Do I Hoard Too Much Beer?
I have been buying the Marks and Spencer 0.5% Southwold Pale Ale.
With my body, the beer seems to be gluten-free and also the alcohol level is low enough to not affect my INR.
But am I buying to much, as the most I drink in a day is two?
I am only guarding against future shortages!
This behaviour seems to run in the family.
My mother used to tell this tale.
At the start of the Second World War, she asked her Dalstonian mother, if she was prepared for the inevitable rationing.
Her mother replied, that she’s been caught out in the Great War, so this time she’d already got a hundredweight of jam in the cellar and she had another hundredweight of sugar ready to make some more!
I doubt, there was a jam shortage in the Millbank household during the Second World War!
Perhaps, my prudence over beer shortages comes from my Dalstonian grandmother?
I’m Now Following The Queen’s Example
By Legend, the Queen never carries any cash.
I’m now deliberately following a similar policy, but I only use a contactless bank card for most of my daily purchases, like my paper and food.
I’ve even still got a couple of John Lewis vouchers gathering dust in my wallet, as sincve the new M & S Food opened in Dalston, I rarely go need a Waitrose.
One thing I find with M & S Food, is that on a typical purchase the average price is two pounds per item. So to keep under the thirty pound contactless limit, I rarely buy more than fourteen items. These unusually fit easily into usable bag.
Buying my paper in M & S or a station also means I can use contactless for the purchase.
A couple of days ago, I was approached by an aggressive tin rattler for a charity I would never suppose because of some of their practices. So I waved my card and asked. “Do you do conactless?” I got a smiling “Sorry! No!”
I still use cash for three purposes.
- Restaurants with waiter/waitress service, so the tips go to the staff. It also means at busy times, in cafes I use a lot, I always get a table.
- Black cabs, when I occasionally use one.
- Personal services from local tradesmen, where the value is small. Otherwise it’s a bank transfer.
But it’s amazing, how little cash you now need.
Marks And Spencer Returns To Dalston
Marks and Spencer used to have a shop in Dalston, but it is now long gone. In those days before and during the Second World War, the shop would have been close to where my mother worked at Reeves.
Yesterday, I went to the littleWaitrose at Highbury and Islington, only to find it was being rebuilt, so I decided to take the Overground to Dalston Kingsland station and get the tin of cannellini beans, needed from the big Sainsburys opposite.
On turning right out of the station, I saw a new store had been opened under a new residential block.
Imagine my surprise, when I saw it was a new M & S Foothall.
But Marks and Spencer don’t sell cannellini beans, do they? Oh! Yes they do!
- This new stop may only have a short frontage on the street, but it is deep.
- It is much more Kings Road, than Dalston Kingsland High Street.
- The gluten-free section is massive.
- I was even able to get the Southwold 0.5% low-alcohol beer.
These pictures show the store on Dalston Kingsland High Street.
I suspect this store will be a roaraway success.
- It is a high-quality store.
- The world-famous Ridley Road Market is opposite.
- The only major store in the area, is a medium-sized, but rather tired Sainsburys.
- Passengers changing between the two alston stations will have to pass the front door.
- It is up there with new stores I’ve seem in Camden Town, Muswell Hill and West Hampstead.
If Crossrail 2 is built, it will sit right on top of the Dalston mega-station.
Thoughts On Alcoholism
In the last month or so, I’ve done something that I’ve never done before in my life.
I’ve drunk perhaps half a bottle of beer when I’ve got up. Admittedly, I’d left the bottle half finished by my computer.
It was good.
In the 1960s, I could drink a lot of beer. I just seemed to need it.
About that time, I decided I needed to drink large amounts of fluids and swapped to tea and Coke.
My doctor understands my needs for fluids and the practice nurse has the same problem. The nurse puts it down to leaky skin, which he has.
I actually love walking in the rain, so that might help explain it. We all live by the laws of physics.
My father warned me off alcohol in a practical way, by giving me halves of Adnams down at Felixstowe Conservative Club, whilst we played snooker, when I was about fourteen.
My father drank a lot of fluids, but I never saw him drunk and most doctors would say he was a sensible drinker. Like me, he also drank a lot of tea!
He had a reason to control his drinking! His father had died from complications of being an alcoholic at 40, when my father was about twenty.
My grandfather had lived just around the corner from where I live now and my father had once told me, he had drunk large amounts of beer and had moved on to whisky.
Around 1900, there was very little to drink except beer, so did my grandfather’s need for fluids mean that he turned to what was available?
Now I like a good beer and know of its properties to slake a thirst when you’re dry. I’ve worked in foundries in the 1960s and beer was always available.
So is there a type of person, who needs a lot of fluids and if beer is available they turn to it. In some cases does this lead to alcoholism.
As to myself, I must have gluten-free beer and because I’m on Warfarin, I must keep my alcohol consumption down.
So I now drink a gluten-free beer, that is just 0.25 of a unit and tastes like real beer from Marks and Spencer.
But then it is real beer, as it is brewed in Southwold by Adnams.
My life has come full circle.
A Quick Fish Pie Supper
I like fish pies and there are several entries for fish pie. If I have time, I will cook my version of Jamie Oliver’s Fish Pie.
