The Tipping Point

When do you finally give in to beer? When to you finally think; sod this, I fancy a beer? For me, tonight, it was 1720 as I walked home from work, the sun in my hair, contemplating a bottle or three after mowing the lawns/sorting the laundry/burying the neighbour's recalcitrant cat beneath the patio. Instead, I looked over my shoulder as I approached the bus stop and rode off to the next village for lashings of beer and fish and chips.

The beer was Blue Bear Splendid Ale, light in colour and ABV, impressive malt balance, actually refreshingly malty in a season of over-fruited washy-hopped 'summer' offerings. The fish & chips was beer-battered haddock with home-made tartare sauce and proper mushy peas. The sun still, cattle lowed from the shed next door and even the sight of an insufferable cock in a droptop BMW didn't put me off (doesn't he know all the *really* insufferable cocks are driving Audi R8's this year?)

There's only one problem with tipping points... they lead to another. Another drink beckoned on my return home, my hoppy beer wasn't cold enough, so that left me with only one viable option - and the reason why I keep gin in the freezer and vermouth in the fridge. The last of today's rampant sunlight is fracturing across the buddleja globosa as I savour the killer aromatic blend that can be found only in a dry martini. On a school night. Handcart to hell has been reserved for tomorrow morning.....