The Lizards Guide To Surviving The Lockdown : Part Two - The Bloggers Advise

Eight weeks?  Yes, it's been eight weeks now.  Have YOU gone insane yet?  Have YOU covered your walls in unsettling, strange pictures with a chartreuse Crayola?  Have YOU baked a life-size effigy of Captain Tom with your panic-bought hoard of flour?  Have YOU even started watching BBC3?  If so, you're not alone.  Probably.

Any kind of pub-type experience is at least ten weeks away at this point, so at best we're not even halfway through this yet.  But if you, dear reader, think that you are suffering, imagine the travails of those most affected by this ordeal - the pub and beer bloggers of the UK.  As this particular blog is among those that are most well-regarded and connected, we at Seeing The Lizards have asked a select group of other bloggers on how they're coping while cut off from their usual stimuli.  And, importantly, how much they're drinking as a result.

All responses have been anonymised for their (and quite probably your) safety.

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"Ah've been handling this lock-doon very well, if ah do say so mahself.  Though it's a braw job ah wisnae stuck doon in London wi' all those southern jessies and their awfy bad beer wi' nae sparklers. Plenty o'thermometers here too tae check if ah get the Rona.  In the meantime, ah'm goan through ma collection of old brewery crap ah got while scaring the reps senseless back when ah was a CAMRA Brewery Liasion Officer.  Right noo, ah'm off doon the offy for a carry-oot o'Fever Tree and Plymouth which should last me the neet!"  Alcohol units consumed since 23rd March - 175.

"Though you'd think these events would affect our business model somewhat, it's actually been very productive for us.  At our blog, we've been posting links, giving our customers (readers) teaser extracts from our next book, posting links,  organising themed posts with other bloggers to post links to on our blog, posting links, using other blog posts to 'springboard' our own and, of course, posting links.  We've also been writing EXCLUSIVE CONTENT, which you can access by signing up to our Patreon for as little as ONE DOLLAR a month.  Don't forget to check out our pledge tiers for extra bonuses too!"  Alcohol units consumed since 23rd March - Click here for EXCLUSIVE CONTENT.

"To be honest with you, this lockdown is a bit like being a hostage in Beirut in the 1980s.  But without the blindfolds and beatings, of course!  I can't do my usual thing of travelling and taking bizarre and probably inappropriate pics now, so I've mainly been deleting all the emails I'm getting from Amazon asking me why I've not used my Dash button for green highlighters in two months!  Though my faithful readers can be assured I'll carry on taking scary photos of myself holding cleaning products.  I'll probably be drinking them too by July as well!"  Alcohol units consumed since 23rd March - 80 (100 if you're counting Toilet Duck and Flash)


"Like thousands of other people, I'm working from home at the moment.  Well, actually, I always did, really.   But make no mistake - I am working.  Despite what some haters seem to think, setting up Zoom meetings with brewers, shop owners and other journalists so we can tell each other how awesome we are is, like, really hard dude.    The other hard part is actually having to go out and, like, buy beer with money and stuff.  The freebies from Europe are taking ages to get here, man.  I'm almost out of spare cash too, so I'll probably have to ask dad for some.  I mean - ask him to invest in an Awesome Online Beer Magazine That Will One Day Probably Do A Print Edition.  Value of investments can go up or down."  Alcohol units consumed since 23rd March - 2

"I've heard some people have been really bored during this lockdown.  Not me - I'm making sure to plan for an uncertain future while I still can.  I've been going round the cash machines of my local town and emptying them of money, lest the government use COVID-19 as an excuse to ban cash altogether.   It's a free country, or so they tell us.  Also, I've been wrapping my house in tinfoil to make sure no puritan busybodies grab my data while I'm ordering Dreamies and Badger Tanglefoot from Sainsbury's.  Though I have been pursuing leisure too - I've been playing all my prog rock albums non-stop since March.  I've got through six of them so far."  Alcohol units consumed since 23rd March - 100

