Almost forgot ! I wrote the annual awards edition so promptly I missed the monthly round-up that’s part of your contractual entitlement.
And who can forget December ? A month of magic and Martin’s birthday, if short on trips to Merthyr and Motherwell Maidenhead.
Sixty (60) different pubs; those points on the travel map above reveal a theme of recent months; Sheffield to Waterbeach to Rye, with occasional excursions along the Kent coast.
My birthday (22/12) was a subdued affair with Sussex sea air and Turkish meze,
while Mrs RM got the classics along the North Kent coast. The Quiet American and vegetable soup combo in the Shipwrights Arms was unbeatable.
Christmas came and went, the boys did their duty as sons and grandsons,
and everywhere beer quality was extraordinarily good in a month oft overlooked by casketeers, lest they meet real folk enjoying themselves in pubs.
I met a few friends off the blog IRL (as they say on MumsNet), including Trafford Mark at a Mancunian new railway arch tap whose cheese and onion cobs were astonishing.
Pub of the Month was the (rediscovered) King Charles I, a joyous melting pot of a Kings Cross boozer,
though frankly there wasn’t a bad pub, or beer, to moan about. Which wouldn’t stop some folk on Discourse who detest “bland” beers like, er, Tim Taylor Landlord and Fullers London Pride.
Or Pedigree. I’ve declared that end-of-year Acorn Winter Pale near Leeds my Beer of the Year, and that’s right, but it was a joy to see Pedi in marvellous form in my own Sun the week before Christmas.
But the main news of the month was rather sad, as we lost Peter Edwardson, Old Mudgie, who’d have loved that pint of Pedi.
I’ll let Russ have the last words.
And I expect my main trip in January will be to his funeral in Widnes on the 16th. Rest well, Peter.
retiredmartin 
Good choice for your beer of the year.
Although I didn’t get to try the Acorn Winter Pale in December, I do remember having it at the Cardinal’s Hat in Lincoln in February 2024*, and like every single Acorn beer I’ve ever had it was very well made and hugely enjoyable. Some breweries (especially those beginning with an A**, for some reason) make oodles of “different” beers that are really just the same with a different name, but Acorn beers are always varied and interesting, and generally superb and memorable.
*(I remembered that I’d had it before but I had to look it up on a spreadsheet.)
**(OK, probably just Abbeydale, actually.)
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I’m obviously scoring the pub, not the beer. That 5 could have been Tetley. Did you see the chap on Discourse who scored Tetley in Whittlesford a 5 ?
Will write up that Abbey visit very soon.
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You might read that at the funeral.
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I think Peter was a very good writer, though I disagreed with 95% of what he wrote. “His card was punched, his time was up…last call was called for he.” I don’t think that’s appropriate for reading at a funeral at all.
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Might use that line at my own funeral.
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I’m not having a funeral, direct cremation, get on with your lives etc.
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Believe me, Will, I’ve heard plenty that really shouldn’t have been read under such circumstances, but that seems to me to be in the spirit of his friends’ outlook?
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