[theo_luddite]

Pretty sure I've said this before, but not too ashamed to regail you all with it again.

It possibly wasn't the best but it was the last time I tasted Tetley's as it once was and it was in Canada in 1995. I'd just gone over there that Easter(ish) and quickly established a local a short(ish) by their standards, walk from home. Anyroad, that October, just after my birthday, the rather sparky (I could use other terms, but not on an, er, family website ) organised a pub crawl, with a difference. This involved coach travel. So after a couple of pints in the Unionvile Arms (https://unionvillearms.ca/) we were off to the far flung reaches of, er Pickering. That's Pickering, Ontario, not the Yorkshire one, hell how far can a coach go in an hour?

The Black Dog - still there. https://blackdogpub.ca/
Right in the middle of the bar was a Tetley's fizzy pump. They don't do hand pumps over there. My 'Mercan work colleague, never having seen it before enquired as to it's pedigree. Well, the dickhead head brewer from Carlsburg had already pretty much ruined what we pretty much went from the tit to the hand pump from in Yorkshire, so I gave him a one minute synopsis, said it will probably be shit, but let's try one.

I was a third to halfway down the glass before it left my lips. I couldn't order another round quick enough. We had to leave after two. (Sob). Subsequent returns to the Black Dog were met with the same disappointing shit that had pervaded Yorkshire and beyond in the months/year and the rest before. I regressed to far more tasty local Canadian fizz, and believe me, it's fizz. If you are paying that much you might as well kind of enjoy it.

The pub crawl took in places as luxurious as Stouville and included exotic food such as chips, chicken wings and Scotch Pies (never knew they were a thing, never seen them since, even in Scotland). The pastry gave me indigestion at around 2 in the morning.

It snowed later that evening. I was throwing snowballs at the moon (very pathetically) on the walk home.

Otherwise, before I absconded to Middle England, I had many a decent pint in the Plummet Line after a day, or evening, or both (or lunch as well sometimes) at college as a just legal teenager and quite a few places in Leeds that are too blurred to recall. Most were in or around the station on my way home when I was unfortunate enough to work in that part of the world without my own transport. Scarborough Hotel on occasions if I could be arsed to walk out of the station and back in again or detoured from the bus stop back to the station for about 30 mins. Always blamed cancellations when mum asked why I was late home for tea. Like she couldn't smell the beer on my breath, eh?