Ramblings: Derby, Sunday, 2009

My next three months of Sundays are taken up by long country walks. So you can expect a few rambles involving rural pubs and eclectic bus services. Meanwhile, it's the last day of my Christmas holidays so I forced myself round Derby for four pints. And another one.





There's something vaguely dirty about drinking alcohol before 10am. Unless you've been caning it all night and haven't gone to bed. Or it's New Years Day and you've woken early to find a spare bottle of champers in the fridge. Or you're travelling business class. But having a pint next to a cooked breakfast seems odd even for a Reluctant Scooper like me. At least I had the common decency to wait until I'd finished my microwave-up in the Babington Arms before my first beer - and at least my breakfast wasn't just a pint of Stella like half the old soaks in there. Despite the usual panoply of beers available I don't usually succumb to booze after breakfast here, but I don't usually see Thornbridge on offer. A pint of Kipling was almost ordered before a gem was spotted - Seven Heron, brewed by Melissa Cole at Thornbridge. It's a superbly smooth drop, light malts and creamy hops, just a hint of flint amongst those fat wet fruits. It was good enough to stop me being pissed off by whoever was whistling the refrain from Nessan Dorma, over and over again, out of tune.

After a spot of shopping, a damn fine cappuchino at the Grand Cafe Caruso and a laugh around the remnants of the M&S sale, I dragged my cold bones into the Brunswick. No coal fire at 1205 so I pitched up by a lukewarm rad with a pint of Father Mike's. Velvet liquorish is a glass. Really quiet in here, mind; I could actually hear myself drinking. The odd bus passing by and a foot sticking to the bar floor were the only sounds to keep me awake. And can I just say something about shopping? Glad as I was to buy a Simon Drew calendar, why are they selling at half price, with a further 50% off at the till, only four days into a new year? And how can a set of 'gentleman's beard scissors and moustache comb' cost sixteen quid? It's a rather small pair of round-tipped scissors, as used by primary school kids, and a comb that you used to buy for your Sindy doll. Not that I ever had a Sindy doll, of course. My Action Man always preferred Barbie. Even though he had no genitals.

The long haul of literally two dozen paces plonked me into the Alex. Alan was removing the Christmas decorations and ensuring that the Abbeydale Absolution was pulling through OK. It was, so I had a pint and By Gum was it wonderful with a rich creamy melon-melange. Quiet here as well, two guys in the corner discussing the merits of fewer megapixels and the cellar cooler vibrating the table to leave pattens in my pint. Eventually though the near-silence seemed to be mocking my failure at yet another Azed crossword in the Observer so I decided to go freeze my nethers off and slope up to the 'Pot.

Rewind. Play... 'Really quiet in here'... me and the barmaid and the off-duty cook and the off-duty-cook's mate. Almost two o'clock; I wouldn't see another paying customer for over 45 minutes. At least is ensured that the cellar bar was quiet, apart from the jukebox lurching into life every fifteen minutes (no problem with that when it's the likes of 'The Prince' by Madness). Un-Reluctantly I plumped for a pint of Headless Summat Else - rather like KSA or First Bloom, more than possibly a rebadge/mix but still wonderfully citric so I don't give a tinker's tassle. Then the entertainment arrived, a charmeless nerk who regaled his mate with such pearlers as "Belgian beer is shit, it's all lager", "Brooge, it's beer city", "that festival in Hanover, er, Hamburg... I was sick as a fucking pig in there" and my personal favourite on a Bremen beer festival: "there must have been 800 beers, nearly all free". Thankfully, all too soon he had to catch his bus home, probably to edit some Wikepedia pages. I celebrated his departure with a pint of Acorn Ahtanum, a copper/red flat fart of a pint with a clean grapefruit feel with a little earthiness lurking.

Another fun Sunday - they nearly always are. Solid classics, new scoops, freezing cold pubs and a laugh somewhere along the way. If you can get into Derby on a Sunday it's well worth a trawl around - leave it until April and I'll show you around.