looks all that bad in ‘that’ photo (he looked worse in the one where he’d had the surgery for the moles on his face).
And as for his sartorial elegance, feh! He needs to stand out on his journeys (or, come to think of it, hide as the case may be). 🙂
So suffer the slings and arrows Si. Keep calm and carry on and all that. 🙂
Cheers!
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Hooray for Si !
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I’m appalled by all these comments about the Simon photo. I mean, that is the picture of a man who has heroically sacrificed his own health so as to provide amusing writing for the likes of you and me. (All right, he probably *enjoys* sinking 7 pints in a single day, but still…)
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He’s a present day martyr, that’s what he is, Mark.
Actually, it’s not that he looks bad, just really serious that’s funny.
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“Actually, it’s not that he looks bad, just really serious that’s funny.”
Argh, totally missed that being the point (sigh). I blame my North American upbringing. 😉
As for seven pints a day… I enjoy that usually every Saturday; in my case it’s 8 500ml cans ale and it is usually over about a 12 hour period. 🙂
Cheers
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Blame the Americans, definitely.
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Having seen the hats that Conservative ladies wear there I would suggest that Simon dresses quite sensibly.
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