Chapter 7
[1] I was born not that long after the end of the last world war. I had a ration book as a baby—vouchers that qualified one to receive the staples of life (there was no token for beer for adults). I grew up listening to war stories and also gleaning tidbits about the heroics of those who would not willingly volunteer their stories. Blokes like my Uncle Bert. I had been told that my father, who was so much older than my mother (see endnote 15 of this chapter), had fought in the First World War. When I was rather older, someone drew my attention to the work of Fred Holcroft, a Lancashire author, who had written a short book called Finest of All: Local Men on the Somme, one of a series on the history of the First World War. I have no idea how he introduced a quotation from my father in this book, but there it is on page 62. The piece reads:
J. W. “Jock” Bamforth of Birch House in Up Holland, in later life a well known and respected headmaster, had just completed his teacher training course at Saltley College, Birmingham when war broke out in 1914 and together with several fellow students he volunteered for the 1/8 Royal Warwickshire Regiment… He was in the first wave to go over the top. “At 7.29 am we were ordered to lie on the parapet and at exactly 7.30 am we were given the order to advance. We had to advance at walking pace, rifles in the air (a new method). We had hardly got the order when every gun in Germany blazed away at us, especially machine guns which did all the damage. Before we crossed No-Man’s Land we had lost practically half the Battalion. We reached the fourth German line and held it for about four hours when we had spent our stock of bombs and ammunition and we were not able to communicate with our H.Q.”
It seems that my father was one of 70 men who were almost cut off and who were forced to fight their way back. (Imagine that, for a moment—walking in and out of the gates of hell with a need to repeat the nightmare soon after.) The Corps of which Jock Bamforth was a part suffered more casualties than any other on that dreadful July 1st, 1916. All told, there were more than one million casualties on the Somme. On that first day alone 19,240 soldiers in the British army died, to make it the bloodiest day in the army's entire history. My father survived with a bullet in the arm. As I sit here, more than 90 years later, I quietly contemplate how my God carried half of my genes to safety through the mud, filth, and blood by a river that I have never seen in Northern France. And I ponder quietly the sheer unlikelihood of innumerable occurrences of survival against the odds that must have occurred throughout the convoluted path that brought my own set of chromosomes into juxtaposition.
[2] Scotland is lager (and whisky) country: Tennents lager was first brewed in Glasgow in 1885. And didn't I get to hear it! My boss—the irrepressible Tony referred to elsewhere in the endnotes, once dispatched me to the great Scottish City in the mid-1980s to tell them that their lager needed some attention if it was to match the Carling in Burton. The words “Sassenach,” “wee,” and “bastard” were among those fired at me before I hastened back to the airport. “We have been brewing lager beer in Scotland for a hundred years. Piss off back to your ales.” Ah, tolerance.
[3] The classic English style is ale, made from excellent barleys that germinated readily and consistently and therefore could be dried to quite a high temperature, and could be mashed with relatively simple technology (see Appendix A for a simple description of malting and brewing). However, the barley available to the Germans was less good and germinated unevenly. For this reason, the breakdown of the grain to render the starch accessible had to be continued in the brewhouse, and before that, the malt had to be relatively lightly kilned so as to preserve enzymes for the ensuing mashing (they did not of course know about enzymes—all of these things were worked out experientially). The light kilning led to the inevitable low colors in the resultant beers. In the brew-house, they worked out that they needed to start out the mashing at a relatively low temperature (we now know this was to allow the action of the more heat-sensitive enzymes) but that a higher temperature was needed to efficiently produce sugars for fermentation. They had no thermometers to measure temperature, so they resorted to taking out a proportion of the mash, boiling it, and then adding it back to the main mash to raise the temperature. The process is called “decoction” mashing. Finally, the fermentation and maturation process hit upon was slow at a relatively low temperature—the beer being stored in caves. The word “lager” means “to store.”