"Lockdown?  What lockdown?  It's life as usual for me!  Just let me open this bottle of whisky here.  Yep.  Life as usual.  Sitting in bed browsing Amazon for paisley shirts and clicking on eBay's selection of obsolete audio equipment while listening to music that no person with a sane mind would put on the turntable in 2020.  Yeah, I've not been to the pub for a while, but to be quite honest I've forgotten all about them.  Oh look, is that a new video about acoustic gramophones on YouTube?  I'll queue that one up behind that two hour one on reel-to-reel tape recorders.  Damn, the whisky bottle's empty again.  Where did I leave that carrier bag?  Look, I'll write another blog post one day.  Just have to figure out which keyboard to aim for."  Alcohol units consumed since 23rd March - 845,231

News in Brief #43

Opening Feb 2015 Aug 2015  Jan 2016 Apr 2016 Jul 2016

Craft Bar Opening Eventually

Artisan beer bar The Seed Drill, Wakefield this week again put back it's opening date by another two months. Expectant drinkers in the town have been looking at blacked-out windows and scaffolding since October 2014. "They said they'd be open January last year," moaned local crafty type Adam Usedvinyl "and we're desperate for decent beer in this town, man." while gesturing angrily at the nearby Timothy Taylor pub.

"It's not my fault." opined owner and serial bankrupt Dave Flybynight "I keep discovering important archaeology whenever I try and do any work here.  I'm not having problems funding the unit conversion or anything."

"You'd think these so-called discerning beer drinkers would know the best things take time. I'm aiming to open in November. Probably."

London Crafty Bar manager Luke Lumberjack-Shirt upon hearing this news admitted "When opening my place, I just broke into an unused shop and set up the bar overnight."

"There are so many of these micropubs now, everyone just assumes they're all legit."

Unloading the next batch of Bloggers into town

Pubs Full of Travelling Bloggers

According to a survey carried out in February 2016 by Grizedale University, 90% of all transactions in pubs are carried out by people ticking off the pub as visited in order to write a blog entry afterwards.

Landlord of The Wheatsheaf, Pontefract Barry Shortmeasure confirmed this to us "Yeah, it's been happening for a good 18 months now. Take the people in my pub now. One is staying at the local Travelodge on the cheap, and is wandering around with his camera looking for old codgers sat at tables to take pictures of.  Those two over there? One's is walking eight miles between pubs and churches, and the other is going round the locals until the football game starts."

"And her? She's visiting all the Wheatsheafs in the British Isles. I know that because she asked me where the next one was."

"I don't have regular customers anymore," sorrowfully recounted Barry "But these Bloggers are worth more in publicity than any local pissheads sat in here all day."

"Though I charge them based on their Google ranking, of course."

You YOUNG people with your MUSIC and HAIR

CAMRA Terrify Membership With Visions of Youth

This week, all Campaign for Real Ale Members received a brochure detailing the options for CAMRA's future and a bit of paper saying they could have their say. Some are not happy, however. "It's terrible," said Branch Treasurer Greg Steakbake "there are all these YOUNG people on the cover!"

"I know the thinking behind this down at St. Albans." complained Steakbake "They're insinuating all the active members are really old and need to be replaced with these people who may even be under 40. Who knows what will happen if they do?"

"So-called Craft Beer may gain Official Approval. I didn't join CAMRA in 1974 to be faced with this now. It's almost as if the future will happen and I'll be left behind."

"I'm not jealous or anything," insisted Greg "If anything they should be jealous of me. Where were they at the first branch meeting in February 1975 at the Farmers Arms, Heckmondwike when it took five of us three hours to take down the minutes because we were all hammered on Tetleys?"

"Great times. I think."

Professionalism, or The Role of the Blogger

Beer Bloggers. Making things harder for Reasons

What with the prevalence of Higher Educational qualifications amongst the young in the 21st century, there's been an increasing tendency to take something relatively simple and analyse it to death in order to convince others that it's serious and worthy subject of study. The beer blog, most specifically the "beer communicator" style of blog, is the most obvious manifestation of this.

If, as Chris Hall says here, 2015 was the turning point in the world of beer Bloggery, with an increase in the quality of debate and the subjects being discussed, what of the "hobby blogger "? There are some blogs out there, and we know which they are, which the authors' intentions go "professional" are blatant. The ambition isn't just naked, it's stripped off in the stand and is running around the pitch with its cock waving about.

