2006-07-26
This won’t come as a surprise to those of you who know the ‘real’ me, but I probably never mentioned before that I work for a brewery? Through the previous diary it was pretty important for obvious reasons to keep anything that might identify me personally hidden but, perhaps stupidly, I feel a little less concerned about that these days. People do still visit that diary randomly, and they could if interested find their way here, but I think the risk is fairly small. According to the sitemeter stats a surprisingly large number of people get there by googling a variation of ‘what does an orgasm feel like’? which takes them to an entry I wrote a long time ago where Jo asked me what he orgasm felt like – to me – from the inside. I sometimes wonder who it is that wants an answer to that question – are they young? Or are they older and frustrated or uncertain?Anyway…beer. The last few weeks have been rather warm in western Europe and the beer market is on an upturn. I’m doing my bit. Victory in Monday night’s cricket game was nicely rounded of with a couple of celebratory beers; last night’s cycle home up the hill was so warm that Kenny and I decided we had to cool down with another couple and tonight may be the same. Friday evening there were a few before the cycle even started (which actually isn’t very wise).
OK - we all do it. My working day, however, is surrounded by the stuff and I am in the fortunate (?) position of having part of my salary paid in an allowance of beer collectable in cases in the office beer sop. We have a bar on site, we have samples of new products brought round by the post team every now and again. Today, for instance, I was meeting with someone who had been out to Serbia to look at a brewing company we’re considering investing in – on a completely different subject – and at the end of the session he reached down and brought out a couple of bottles of their product and asked me give them a try and report back on quality. These things happen – someone’s got to do it.
The problem is I don’t really like our beers very much. Being a mass producer we produce for the masses – mostly lagers, mostly fizzy and cold. I know – most of the world wants that. I don’t. I want my beer brown, room temperature and still. And curiously most of the people (men anyway) who work here think the same. If you know about beer, you don’t want what we sell.
And few of the women want their monthly allocation. Some manage to sell it, some just don’t bother to collect it. Jo was in that category before she went away on maternity leave (the right to beer continued even though she wasn’t here) and so it was kind of assumed that whoever wanted to take a little extra to use up her allocation could do so. One of the things she cast up at me as a grievance before my holiday was that I had allowed people to steal what was hers. ‘Allowed’ seemed a bit strong, especially as it appeared to be synonymous with ‘encouraged’ in her mind. ‘Failed to prevent’ would be fair.
We sat out in the sun yesterday lunchtime and she was flirtatious again. Did I want to kiss her? Did I want more than that? I did. She said she’d been feeling a bit “icky” about my silver wedding. ‘I suddenly thought: he’s married! Properly married!’ This seemed to mean that I’m married in the way that old people are married. And I think that is inevitably true, but it shouldn’t be news to her! She started to tell me that things between her and Dave are better now than they have been since they were first married, and that maybe she is starting to feel ‘married’ in the same way. At last. I resisted the strong temptation to ask whether he’s still as abusive, whether he hits her still. But then she kind of gave me the answer to that.
As we got into the lift to come back to work she said: ‘And he’s not drinking as much these days…but that’s because you let people steal my beer!’ And then she laughed, put her arms around my neck and kissed me for the fifteen or so seconds before the lift reached our floor.