[4] As a boy, there was a huge map in the front of my classroom which marked in red the parts of the world that were within the British Empire. I think it was somewhat out of date and was presumably there to instill pride in the kids. It was John Wilson (pseudonym Christopher North) who wrote in his five-volume Noctes Ambrosianae (W. J. Widdleton, New York, 1867): “His Majesty's dominions, on which the sun never sets,” which is now generally transcribed to “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”
[5] Stop press: The Dutch brewer Het Koelschip have launched 45 percent ABV Oblix. Pretty soon we will have beers that you can fuel your car with.
[6] The higher the alcohol content of a beverage, the greater is the tendency of the alcohol to retain volatile materials in the beverage. For this reason, the complexity of the aroma in a regular strength beer is likely to exceed that in a typical-strength wine.
[7] Once again I was in Glasgow. The year was, perhaps, 1986. As the young Research Manager of Bass, I was in town to take part in the annual road show that the headquarters technical managers were expected to make to the various regions' breweries. We had the brewery at Wellpark, and another in Edinburgh, so one of our regular jaunts was to Scotland. Being a Bass employee, I naturally was expected to stay at the Crest Hotel downtown. It was “one of ours” (a sentiment which would become even more important a few years afterwards, when Bass sold all its breweries and bought hotels instead—lots of them—making it, through owning the likes of Holiday Inns, the biggest hotelier in the world). On that particular evening I needed some cash, so I wandered up the road to the nearest Nat West ATM machine, which happened to be in Blythswood Square. That in itself was a risky thing to do, for therein was the favored haunt of the local ladies of the street. As soon as I had withdrawn my crisp tenners, I was approached by an attractive young woman who wondered if I would like to make an investment in her services. I declined and hurried across the street, making my way briskly back towards the security of the hotel, which is when I was accosted by the little man with the bloody face. He didn't make a straight line for me, but rather meandered somewhat like a yacht cast about on a turbulent ocean. Somehow he got close to me, and lifted his hand to gently prod me in the chest. I noticed that he was holding a brown paper bag with the outline of a bottle inside. Blood was trickling from a cut somewhere near an eye. “'Scuse me, 'scuse me, Jimmy,” he said. (It was like the movies, the archetypal wee Scot in his cups, referring to everybody by the diminutive form of James.) I just looked at him with a blank expression, while inwardly I guess I was girding up for confrontation, but his countenance was actually one of curiosity and puzzlement. “'Scuse me,” he said once more, “where am I?” I told him and, ignoring his profuse gratitude, I sped on my way.
[10] It is always beer shown on the photo behind the television news anchor, never vodka or even wine. The reason is that the latter glass might just as well contain water or fruit juice but the foam tells the viewer that the story is about booze. So the link is drawn between beer and bad behavior, despite the fact that it is more likely shots of hard liquor that present the greater problem.
[11] They are described in repulsive detail in www.collegebeergames.com.
[12] Cider in the UK refers to an alcoholic beverage, a.k.a. “hard cider” in the US. In the English west country, the cider is sometimes called Scrumpy.
[13] Grammar school. When the author was a boy, all primary school children after their eleventh birthday sat an examination called the “eleven plus.” If you passed, you went to a more academically demanding school, the Grammar School. If you failed, you went to the “Secondary Modern.” In the 1970s the system was scrapped in favor of comprehensive education.
[14] Legal drinking ages worldwide:
None: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, Togo, Tonga, Vietnam.