The blogs of the already professional beer writers, infrequent as they are due to commitments, can be filtered easily. These people have a living to make, and cannot be seen to be too critical, or overly engage their teeth to the feeding hand. These types tend to avoid specifics about producers or suppliers, unless they know for certain there'll be no comeback.

The "beer communicator' blog is different, and thus harder to judge. They need to get their writing and, more importantly, their intentions 'out there'.  Contacts need to be made, relationships built, so that interaction between communicator and producer is mutually beneficial. If not today, then at some point in the future.  Beer journalism, for want of a better term, pays buttons. What living there is is dependent on the largesse of bars and brewers. This is the thinking behind the oft-quoted quip "beer people are good people".  A simplification, yes, but a necessary one for the functioning of the breed.

I'm not suggesting the Beer Communicators are corrupted by freebies and contacts, more that this is a natural result of interacting with the Trade. As Charlie Brooker once said, it's easy to slag off TV shows and their makers from behind a newspaper column, but when you have your own production company these people become your peers. And what do you say to them at parties? Such is the dilemma of the Beer Communicator.

If you want honest, unvarnished opinions then you have to go to the dedicated amateur blog. These are done for a desire for attention, a need to show off knowledge, or maybe even for fun. They may not be polished, or even coherent. But what you will get is honest opinions. Even if they are wrong. Or worse, contrary to received opinion.  It's usually unfair to say they are " trolls". After all, one person's trolling is another's contrarianism. It's easy to cry "Troll!" if others disagree with you online. But unless it's personally insulting, it probably isn't.

The question I would ask is : Do you consider beer a way to enjoy yourself, or something serious that needs to cogitated, discussed, and generally taken apart? What is to be gained from this, and who will be doing the gaining?

Beer isn't that complicated, really. For what reasons should it be complicated?

News in Brief #31

A lower-than-average tab

Tab System Blamed for Consumer Debt

Figures released today by the National Office of Statistics revealed that three-quarters of the £1.4 trillion owed by UK consumers is held over on pub tills in lieu of payments for drinks.

Tavern habituee Bob Barfly admitted to us yesterday "I'd been in this pub a couple of times and paid up each time. Then on the third occasion I found myself 5p short for a pint. No worries, said the barman, we'll open a tab for you. You can pay for it later."

"That was 6 years ago," confessed Bob "and I've never paid for a drink since. There's new barstaff every time I go in, and they just keep adding to my tab as if they don't care or something. I dread to think what it adds up to."

Stereotypical pub landlord Barry Shortmeasure "It's true. Our ever growing tab amount is a problem. But I ignore it as my own personal tab here is about £10,000 now."

"Never mind. If the Pubco complain, I'll just abscond with the till and takings. That way they'll never find out."

How to blag and self-aggrandise, mainly

Blogger Announces "Be A Blogger" Event

Worried that there isn't anywhere near enough nonsense in the world already, long-time (since 2012) beer Blogger Sam Unselfaware is running his own event at his local Crafty Bar to show everyone how. Topics covered include :

• "New Blog Post (1/16)" - Bombarding Twitter with links to your latest post, using different usernames and text to make it look different.
• "You May Well Think That, But..." - Use of passive aggression towards Bloggers who disagree with you, the more minor and inconsequential points the better
• "A Reasonable Place To Drink" - Damning bars and pubs with faint praise because they didn't treat you with "due deference" when you said you were the local blogger.
• "But I Declared It!" - Maintaining a spurious air of fierce independence while accepting freebies from breweries and festivals. 

"Be A (Beer!) Blogger" will be held at the Elongating Gibbon, Shoreditch on 9th October. Tickets £19 or Free with a pint bought for Mr. Unselfaware.

Sad, tragic figures with nothing in their lives, yesterday

Regulars Declared Blight by Pub Campaigner

Man-who-wants-to-erase-the-last-60-years Mudgie Mudgington this week decried the influence of pub regulars on the licence trade "People think that pubgoers are a right laugh" he complained "but they're actually a load of sad bastards."

Mudgie went on "They sit there in the corner, drinking pint after pint of weak brown bitter, prattling on with their half-baked political views and memories about how things were better in 1972. Do they realise how boring they are?"

"Their families have deserted them, they have no jobs or lives. All they have to look forward to is dying in front of the TV and being eaten by their cats."

