The Hammock Papers: beer

It was a quick walk to Lipp’s and every place I passed that my stomach noticed as quickly as my eyes made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people in the brasserie and when I sat down on a bench against the wall with the mirror in the back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a distingue, the big glass mug that held a liter, and potato salad.

The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l’huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread with the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.

Ernest Hemingway, born on this day in 1899, from A Moveable Feast

The peaceful possibilities of the pint ...

And so we return to the pub. One night, that happened to have been my penultimate, we took in the village. While the English village in these times is little more than a retirement home cross-pollinated with a pleasant nursery, it once served an interesting role in congruence with the country house. It was the tandem of rural life, the village offered workers and the big house offered work. Not all of the landed gentry were kind to, or willing to fraternise with, the villagers, but for my unnamed hosts it was an obligation; noblesse oblige, as it were.

It was in this pub, so identical to that of the East India Club, that all distinctions of class vanished, and rich man drank with poor. They hunted together and they drank together; while it is entirely possible that the ancestors of one were tenants of the other’s ancestors. I spoke little that night, for I could only observe. I don't think I said more than a few words, mostly 'please' and 'thank you'.

The night ended with a chorus of laughter, over some joke I have since forgotten. While I looked on and beamed, an older chap, who I was sitting next to, leaned over and addressed me.

"They're a good lot," he said. "Keep them around."

Alas, I did not heed his words. And while I never fell out with my unnamed friend, life pulled us in different directions. Lockdown made islands of us all, and some of us stayed that way. He lives abroad now, America I think. The last messages we exchanged were for the wishing of a happy Christmas, in 2019. As I took my seat in the car, alongside my fellow tourists, and Amorley was driven out of view, I knew that I would never return, and should never return; for my week there was so perfect, that I could never hope to recreate it. If I was to, then I'd become a tragedian junkie, forever chasing that first high with a greater and greater dose.