Books of the Year

I read a dozen books this year, mostly in short bursts rather than spread across the twelve months, including a few I've been meaning to get round to for a long time.

The Hard Life/At Swim Two Birds/The Dalkey Archive/The Third Policeman/The Poor Mouth by Flann O'Brien

I've read quite a bit of Flann O'Brien before, especially his Myles na Gopaleen columns in the Irish Times, and his novels are an extension of those, mixing Gaelic mythology, surrealism, philosophy and wit, including the archetypal Dublin character The Brother. Naturally pubs and boozing feature quite heavily too.

The Dead by James Joyce 

Back to Dublin again for this long and ethereal short story which I wrote about here.

The Duel by Joseph Conrad

Another long short story, about two French army officers fighting a series of duels throughout the Napoleonic Wars, which was made into a memorable film by Ridley Scott in the late seventies.

Catherine, or The Bower by Jane Austen 

I thought I'd read everything by Jane Austen until I came across this unfinished teenage novel by her. It's often included amongst her juvenilia, but the themes and settings are much closer to her later published works.

Munichs by David Peace

I've read Peace's other two football novels, The Damned United about Brian Clough's six week spell at Leeds and Red or Dead about Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, but this is understandably much darker than either, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere in the offices beneath the stands at Old Trafford, the rainy streets of Manchester and the snowbound Munich hospital and hotel where the survivors of the 1958 air crash are taken.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

I read this story about a young Indian man's encounters with the Buddha and lifelong journey of self discovery after seeing an interview with former Chelsea and now US women's football coach Emma Hayes in which she said that she gives it to new players when they join the squad.

My Century/The Call of the Toad by Günter Grass 

Two later, and less regarded, works by my favourite German writer, although, like his Crabwalk which I read last year, I enjoyed them both in different ways, the former a fragmented series of snapshots spanning each year in twentieth century German history and the latter a heartfelt piece about Polish-German reconciliation set in his native Baltic city, Danzig/Gdansk.

Winter Warmer Wanderings

I completed Winter Warmer Wander, Stockport and South Manchester CAMRA's annual celebration of strong ales, stouts and festive beers, somewhat ahead of schedule this year, three weeks before the end of the event, which runs from mid November to late December, consists of collecting stickers from pubs to win prizes, and is sponsored by Stockport family brewery Robinson's, who are also celebrating the 125th anniversary of their strong ale Old Tom.

I went to twelve pubs (four in Manchester, four in Cheadle Hulme, two in Cheadle and two in Stockport), about half of them tied houses of local family breweries (Holt's, Lees, Robinson's) and the rest a mixture of micropubs and free houses selling beers from further afield, mostly those of North Midlands breweries Thornbridge and Titanic. 

I drank more stouts than strong ales, almost all in halves due to their strength and price, although the latter were amongst my favourite beers on this year's event. I managed to call at some regular haunts, the Chiverton Tap next to Cheadle Hulme station and the City Arms in Manchester city centre, but also revisited a few pubs I probably wouldn't have gone to otherwise, including the surprisingly pubby Red Lion in Cheadle and the Pointing Dog in Cheadle Hulme, a far flung spot on the southern border of Stockport for most participants on the event, but fortunately only a couple of miles walk for me.

A couple of beers from yesteryear

I picked up a couple of beers from the supermarket the other day which were a common sight in pubs when I was younger, Newcastle Brown Ale and Mackeson's Stout, both of which have now become something of a "ghost brand": still produced, albeit in much lower volumes than before, but never advertised or promoted.

I occasionally drank Newcastle Brown Ale as a student in the early nineties, when it became something of a cult beer and was regularly stocked by student union bars (it also pops up in most episodes of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, rereuns of which I've been watching on That's TV). Since then, Heineken has bought Scottish & Newcastle, demolished the former Federation Brewery in Gateshead where the beer had ended up, and moved production to John Smith's in North Yorkshire. I'm not sure if it's the move from Tyneside to Tadcaster, but it seems much smoother and blander now, although still with a decent head and a slightly sulphurous aftertaste that is quite appealing and reminded me of the famous "Burton snatch" you get in the pale ales brewed there, Draught Bass and Marston's Pedigree.

The first pub in drank in as a teenager, a Whitbread house that finally closed its doors this summer, stocked bottles of Mackeson's Stout., a beer they had acquired from a brewery in Kent which they bought, and eventually shut down, turning it into a national brand (the dairy churn on the label of the bottle indicated that it contained lactose, a sugar derived from milk). Milk stout is traditionally associated with either pregnant women and nursing mothers, due to its supposed health properties, or older ladies, no doubt because of its low strength and sweetness. The gossipy trio who supped it in the snug of the Rovers Return in early episodes of Coronation Street fit the latter archetype, although it was also the favourite drink of one of my fellow teenage pubgoers, rather the bitter, lager, Guinness and cider everyone else ordered, and who regularly took bottles of it home with her. I quite enjoyed my first taste of it, which comes now out of a can rather than a bottle: a dark brown, rubyish colour similar to Guinness, a thick, off white head, an aroma of brown sugar, bit of a thin mouthfeel, and slightly roasty, not at all sweet really (I'm still on the look out for some Whitbread Gold Label barley wine so, like Ron Pattinson at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, I can make a Mackeson's and Gold Label black and tan).

Castle Kings of the Mild Frontier

I went to the Castle in Macclesfield yesterday afternoon, which had been voted best pub of Mild Magic, the annual sticker trail organised by my local CAMRA branch, Stockport and South Manchester, and extended to the former Cheshire silk town for the first time this year. The owner of the Black Country brewery Sarah Hughes was also there to pick up the best mild award for their 6% beer Dark Ruby.