We asked Mudgie how he gained such expert knowledge on the subject "I've sat in the pub every night for the last eighteen years listening to them." he announced triumphantly.

"But I alternate the pubs I go to. So I don't count".

News in Brief #30

Watty knows what Craft is

BrewDog to Stop Stocking BrewDog Beer

This week, exponentially expanding Crafty bar operator BrewDog PLC has conducted a wide-ranging review of it's beer policy. "It's something we do regularly," pontificated posturing 'anti-businessman' James Watt "just to make certain what we stock meets certain standards of quality and artisan production."

"I looked down the list. Partizan, yeah. Kernel, yeah, Brew By Numbers, yeah. Then I saw we were stocking stuff by a company called BrewDog. Didn't know much about them to be honest. So I looked up their website and I was horrified."

"This so-called Craft Brewery seems to fund itself via deeply odd share issues and bond issues, while endlessly shouting about how rebellious and 'punk' it is. I read somewhere that this 'BrewDog' is valued at £300 million. Some punks!"

"I rang up every bar in our company and told them to tip all this 'BrewDog' beer into the nearest river.  We can't be seen selling such faux-Craft beer."

Local hipster Luke Lumberjack-Shirt told us while putting empties into the local bottle bank "BrewDog? Are they still a brewery"

STONCH Blog soon to be renamed "Ginger Beer"

STONCH Blog Announces New Contributor

Beer blog and perpetual controversy factory STONCH has announced the latest member of it's ever increasing writing team.

"I've been wanting to take a back seat on the blog for ages." rambled Stonch himself from underneath a huge pile of Moretti bottles. "So, while I've been getting more people in to do the writing, I've found I needed someone else to help coordinate their efforts."

Someone Else is former News Of The World editor Rebekah Brooks. "To be honest, when we found out we were all trembling with fear." confided STONCH writer Tinno Mackerel "We thought we'd be exposing Beer Communicators as paedophiles using phone hacking. But it's not happened. Yet."

But fellow STONCH scribe Benjy Broggovich admitted "After sending in a post about Harvey's Best, Rebekah did give me an awful phone call saying it was "Fucking shit and you can fucking stick this real ale shit up your fucking arse, you fucking shitty prick." "

"Though she does seem to be more polite than Stonch ever was."

Not a macrobrewery, yesterday

Lagunitas Boss Sells Company Over Corpse.

The Craft Beer world was rocked to it's Converse sneakers by the news this week that macrobrewer Heineken has purchased a 50% interest in California brewer Lagunitas.

"I know I said that I'd only sell out over my dead body." protested Brewery boss Tony Magee "But I'm not as hypocrite as you know."

Magee managed to buy an actual dead body of a Mexican illegal immigrant to sign the contract with the Dutch fizz factory. "They're ten a penny round here," laughed Magee "and we made sure we did the contracts in the walk in fridge."

Meanwhile, Lagunitas head brewery Summer Fourtwenty expressed his approval at the deal "Heineken, man" he murmered contentedly through half-closed eyes "That mean I can visit Amsterdam for business reasons on expenses."

"I wanna see the windmills and canals, man."

Everybody's Making It Big But Me

We sing about beauty and we sing about truth for ten thousand dollars a show

It's often said that to be a Drinks writer, you don't require any original ideas, much writing ability or even any expertise in beers, wines or spirits. The sole ability you need is to type coherently while pissed.

And if that's a low bar, then most of the "Beer Blogging Community" can hurdle it with aplomb. After all, there's no money in it.

I don't think there's a single Blogger out there, even the ones who get ten times the pageviews I do, who has made a profit on this lark. Which, surprising as it may seem from someone like me,  I don't begrudge the rampant freebie imbibers of the European Beer Blogger Conference. Given the choice, what typical person wouldn't want to spend a weekend gossiping and drinking in congenial company with their peers?  It's the glue that binds us as a species together. And, like religion, bind it does, providing you don't scrutinise it too closely.

I would never fit in in such situations myself, but if somebody like Matt Curtis wants positivity fuel, liberally stoked with complementary booze, then that's fair enough. You do the cheerleading, Matt, and I'll do the mockery. The world needs both to stay in balance after all.

