On 16th March we go to St Kilda's Bay, where we spend a day rather reminiscent of a Nice Retired Couple Out At The Seaside. We walk along the beach, eschew the free outdoor cold seawater and pay for the indoor heated sea water at the St Hilda Baths, eat an ice cream, see some penguins and then have dinner in the nice little pub down the road. If this is retirement, bring on the bed socks and the wrinkles.
(Though, having said that, I know plenty of retired people and none of them own bed socks. Or, in some cases, wrinkles.)
The 'nice little pub down the road' however, happens to be advertising a 'meet the brewer' event the next day, and so we book into that and wend our way home, a happy anticipatory smile on M's notably unwrinkled face.
So, on 17th March we turn up at seven o clock sharp, just as our ticket instructed us.
Our first warning is that there is no one there. We stand at the front of the 'queue' waiting for the doors to the downstairs part of the bar to be opened. We are just discussing whether it would be rude to nip upstairs to buy a drink and take it I to the downstairs part with us, when there is a huge commotion and about four hundred people make their way exuberantly down the stairs, all of whom appear to have nicknames and all of whom are carrying matching beer flagons.
That is our second warning.
The doors open miraculously at this point and so we make our way in and commandeer a couple of seats near the front on a sofa. We are not sure whether to buy a drink. Our ticket includes tastings and food, but we don't know whether the tastings will start straight away or whether we should buy a drink now. Or whether our ticket includes this. Or what the food is. Or whether we are supposed to have ordered it. Or told someone we are vegetarian.
"Right!" Says someone into a mike at the front to uproarious applause and heckling, though we can't understand any of the heckles because they seem to refer to events we have nor been privy to, but which absolutely everyone else here has, "well I think we all know the drill don't we? So we'll be getting started in a bit."
We look around. Everyone is greeting each other enthusiastically, waving their matching flagons and removing their coats to reveal matching club t shirts. I watch a couple of people walk confidently to a shelf behind the bar, retrieve a couple of beer flagons and fill them at the pumps.
"I think," I say firmly to M, "that we need a drink."
As the evening progresses, it becomes, if not already so, clear that this is a club event. Or at least an event to which the beer club are attending.
"Hello," says someone into the mike. We learn his name because everybody begins, instantly, to chant it. "Looks like I am your host this evening."
There is some banter we don't understand, and then,
"Who is new here?"
We are sensible enough to keep quiet. One other man is brave enough to raise his hand. (Though later it transpires he is a friend of one the club members).
There is a cheer. He is presented with a small bell.
"Ring it if the talk gets too technical" he is told, "you know, if we start on about mash tuns and stuff..."
As it happens M and I are not in need of the bell as far as technical beer jargon goes, but we need translation instead on in jokes, club language and what a 'tweeny' is when it's at home.
"I," whispers M to me, "am a bit scared"
"Me too!" I say.
But we are laughing. The beer club are beery, leery and chummy, but friendly, and for the most part, though my mind boggled at the thought of what initiation ceremony might be imposed, we felt like we wanted to join them. Approachable they were not, but note due to their foghorn brand of communication than because they weren't open to the prospect of new friends.
As the evening progressed and as we listened to the two guest brewers talk about their business, and remained entirely on the outside of the various in jokes inbetween, we grew more comfortable and even entered the quiz.
Despite showing our outsider status even more by suggesting in answer to the question "what Australian animal was recently discovered with its head stick inside a beer can?", that it might have been a wombat (" We had some crazy answers to this one - how the hell does a wombat fit it's head inside a beer can - unless it's a very big beer can....") we managed to come in third.
We had a lot of fun that evening, and as for the thing about clubbiness and exclusivity, it seems to me that we are all part of something which, by its nature, others are not. And that perhaps it us as much part of life to be outside of some things, than it is to be inside. And for every club there was once an initiator. And every initiator was, by nature, the first one.
And thus, by necessity, an outsider.
No comments:
Post a Comment