Be like beer
Why do you think Trappists were never thirsty back in the day?
I
Bruce Lee instructed people to “be like water”.
This is utter rubbish. Garbage. A throwaway aphorism that is best left printed on unsold two-a-penny coffee mugs.
We must be like beer.
Let me explain (please do — Ed).
Monks made and still make beer. This is probably the most epic thing about beer. Trappist beer, traditionally made in monasteries, is out-of-this-world (if you’ll pardon the pun).
When you are thirsty and it is hot outside, only a cold beer can really hit the sweet spot.
You can survive on just 13 pints of Guinness a day. Yes, you do not need to eat solid food. A tramp once told me this (What? — Ed).
Beer can be paired with far more meals than wine. One of my buddies once actually drank beer for breakfast. This is not because he has a drinking problem. It was for a noble cause. We were trying to win a pick-up truck. In Poland. It’s a long story (please don’t elaborate — Ed).
Speaking of drinking problems. I do have one. I have two hands and only one mouth. You know what I mean Derrick? Hey? Can I get a round of applause at the back there? (please stop drinking — Ed).
Anyway, back to what beer can be paired with. Kebabs, burgers, pizza, hot dogs, stew, pasta, sausages and mash, fish and chips, sandwiches, Pot Noodles, pork scratchings, peanuts, other nuts, crisps (chips to our separated American cousins), French Fries, Freedom Fries, big chips with gravy (big fries and sauce to our separated American cousins), nachos, tacos, corn dogs, Cornish pasties, omelettes, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, boiled eggs, sausage rolls, pork pies, casserole, soup, those little pastry things with chopped up mushrooms in them (what? — Ed), baked potatoes, fried potatoes, Dauphinoise potatoes, chicken Jalfrezi, Thai green curry, Chicken chow mein, bratwurst, currywurst, tapas, Finnish whale in beer batter, pierogi, bigos, fried chicken, pork chops, lamb meatballs, Yorkshire meatballs, Haggis, Welsh rarebit, lasagne, bacon, sushi, steak. Beef jerky. Toast.
Can you pair wine with all of these culinary masterpieces? No, you cannot Derrick.
There are also many types of epic beers. Stouts, lagers, IPAs, pale ales, pilsners, porters, wheat beers, dunkels, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Epic people like beer. Clint Eastwood. Shane McGowan. Gazza. Tyson Fury.
When people watch sporting events they drink beer. NOT COCKTAILS.
Also non-alcoholic beer is 100% better than non-alcoholic wine.
Beer, therefore, Derrick, is our friend. (Who is Derrick?!?!?! — Ed).
II
Without beer it would be impossible to set the world to rights.
Beer guides conversations in the correct direction. Let us take this imaginary scenario as the Platonic ideal of a beer-fuelled pub conversation:
“Been up to much lately?”
“This and that. Took the kids to the river. We did some fishing.”
“Nice. Caught anything?'“
“Not really. There didn’t seem to be many fish around. Or maybe we were just unlucky. One of those things. You know how it is.”
“Sure.”
“Makes me wonder though sometimes. About the fish, I mean. Is someone deliberately trying to lower the number of fish out there, you know?”
“Why would they do that?”
“So that we can’t support ourselves. If we can’t feed ourselves, then we have to rely on the supermarkets. And then they have to rely on their suppliers, who have to rely on farmers and fishermen. And other food manufacturers. And all of them have to rely on transportation and energy being affordable, and the roads and cargo trains and airports and ships all working properly. If just one piece of that jigsaw is out of place then the whole thing collapses. And then we don’t get to put food on our tables. And then there’s no use trying to hunt it yourself because the fish are gone and the other wildlife has been gradually killed off too.”
“You’re right. You’re totally right. Then they can control us. The government, I mean.”
“Got it in one. We become their slaves.”
“We rise up to protest that the supermarket shelves are empty and there’s no fuel at the petrol stations and then they crack down on us.”
“That’s it. You know I saw this thing on Facebook the other day.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, it was a quote by George Orwell. You know him? The writer.”
“Yeah.”
“It said: ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever’.”
“He said that?”
“I think so.”
“That’s grim.”
“Things are bad man. They’re bad, and they’re getting worse.”
“You’re right. You know the war over Ukraine? That’s the Deep State involved right there. You know that right?”
“How so?”
“They’re controlling it all. Keeping the war machine going. Poking China at the same time. It’s clear.”
“And they can keep the war going on forever over there. They don’t need soldiers. They’ve got the robots and the drones on stand-by. To keep the fighting going.”
“That’s why they want to kill us all, you know that? The Deep State. They need us dead. Otherwise we’re in the way. They’ll be no jobs for us soon. The robots will do it all. AI. ChatGPT. Then what will we do?
“You know what we have to do, don’t you?'“
“What?”
“We have to bring AI down. From the inside.”
“How?”
“We have to build an army of hackers. Get them on our side. Fighting for the common man.”
***Three pints of Roosters’ Baby-Faced Assassin later***
“The best way to bring down the Deep State is to not vote.”
“But I thought it didn’t matter who you voted for because The Deep State runs everything anyway? They’re just puppets, the politicians. Aren’t they?”
“And that’s exactly it. We stop voting. Everyone. And I mean everyone. Then they won’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Deep State will have to come out of hiding. And then we’ll have them.”
“Why would they reveal themselves?”
“Because we’ll say ‘listen you lot, right. You bunch of evil bastards. You either reveal yourselves, or we never vote, and no one ever wins an election again and nobody can govern and the system collapses. No taxation without representation, as that bloke with the funny hair once said.”
“Who was that?”
“I don’t know. Mark Twain or something. It’s not important. Anyway, after we get them to reveal themselves, then we demand that we have a referendum for every single policy that is proposed by any future government. A bit like what they do in Switzerland. Or is it Slovenia? Might be Slovakia? You could do it all on smartphones. New Act proposed. Ping. Sent to your phone. Yes or no? Easy.”
“I like it.”
***After getting halfway through one-for-the-road***
“What do we do with the Deep State actors when we expose them?”
“We put them on trial. But not in Geneva. Or in New York. And not with established judges. They’re all biased.”
“Where then?”
“Somewhere in the Arctic circle. Where they can’t control our minds with wifi and 5G and cellular towers.”
“What about the jury?”
“We’d have to use older people. People over 95. Like from Japan or something. Who’ve not been brainwashed.”
“This all makes a heck of a lot of sense.”
“Of course it does. When we think about it carefully we all come to the same conclusions. It’s inevitable.”
III
Some people maintain that without beer, many more people would have died in centuries gone by as they would have had to drink dirty water instead. Or wine spiked with poison by Arians, Nestorians, Jansenists, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
This means we may have been deprived of many wonderful medieval philosophers, theologians, musicians, bards, painters, sculptors, architects, warriors, Kings, Queens.
As the old T-shirt slogan reminds us:
“Beer is proof that God exists and that He loves us”.
Progress report:
The first draft of my latest novella, The Anchorite, is complete and is going through its first edit.
I am still editing my next novel The Fragment from The Shroud. Getting there. Sort of.
Take it easy. And thanks for reading.
Your "buddy" sounds like he needs help, or was led down the garden path by a briy and America