It's all harmless, really. As long as you take the resultant tales of free trips and schmoozing with the scepticism required.  You know the Bloggers won't want to appear rude to those who welcomed them so warmly, so don't expect impartiality on their part. Enjoy it for what it is.

They had fun. We can look askance and feel moderately virtuous. It's a win/win.

News in Brief #28

When I were a lad, this were all fields

Last Bitter Drinker Preserved

In its ever increasingly desperate attempts to prevent the last 70 years from happening, English Heritage has decided to stick it's nose in again towards the pub trade.

"We've managed to prevent the destruction of those remaining Victorian bars; stopped them flattening those 1930s road pubs; we're even well on the way to preserving 1960s flat roof places." confided younger-than-expected tweedy figure Roger Anachronism "But what about those who make pubs what they are - the drinkers?"

So, after an extensive search, EH found the last drinker of Ordinary Bitter at a pub in Oldham. "We got to him just in time," whispered Roger "the landlord was just about to replace the Hyde's Original pump with BlackJack. Think about it - a whole culture lost forever."

"We slapped a preservation order on both him and the handpull, so future generations can observe what drinking in pubs was about in the 1950s and 60s".  But what, we asked, did the pub and the drinker think of this?

Roger sighed " Does that matter? You don't know anything about Heritage, do you?"

"We're Communicating Beer, not taking the piss."

Beer Festival Organisers Sell Off Surplus

Last weekend, the organisers of the London Crafty Beer Fest 2015 proclaimed their event to be an Awesome Success. So awesome, in fact, that they're selling off what's left to all-comers on eBay. "Yeah, dudes," announced LCBF CEO Luke Lumberjack-Shirt, "We decided to let our awesome beer friends have a chance of a permanent souvenir of our event. Plus we need to get rid of it before it becomes uncool."

The listing is as follows :

12 x blue pallets : Previously used for making bars, furniture, tables, benches, climbing frames. Possibly could convert to things for moving stuff around - £29 each

3500 2/3 pint glasses : All marked "LCBF 2015". Many marked with moustache wax and black lipstick. £100 the lot or £200 if we have to clean them.

1 Keg Thornbridge Jaipur X : 8% still remaining inside. Come on, you want this! - £105

1 x Curt Mattis (Blogger) : Found in corner after Saturday session after "curating" one too many beers.  Will pay for removal.

All proceeds go to pay for the freebies given to favoured Bloggers to say nice things about LCBF and slag off the CAMRA event round the corner.

Suffering so you don't have to

Man Lives As Beer Blogger for a Day

Noticing that Beer Bloggers seem to have all the fun, curious online type Sam Notarobot announced online last Tuesday "I've decided to live the beer blogger life for a day!  It'll be wonderful." Having not much evidence to base this on, he worked out an itinerary based on tweets an blog posts by prominent beer types. Here is his report.

"I got up at 9am on my day off. I finished off the half can of Beavertown Black Betty from the previous night. Kept it's condition well, I found.

"I went down to the local Wetherspoons for breakfast. As I couldn't be seen drinking Smiths or Cask, I chose a can of Bengali to go with my full English. I think this counts as some kind of cereal .

" Leaving Spoons, I decided on an early pub crawl of the Craft bars.  Tried some of the new Craft kegs that had gone on over the previous few days. Only thirds as I don't want to get drunk. Had 7. One barman said 'You some kind of Blogger or something?' As if! Tweeted about presumptuousness of pub staff

"It was now 1300, and a Beer Festival had started in a nearby Masonic Hall. Went along with a CAMRA card and got in free. Had another 8 pints. Tweeted drinks along with brewer names in order to get followers. Nobody did. Except Thwaites. They follow everyone apparently.

" Got home at 2200. Decided to crack open my stash of Thornbridge Halcyon while writing up the day's events in my post. Woke up face down on the keyboard at 4:30am with an 'crack in Earth' type hangover

"Checked over what I'd done. Blog post unintelligible nonsense, and appear to have got into a massive Twitter argument about some minor point of pub etiquette.  Managed to throw up just before work. Felt a bit better.

"My admiration of Bloggers has exponentially increased. How they do this every day, I don't know."