But today, I found a new gluten-free fish pie in Marks and Spencer, so I had to try it.
I cooked it in the microwave and it was of a very different type to Jamie’s, being creamy rather than having a good proportion of vegetables. Although, both have a potato topping, rather than a pastry pie-crust.
It was well-worth buying, cooking and eating, at a cost of £3.80 for one.
Note the tomato sauce in the pictures. I’ve found some very dodgy fish pies and cooked some of my own, in my time, that needed it.
This one certainly did not!
Next time, I’ll cook it in the oven, although I think both methods will work, but you may get a different texture of pie.
The Return Of The Best Gluten-Free Sandwich From A Supermarket
Marks and Spencer do very good gluten-free sandwiches. In my experience, the only better gluten-free sandwiches I have had, have been in a couple of dedicated gluten-free shops, where the sandwich has been made in front of me.
This was my lunch today, bassed on a gluten-free egg sandwich, that has been brought back after about five years.
Incidentally, I suspect that egg seems to have a complimentary taste with good gluten-free bread.
I’ve also had excellent gluten-free egg sandwiches in several places including the Tate Britain, Tate Modern and Cafe Northcote in Blackburn cathedral.
Chilled Marks and Spencer’s 0.5% Southwold Pale Ale
I took this picture of Marks and Spencer’s 0.5% Southwold Pale Ale in the fridge of their store on Finsbury Pavement in the City of London.
Not that it needed to be cooled today, as it was real bass monkey weather.
Two Units Of Adnams Beer
This picture shows eight bottles of Marks and Spencer’s 0.5% Southwold Pale Ale, which is brewed by Adnams.
Astonishingly, there are just 2 units of alcohol, which cost just £12.80 in total.
But even more astonishingly, the beer has a good taste for a low-alcohol beer.
The Finest Low-Alcohol Gluten-Free Beer In The World
In some ways this is an open letter to Archie Norman and Jonathan Adnams, who are respectively chairman of Marks and Spencer and Adnams Brewery.
Adnams brew Southwold Pale Ale 0.5% for Marks and Spencer.
I have three medical conditions.
- I am coeliac, which means I must avoid gluten.
- I’ve had a stroke and am on Warfarin, which means I can’t drink too much alcohol.
- I have a need to drink lots of fluids and I find beer is best.
So I need a low-alcohol and gluten-free beer, that has all the thirst-quenching properties of beer.
I should say that my grandfather had the same need to drink a lot and he eventually turned into a serious alcoholic and died at the age of just forty.
I am now seventy and started drinking halves of Adnams at fourteen in Felixstowe Conservative Club, whilst playing snooker with my father. Since a stroke seven years ago, I’ve probably never drunk more than ten units of alcohol in a week.
The Southwold Pale Ale 0.5% satisfies my need for a low-alcohol beer and it has a quality taste, that I very much like.
When I was diagnosed as a coeliac twenty years ago, one of the problems was finding a decent gluten-free beer. So I had a discussion with a brewer at Adnams and he said that their beers could be gluten-free.
But I never tried one!
However, after testing a few bottles of Southwold Pale Ale 0.5% , I was convinced that the beer was low enough in gluten not to have any ill-effects on my body.
But then surely, a low-alcohol beer must be made with less barley to create the low-alcohol level!
I think Southwold Pale Ale 0.5% is a superb beer.
Don’t just take my word for it!
In the reviews on the Marks and Spencer web site, these are some of the titles.
- Favourite Low Alcohol Option
- Best Low Alc Beer I’ve Tried Yet
- Excellent Low Alcohol Pale Ale
Two other reviewers complain about the availability of the product.
Research shows that as many as one-in-fifty of the population of the UK could be coeliac.
Conclusion
Improving the availability of this product could be good for all concerned.
Then
The Ultimate Gluten-Free Product
This morning, I bought a new gluten-free product from Marks and Spencer.
It may only be a humble seeded brown roll, but I think they have pitched it right for the market.
I ate one for lunch with one of their smoked salmon parcels.
I have tasted other gluten-free rolls that were slightly better, but none came anywhere near the 50 pence, I paid at The Angel.
I suspect, I’ll regularly use one for my lunch with an appropriate filling.
I called it the ultimate gluten-free product, as it is precisely targeted at the market.
- I would expect, that the taste is acceptable to most people; coeliacs or not!
- It is in a sealed packet with a Use-By Date of the 1st of September, which is four days from today.
- You don’t have the waste of a loaf, which gets thrown away half eaten after a few days.
- It would be ideal to buy, if you’re going to a party, in case the host doesn’t have a clue about gluten-free bread.
- It would also be ideal, if you’re hosting the party and know that perhaps two out of twenty are gluten-free.
- You could even pack a couple in hand-baggage, if you’re going abroad for a weekend and aren’t sure of the hotel.
- I’ve stayed in a couple of excellent B&Bs, who would have found this product very useful.
At just fifty pence a time, you could even feed them to the birds or make breadcrumbs , if some are left over.
I’m certain at that price, M&S won’t make much direct money out of the product.
But if it takes off, how many will the product attract to the gluten-free section, who will then buy other products?
The Anonymous Widower 