Sixteen: Antigua, Barbados, Belgium, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain (Asturias)
Seventeen: Cyprus
Eighteen: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bermuda, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada (19 in some provinces), Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Guatemala, Guyana, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lesotho, Lithuania, Malawi, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Samoa, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovak Republic, South Africa, Spain (except Asturias), Sweden, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe Nineteen: Nicaragua, South Korea Twenty: Iceland, Japan, Paraguay
Twenty-one: Fiji, Pakistan (non-Muslims), Sri Lanka, United States
[15] My father, John William (“Jock”) Bamforth, was born on September 5, 1893. Queen Victoria was on the throne, which straightway tells you how half of my genome is pretty ancient. By all accounts, my father was one of the most decent men ever to draw breath: school headmaster, Justice of the Peace, church organist (at St. Thomas’s), lay preacher. Enter Edith Halwood, spinster of this parish, born September 7, 1920. She had been appointed as the assistant at Digmoor School in Up Holland, where Jock was the headmaster. On October 17, 1949, they married; on December 10, 1950, was born unto them a son (John Richard) and then, on February 8, 1952, Jock Bamforth died, just months after being diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas, one week before the passing of King George VI. By all accounts, the latter’s demise attracted more publicity, but I am reliably informed that St. Thomas’s was packed to the gunnels and overflowing as my father’s funeral took place.
It was Friday the 13th of June, 1952, when I elected to take my inaugural bow at the Sandbrook Nursing Home in a district of Up Holland called Tontine. I am told a thunderstorm was in full venom overhead—read into that what you will. I was Charles on account of Uncle Geoff, whose second name was Charles, and not as some daft whim from a royalist mother. And the second given name was William, after my father, and his father before him, and his father before that, and his old fella, too. And now my son is Peter William, and my grandson is Aidan William. What you might call a long line of Willies.
I often wonder what it must have been like for my mother. I have never asked: It's not the sort of conversation I could ever have comfortably with her. To be left, though, with a podgy 15-month-old while carrying another unknown quantity, while burying a husband old enough to be her own father must have been somewhat traumatic. I wonder that she stayed sane, and that I grew up “normal.” I did not speak until I was three years old. Except for one word: “no.” It is, of course, a very useful word, one which I could stand to recultivate, for I find myself altogether too ready these days to say “yes” and then become stretched in rather too many directions. Of course, as a toddler back in the early fifties I had no notion of how valuable a few choice words could be. It was my brother who did the speaking for me. I have no recollection of he and I having some hidden and secret language through which we communicated out of earshot of the adults. However, it seems that John did the speaking for me, such as “Charles don't want no nuninons,” which, I have to say, makes me rather suspicious from this distance of time, for just about the only foodstuff (even beer) that I could not do without is onions. When I was an older child, they even comprised a meal for me in their entirety: boiled onions, drizzled with butter and accompanied by plentiful bread and butter.
Once I learned to talk, there was no stopping me. I have heard it said that there has been no shutting me up since. My wife will tell you that this is very much not the case. She sees the real me: a man of relatively few words, at peace with his newspaper and not trying to live up in his “real world” to a reputation for jocularity and “hail fellow, well met.” It wasn't until I got to UC Davis that I encountered (or was prepared to listen to) the honesty of those who would have me hold my tongue. I pitched up, laptop in hand, at the Silo Pub on campus, having been invited to give a talk at an event where they were dishing out free beer. The students took a vote and opted just to have the beer.
My childhood was, on balance, an exceedingly happy one. It is remarkable but true that I never really knew what I was missing not to have a father. It is only when I ponder what I didn't do—like learn to ride a bike or swim—that I reflect on some of the things that perhaps a dad would have worked with me on. Perhaps I would have been less than the thorough incompetent I became in practical jobs around the house if my father had lived. As it was, my mother was very protective. And also, as a young widow, she needed to be careful with money. I prayed to God for an electric train set, like the one that my cousin John had down on the farm. I got a clockwork one. I wanted to be a cub scout, but the nearest I got was a well-thumbed book all about it: I knew all the badges and how to qualify for them, but that was as near as I got to a green uniform. I desperately hoped for a drum kit, but made do with some closed encyclopedias and two 12-inch rulers and beat them to pieces in tribute to Dave Clark, Chris Curtis, and the ilk. It took until 2006 for a real kit to arrive in the Bamforth household—it's my daughter Emily’s actually, but I muscle in with a mean John Bonham “cover”—the neighbors are very tolerant.