I haven't been to the Castle for a decade, since when it's shut, changed hands and been refurbished. Having the same name, it always brings to my mind the final, unfinished, novel by Franz Kafka, especially as its historic multi room interior mirrors that of the village inn where the young surveyor arrives late on a winter night at the beginning of the book. The dark strong beer we were drinking wouldn't look out of place in Kafka's native Czech land of Bohemia either.

I've only been to the Beacon, the pub in Sedgley where it's brewed, once, back in 2012, but that too is something of a time capsule, especially the front room on the right where I sat, which is essentially unchanged since the twenties.

To Look for America

There seem to have been quite a few films about US politics on TV in the last month or so, mostly on specialist channels Film Four and Talking Pictures TV, but also on BBC Four (as part of an evening marking the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation as President). November's upcoming presidential election has no doubt influenced the programme schedulers in selecting some of these films too. It prompted me to make a list of my own top ten films about mainstream US politics, the left and labour movement.

Advise and Consent 

A congressional hearing to confirm a liberal President's nominee for high office is enlivened by Charles Laughton, in his final screen appearance, as a conservative Southern Democrat digging into his past.

All the King's Men

The main character, Willie Stark, is a loosely disguised portrait of Louisiana Democratic governor Huey Long, a populist demagogue whose authoritarian rule leads to his assassination (for US sports fans, there are also some college football scenes involving his son).

All the President's Men

Probably my favourite of all, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford play Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward investigating the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building and its cover-up by the White House. Jason Robards steals every scene he's in as Post editor Ben Bradlee.

The Best Man

With a screenplay by Gore Vidal, this also concerns skeletons in the past of political candidates, at the open convention of an unnamed party selecting a nominee after the incumbent President decides not to seek re-election on health grounds.

Blue Collar 

A gritty tale about racism and union corruption in a Detroit car plant which stars Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto and Richard Pryor, and also has a superb blues soundtrack.

Hoffa

Jack Nicholson as the charismatic Mafia-connected boss of the Teamsters truck drivers' union Jimmy Hoffa and Danny DeVito as his loyal lieutenant (I once drove past the American football stadium in New Jersey beneath which Hoffa's body was allegedly buried after he fell out with the Mob and was whacked by hitman, and probably my distant relation, Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran).

The Last Hurrah 

A comedy in which Spencer Tracy plays the Irish-American boss of a Democratic political machine in a Northern city whose power is based on dispensing patronage through an army of ward heelers.

Matewan

John Sayles' masterful account of a miners' strike in West Virginia, with Chris Cooper as the union organiser who overcomes ethnic divisions between the workers and those brought in by the coal company to break their strike.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 

A slightly saccharine, but still entertaining, film by director Frank Capra, with James Stewart playing a naive youth leader unexpectedly chosen to replace one of his state's senators, and ending with the famous filibuster scene in which his faith in American democracy is restored.

Reds

A personal project by Warren Beatty based on John Reed's book Ten Days That Shook the World about the Russian Revolution, and featuring interviews with pre-World War I US radicals (also the film whose late night showing on BBC Two in 1997 was interrupted by a news flash saying that Princess Diana had been injured in a car crash in Paris).

No smoke without ire

Opinion polls seem to show a narrow majority in favour of the government's proposed ban on smoking outside pubs. The correlation seems to be that if something is potentially unhealthy and costs the NHS money (irrespective of the revenue raised from it) the consumption of it should be restricted, or ideally banned, a dangerously authoritarian idea which could easily be applied to many other things, especially those already deemed harmful by public health professionals, notably alcohol and fast food.

The original ban on smoking in indoor spaces could be justified by the protection of others from the effects of passive smoking, in particular pub staff, but that doesn't apply here. It's hard to see any other motivation for it apart from middle class distaste for and disapproval of unhealthy working class habits.

If this ban goes ahead, one of three things will happen: smokers will stop going to pubs, the time and money spent on constructing outdoor areas for them there will have been wasted, and inevitably more will shut, especially wet led ones; smokers will stand just beyond the boundary of the pub premises, potentially causing a nuisance to pedestrians and other businesses; or they will find the darkest corner of the beer garden in which to flout the ban, leading to awkward confrontations between pub staff and their customers who will rightly wonder what harm they are doing by smoking a cigarette outdoors and why that act is now illegal.

Radicals in the Park

I've spent the last couple of evenings listening to local bands Blossoms and New Order playing a few miles away at Wythenshawe Park, the sound carrying clearly across south Manchester.

Wythenshawe Park is the last remnant of the country estate of the staunchly Royalist Tatton family and surrounds their former home Wythenshawe Hall, besieged by Parliamentary forces in the Civil War, which makes it a bit ironic that since the late sixties a statue of their republican nemesis Oliver Cromwell, first erected outside Exchange Station in Manchester city centre in 1875, has stood there, after the road layout around the original location was altered. Queen Victoria once expressed her distaste for the statue of a man who had killed her ancestor King Charles I before a visit to Manchester, and since its move to Wythenshawe Park it has been attacked numerous times because of Cromwell's genocidal policies in Ireland (when he was a bus conductor in the early sixties, my dad witnessed Irish drivers opening their cab windows to spit at it as they went past).

Near the north east corner of the park is a street of modern housing called Hallas Grove. I'm guessing that it's named after the revolutionary socialist activist Duncan Hallas who grew up just round the corner on Sale Road in Northern Moor, served an engineering apprenticeship at the massive MetroVicks factory in Trafford Park where my grandad worked as a toolmaker, and then became a leader of the International Socialists/Socialist Workers' Party, although I'm a bit puzzled as to why the middle of the road Labour types on Manchester City Council would bestow his name on it.