Of hobgoblins and baked beans

It started with Guinness; available everywhere from pub to bar to club, lovely with chips, even better with Pernod.

Newcastle Brown was next at polytechnic; couldn't be watered down, almost as ubiquitous as the black stuff, topping up a halfpint glass in the student union, glugged from the bottle in the pool halls.

Then Ind Coope's Burton Ale when the Railway Inn in Stafford ran out of Newcy Brown one night. Then an occasional Bass. My first cask beers.

Which led to beer bottles in my food hampers sent from home. My Mum would put together a parcel of essentials - tins of baked beans, Irish stew, meatballs - and then this appeared.

Although she never mentioned it, I think my Mum chose it because of the picture on the label. Which is maybe-ironic; the illustrator of Wychwood's distinctive labels and pumpclips is now one that my Dad collects. He's Ed Org and his work looks like this:

There's more than a touch of Burne-Jones about his work, which is why my Dad is drawn to it I guess (he's a Pre-Raphaelite kind of guy).

As for the beer... well, it's heavy on the crystal malt, Fuggles and Goldings. It's rather chewy toffee. I don't buy it when I'm in the supermarket but I do get given the odd bottle at birthdays and Christmas.

I'm not really a fan of the 'lagerboy' marketing. The goblins & mythology approach is something I've been moving away from since my Runequest-playing days*. But everytime I drink Hobgoblin, like now as I write this, it brings back memories of student bedsits, burnt beans and a beery journey that had only just taking its first stumbling steps.


* Always Runequest, never Dungeons & Dragons. Although I was more of a Traveller kind of guy myself.