Me? At a Beer Festival?

Erik's friend couldn't make it to the Wandsworth Common Beer Festival yesterday, rendering him a tad morose, so I offered, with only a modicum of enthusiasm, to go instead. Thankfully, he promised they offered more than just the bitter, frothy brews, so there was even more of a spring to my step.

Turns out that the "festival" was more like an intimate gathering of intellectuals around hundreds of casks of beer, so I was pretty happy.




We got a table, and started in on half pints of ales and lagers for him, ciders for me.



The weather was delightful and the company was great.

Men came armed with notebooks and pens: they were keeping track of the beers they'd tried and ranked them as they sipped. This was no joke...beer festival-ing is apparently quite serious. Still, it's hilarious cute to see a grown man in a tweed jacket making notes about beer (of all things) in inks of various colours.

As you can imagine, after several glasses of the stuff,




...we were feeling pretty giddy.

We left at around dinnertime and headed downtown after a look back at the festivities...



...and a tour of the gorgeous building.

How had I missed Liberty London before this point? Looks like a fine olde department store to me. Some obligatory photos ensued...








...then we went to Soho Pizzeria for dinner and a little live jazz music. These guys have been playing Thursday nights here for twenty years. Clearly, we liked it.

Twas a great day.