retiredmartin

October 2024. Tottenham. Sheffield.

One of many things I’m grateful to Dad for is the real life education he gave me as a shy young lad. 4am trips into east London in a van packed with flowers, tomato picking in steamy greenhouses to earn pocket money, and visits to exotic football grounds in Luton, Leicester and Tottenham.

I’d been excited to get a ticket to see City at the new Tottenham stadium last Wednesday, but Mum’s welcome discharge from Addenbrookes scuppered that.

Besides a first visit to that space age ground I’d been keen to see the Beavertown flagship bar, though apparently that’s gone to pot;

I remember a genuine excitement around the brewery, the joy of cans of Lupoloid and Black Betty at our annual music festival before that Heineken link-up saw them dumped in favour of Lost and Grounded et al.

Which leaves us with Neck Oil, the ubiquitous craft pump in virtually every gig venue and plain pub in the UK, replacing P*** IPA without you noticing.

Matthew Curtis noted the Neck Oil is a wildly-inconsistent shadow of its former self and although I’m famously indifferent to “beer” I think Matt is right on that.

But on the drive home to Sheffield, with LBC Radio discussing the lack of independence of “craft”, I suddenly felt like a pint of it.

“Blind Monkey does Neck Oil” says Mrs RM.

Actually, it doesn’t, anymore. Hofmeister, Salt and, er, Madri your craft choice at our local.

The Don Valley cask in the Monkey has gone from NBSS 3 to 3.5+ to 3- to 3.5 and back to 3 over our time in Sheffield, mirroring its yo-yo GBG life, so I went for something more reliable.

That’s better !

Shame about the pizzas. Mrs RM interrogated the staff about the gluten-free bases. Ugh.

That wasn’t OUR table reservation. We’re not animals.