Beer (and family)

A guest post by Andrew W Harper
 

Angry? I don’t get angry any more, except at family. 

And even that is a waste of time, as I’m in my damn 40’s and my parents are in their sixties and my sole remaining grand parent – the least likeable one – is 86 today and he really can’t bothered. The highlight of his day is going to be some scallops and the two beers the doctor allows him to have daily. He likes those beers but I do NOT get it – he gets those god-awful Tooheys Red Blocks.

Thing is  - we’re in Tasmania. You know what we have here that you don’t that actually means something?

CASCADE BEER.

Yep, stuff the environment and the view from Mt Wellington and the cheeses and the lifestyle, that’s all hippy bullshit that tree changing twats think is what life in Little Tassie is all about, but those of us who grew up taking baths in Cascade Pale Ale, washing our hair in the Stout and drinking the Blue (the lager, the best one, the one that evil evil CUB tried to kill off when they bought our precious brewery) , we stay here because of one big thing: mainland (that’s you lot, he said, reaching for his banjo) beers is the very Urine Of The Goat. It’s DISGRACEFUL. You lot cannot make beer to save yourselves, except The Coopers Family, and South Australia is a whole different thing anyway, doesn’t count and doesn’t in any way make up for VB or even worse, XXXX – that stuff is goanna vomit diliuted with Wombat Pee.

And my granddad, salt of the earth, war veteran, life-long Tasmanian – he doesn’t like Cascade.

I don’t get it at all but he’s 86 and I guess he’s allowed to drink fermented magpie droppings if that’s what he wants to do. I just have to respect that, because that’s what family is all about: not telling people they are morons to their faces, but going home and chewing your poor wife’s ear off over a decent cleanskin. That’s all you can do, and that’s all I intend to do, but I swear I’m going to drink a Pale Ale in front of him because the best birthday gift I can truly give the old bastard is something to abuse me about – because you should here his descriptions of Cascade. It may be Nectar to me, but he manages to combine classic old school racism with an encyclopedic knowledge of Australian Wildlife in his invective, and as much as I cannot stand it, cannot condone it and find it hard to put up with, it will be like music – because I have learned it’s pointless getting angry.

Happy Birthday Granddad. I wish we could share a beer but it’s all about beer ABUSE and it keeps us together, because at least neither of us are micro-brew wankers.

But that is another story, and shall be told another time

Andrew blogs here and here

I like beer. Captain AR Pants esq