22: Uncomfortable With Authority

Despite the Mercury Retrograde (which I am absolutely, resolutely ignoring, this week has been pretty good to me so far), I've been trying a lot of new things. I started running again, I enrolled on a course (WSET L2), I did some public speaking and I've gone on a press trip by myself -- which meant flying by myself too.Despite my severe fear of flying (I might have mentioned it) I was more concerned about the public speaking. I'm never a fan of being treated as an authority. I'm a journalist. I do research and collate it; I get other people to give me authoritative quotes, and I fan around them with decorative waffle. Giving my opinion on anything makes me extremely uneasy, especially because my memory is notoriously bad and I can't stand up to further questioning. I'm also very willing to please, and hate getting into arguments. Everything unravels. Give me an hour and a sheet of paper and I'll give you a decent explanation.I think this is why I do things like enrol on official courses (see top paragraph) and all my books have annotations and bits of post-it sticking out of them. I want to learn. It would be nice to be an expert on something instead of a potterer in everything. But then people would ask me for my opinion, and I'd hate that.I'm in Dublin now, which is why this newsletter is so early. I'm getting to spend an hour in Guinness' archives. I think the stout festival should be more exciting -- and I'm looking forward to it, don't get me wrong -- but an hour in the archives? Dream. Living it.Other Stuff:

• Mothercare, yes, the baby shop, had a huge impact on music throughout the 80s, 90s and now. This tweet thread goes through it step-by-step.

• West Kerry Brewery has had a tragic and difficult recent past. Breandán Kearney's emotive, heart-achingly sad, beautifully written piece on how owner Adrienne Heslin got through and how the brewery is succeeding now had me very literally in tears. No internet hyperbole for you there. I was crying in an airport Burger King.

• Staying with important music discoveries, Pellicle has begun a new series of mixtape features which I am fully on board with. The first is by editor and co-founder of Pellicle Jonny Hamilton and it starts with Arab Strab and I love it.

• This month's BEER magazine (CAMRA's monthly mag) was a really good read. I especially liked Matt Curtis' piece on the new wave of cider. New wave cider? Nu-cider? Neo-heritage? Someone stop me from creating these horrible non-genres. Anyway, it's great and really, really exciting to see in such a publication.

• According to Jacob Dean for Vinepair, local businesses are gaining solvency after economic decline in rural Japan. I met this in rural northern Spain too, and it's super interesting to see hop growing taking the form of a cash crop and bringing craft beer to areas which may not have been into it to begin with.

• In photos: New Yorkers on their lunch breaks in the 1970s, captured by Charles Traub. A joy.

• Great timing for this piece for me -- Beth Demmon talks witchcraft and brewsters in this interesting and informative piece about the ties brewing has always had to magic, and the brewers who use it in their everyday processes. 

• Caroline O'Donoghue is a peach on twitter, but she's also a fantastic writer. This interview with Richard E. Grant from January earlier this year shows she's also a warm, informed and incisive interrogator too.

• I liked this deep dive into the book Cork Dork because I just finished it this week and had So Many Thoughts... and because it's a couple of years old, someone else had already laid them all out with answers for me. Useful!

• Hello to everybody who was at Salford Independent Beer Festival last week. What a wonderful festival, and what a warm, welcoming atmosphere. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

My Stuff

• If you subscribe to Beer52/Ferment mag, you'll find two pieces by me in there this month -- one about the amazing Abbeydale Brewery Funk Fest, and one about the history and relevance of amphorae.

• I put out a tweet earlier this week asking what you'd like me to write. I'm interested.

Unnamed Woman -- Charles Traub, 197?