As a child I learned to respect possessions. It could be taken to extremes, though: I was forbidden to sit on the settee for fear of damaging it. “Be coming off that eighty pound couch” was my grandmother's salutation. She was the toughie in the family. To this day I adore lowering myself real s-l-o-w-l-y into steaming baths that are unhealthily hot. Back in the fifties I started this habit—and had barely got my butt onto the bottom of the bath before Nana would be hammering on the door, demanding that I “be coming out of that bathroom with all that steam ruining the paint.” I have obliterated from my memory how I would be locked under the stairs in a dark closet for being naughty. I know that she loved me, but she had a mightily strange way of showing it sometimes. Her toughness had undoubtedly been forced upon her.
Jane Petty, my grandmother, was the twelfth of thirteen children, born into a family that had farmed from way back. It was inevitable that she would “court” and marry a farmer's son, and her chosen beau was 42-year-old Richard Halwood. In a period of six years there were four children, my mother being the youngest. And when little “Edi” (my mother) was only seven, Richard died. Jane Halwood stayed on as tenant at Captain Leigh's Farm in Up Holland, to be farmer and mother. She was tough. And yet so loving of the little boy who was her favorite among the grandchildren. I remember the delicious warmth of sitting on her lap as she taught me to tell the time. I think of our closeness as we traveled on the bus to Wigan, to eat pies and drink tea at Poole's café, for me to sit on a pouffé as she had her hair set by Mrs. Bannister. Oh, that smell of egg shampoo! Despite the warm and protected environment, the spirit of adventure was already taking me away from the security zone. The quarry was less than a mile away but to a three-year-old, it was another world. Over the wall I went, deep into the gloom beneath forbidding trees. All was quiet. I wonder quite what I would have done if a friendly miner hadn't peered over the wall (he had seen a podgy little chap headed in there) and, grinning, extracted me, took me back to “Kenwood,” and asked of my frowning grandmother, “Is this little chap yorn?” Thank God it was him and not one of the fearsome looking nuns that promenaded up and down College Road, or one of the priests from the renowned Roman Catholic college that was spitting distance away. My mother and Nana, the two adults in my home until my grandmother died in 1964, were always very careful with money—for instance, most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my brother—but I cannot consciously say I wanted for anything that was genuinely necessary. Indeed, I had some things that I was less than enthusiastic about, like weekend trips (when I invariably felt nauseous in the back of the car) to places like the Yorkshire Dales, Derbyshire, and, most dreary of all, Wales. (I guess I was projecting myself to a future of gloom on dry Sundays, when the pubs of the principality were closed on religious grounds.)
But they were happy times. To this day my heart leaps when I am walking along the narrow roads in Up Holland or the other villages of Billinge and Orrell where I lived. My mind's eye can still see the miners walking along the road, black in the face, and spitting copiously on the flagstones. I can still see myself holding a streamer descending from a vast banner as I walked with all the other parishioners on Whit Sunday, and I can still see myself poking at the bloody blisters on the back of my heels, induced by the brand-new sandals that had been bought for me especially for the occasion. I can still smell the tomcats in Miss Snape's bakery where my mother bought cakes. I can sense fat Sydney Stevens cutting my hair, a requirement I detested then just as much as I do now. I can see myself sitting in Mrs. Bulloughs (the dentist's) chair and the gas mask being lowered over my face as yet another tooth was extracted (too much Ribena—but my mother swore that this sugar-loaded stuff, dissolved in boiling water, was just the elixir to beef up her scrawny infant. Sadly she was less fastidious about my teeth-cleaning habits). I can see the red Ribble buses and the onion sellers on their bikes and the gypsies being turned away by my grandmother with a “be gone—what you need is a dose of bug and louse powder.” Their curses meant nothing to her. I can see myself on Sunday afternoons in the country lanes collecting nature's bounty to show-and-tell at school— rosehips and catkins and sycamore wings. And I count my blessings. Yet I will never understand why until I reached my mid-teens friends were discouraged or why I never had a birthday party.