Time for bed

Regular readers - yes, I mean you, Dave - will know that my breaks from blogging make the tart grow fondler. Check the time. It's almost time.

My plan had always been to take a few months away. Partly because I wanted to be fresh and feisty for GBBF and the Ratebeer European Summer Gathering. Say what you like about them; social inadequates with too-narrow focus on what makes a good beer? Fuck you. I will be in the company of the finest beery people I know. Some real turds too, for sure, but that's the way the crumble cookies.

Then, strangely, events in the last few weeks have made me wonder why beer bloggers bother at all. Anti-CAMRA, craft beer, new-wave keg... it's not the topics - they deserve to be at the top of the debating agenda - but the attitude. Frankly, bar a few enlightened souls, it stinks.

It seems that original thought is a declining commodity. Yes, I know comment on news is vital and valid. Comment about other blogs - it's a free world, baby. Comments on other blogs that are longer than the OP? WTF?

Knickers are being twisted for no more than the perverse fun of doing so.

Beer blogging in the UK is by parts splenetic, reflective, a release, a mouthpiece. And occasionally obvious, fatuous, worthless.

You don't need to be told the do's and don'ts. They don't exist.

It's not about changing the 'entire producing and consuming beer scene'.

It's about having an opinion. It's about thinking.

Please remember - thinking is so important.

And don't forget, people. It's only beer. It may be game-changing, life-shifting beer.

But it's only beer.

As long as it's good beer...

See you all in August, folks. Be Nice To Each Other :-)