Karma !! For my sins (snobbishness) I received an invitation tonight to have a beer with my stepson, in the pub over the road from the restaurant where he's working.

It's a "John Bull Pub". Well yeah, I would have run a mile but...  This appears to be an export-formula pub that you can find on five continents. To be fair, the staff were English, and I managed to chat about the cricket while watching the highlights of the 4th Ashes test which I have been following online over the past 4 days (comedy collapse by Australia, made my day). But the beer, my dear...

I started with a Young's London Stout, which was not bad, but didn't really float my boat. I was intending to try a Wells Bombadier next, it seemed the best bet with respect to my tastes, in the absence of any actual cask ale. Alas, my stepson insisted on buying me a "Wells banana bread beer".

It wasn't a bad beer, but the banana thing put me off it. As a thought experiment, cf. Pete Brown, I tried to imagine whether it would have tasted of banana if I hadn't known. I'm pretty sure it would; the dominant impression, in both nose and mouth, was the "banana" flavoured lollies of childhood, which contained only the specific chemically-produced "banana" ester. To my surprise, I find that the beer is made with real (fair trade) bananas. A waste of good bananas, for my money (or my stepson's).

But that's enough snobbishness for me (two pints being my limit on a week night) -- it was a fun evening anyway.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}