Thursday 16 September 2010

GBG: pub-listing Proustian porn


And the latest Good Beer Guide lands on my desk. Hefty beast but not as heavy as 1001 Beers, but I bet the word count isn’t far off the 250,000 words I spent six months sifting through in 2009. I first bought the GBG in 1992 when I soon discovered the difference between recommending a pub in its pages to my then girlfriend (whom eventually became my wife) to one that was in the Good Pub Guide. One Sunday lunchtime we visited a GBG-recommended boozer in Dorset. I think she expected grub and gingham, but she got a room full of old guys leaning forward and peering at these two out-of-towners, one of who was burbling with excitement because Eldridge Pope’s rare porter (Blackdown Porter?) was on tap. After that, it was the Good Pub Guide if she was in the car and the GBG if I was out on my own or with friends (though many pubs overlap between the two). Roger Protz has been editor (on a second stint) since the turn of the last century (1999 that is) and he’s been doing the rounds of the media today — I suspect this is one of those times when beer is guaranteed to get a good hearing (BTW I got an press release email today that told me about the Pope’s love for Spitfire…flippin’ heck, what next a t-shirt with ‘I downed a Spitfire’?). Thoughts on it? The GBG is an institution, and like all institutions it doesn’t please everyone (like my wife) but it’s strong enough in its own skin to ride over those who might snipe at it; because of the voluntary nature of CAMRA and despite the best efforts of the members (I’ve done the surveys, I was out on Exmoor on a cold January night, went into a pub I thought worth recommending and the barman pulled me a half and said that he hadn’t pulled one through that tap for a couple of days…) it can’t always cover everywhere; there are occasions where I have gone into a GBG pub and thought like my wife-to-be did all those years ago (a sign of increasing age or just irritation with wall to wall tickers?). I also miss the articles at the front from various writers — I have an old GBG from the 1980s where Michael Jackson writes about American beers. The stuff on the Global Giants can be a bit Dave Spart too but hell this is CAMRA’s (and Roger’s) gig and it hits the solar plexus where it counts (ie promoting beer). It’s magnificent that it continues on its way and even as I use it for the now I also use it to delve back into the past  — Cambridge for instance has many of my old haunts; then there’s the King’s Head in Llandudno, the first place I ever called my local. So there you go: pub-listing Proustian porn for all. I recommend it for that alone (not sure if the wife does). 
Good Beer Guide 2011, price £15.99, though you get discounts if a member or go through Amazon.

12 comments:

  1. I liked the articles in the front too.

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  2. Over the years I’ve amassed a collection of 29 GBGs (30 if you include the 1984 one I lent to friend in 1986 who was going on a contract to the Middle East and wanted some nostalgia to read – I haven’t seen him since). I even have one of the first ones, copyright date 1974, price 75p, 96 pages. Unfortunately it’s not one of the first print run which was withdrawn due to a legal threat because it said of Watneys “Avoid like the plague”. These are as rare as rocking horse droppings and a mint one will set you back quite a few bob. Mine just says of Watneys “Avoid at all costs”.

    Like Adrian (we met on a Bier-Mania tour once) and Ed I liked the articles in the front too.

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  3. A sadness of this book, rarely mentioned, is the degree to which it ghettoizes (is that real word?) the beardy pong drinkers.

    By compiling a national peer reviewed guide, the beardy knows where to go in an unfamiliar town and thus is spared "pot luck". The pub the guide directs the beardy to is likely to be acceptable as it fits the agreed criteria of the peer group. However the beardy will never see the full picture of his society. He will never enter the establishments that do not fit into the peer group norms and will never thus understand our fractured and diverse contemporary drinking culture.

    Maybe the beardy does not want that, preferring the warm womb of familiarity wherever he goes.

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  4. Ed — I look back at all my old copies (like Steve I have ammassed many from before when I used to buy it regularly) and see lots of interesting stuff
    Hi Steve, cor that was an exhausting trip wasn’t it?
    Cooking and what’s wrong with familiarity, though even without the book you can see which pub you should avoid (usually a gaggle of sagging chaps in the rain, fags in hand, the urgent conversation of the truly lush)you can know where to go and not where to.

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  5. I certainly cannot critisise the lure of familiarity, Ade. The joy of a can of Foster’s in my living room is the warm womb of familiarity. It is just worth noting that for the beer guide following beardy, the only appreciation of our many and diverse modern drinking establishments will come from the binge drinking headlines of our tabloids and not from a personal experience of a lovely ice cold pint of lout in the company of orange ladies and Ben Sherman’d chaps.

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  6. I've got the article you wrote for the Beer supplement of What's Brewing in November 2006 about that tour framed and on the wall by my desk - I'm nothing if not vain!
    I've been on several tours since, one with Ron Pattinson and Jeff Bell (Stonch). I must get around to visiting the Gunmakers. It's a pity Andy's had to pack the tours in, the last I heard he was surveying in Afghanistan

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  7. I have a complete set, after I was complaining to the father of a friend of my daughter's that I was missing the 1975 and he said: "I think I've got one in the attic …", though admittedly my 1974 is the 20th anniversary reprint rather than an original. I do now use them for historical research - as I do my collection of What's Brewings going back to 1977 …

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  8. Cooking — had enough of that type when I was growing up, so well up to speed on it all.
    Steve — yes, he’s still out there, heard the other month
    Martyn — I have them going back to the mid 80s and about 10 years of WB in the attic as well, very useful as you say for research.

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  9. Like Martyn I also have a complete set, including a rather tatty original 1974 edition - cover price 75p! Whilst the set is sometimes useful for research purposes, I couldn't really justify the space the guides were taling up on the bookshelves. My wife also, quite rightly, pointed out that they were just gathering dust! They now erside in several boxes, up in the loft.

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  10. I work on the principle (I think it’s Quentin Crisp’s) that dust doesn’t get any worse after 2 years. I hate friends who call round and pick up one of my glass collection of the dresser to admire and a, leave clean finger marks on it and b, don’t put it back exactly in the clean patch it came from!

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  11. Hi Adrian,
    Great blog mate. Yep, I am in Helmand!
    Website still up and never say never, gotta pay the bills though!
    Cheers,
    Andy

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  12. Paul — I have collections of all sorts of things, and they are in the loft but hoping to get it insulated and boarded up soon so it becomes another study.
    Steve — think that was Crisp, saw him at the ICA about 1983, a fragile slip of a man.
    Andy — good to hear from you, you reckon the USMC will bring any craft beer with them…

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