Read Online Bar None by Tim Lebbon - Free Book Online Page B

sweet, a gentle bitter finish—I can remember the first time I recognised nature for what it really was. I remember because it was a weekend I spent in a cottage in the Welsh mountains with the two best friends of my teens, Clive and Rob, drinking Old Empire and accepting whatever strange effects so many bottles of that potent brew presented. None of us had ever bothered with drugs, and even at that young age we were true acolytes of brewed hops. Rob had gone through a lager-drinking stage when he was seventeen, suffering much haranguing from me and Clive. But two years later he recognised it for what it really was—the gassy emission from Satan's dick—and he was back with us on the beer.
    Ahh, the Heavens we found in so many pint glasses, in so many pubs. By the time I was thirty it was almost a way of life, but even at nineteen beer had a huge effect on me. Perhaps there's something in it, a chemical we're not quite sure of that reacts with the human mind, building a precious bridge between amber fluid and the psychic solidity of our thoughts. What I've always loved about drinking beer is that there's no real snob value attached to it. Go to a local beer festival and you'll pay the same amount for a new local brew as for that year's Best Beer winning brew. A half-pint glass, a tug on the handle, and a taste explosion that moves you one step closer to God.
    I like wine, but I despise the culture of snobbery and pomposity built around it. A decent five-pound bottle honestly tastes better to me than the three-hundred-pound bottles I've tried, and I have tried them. Talked into it by friends, offered a glass of something special by work colleagues and some of Ashley's family, and while they haw and har and delight in the sheer decadence of a glass of wine worth more than an OAP's weekly cheque, I reach for the Jacob's Creek and have a much finer time.
    So that weekend in Wales, when nature hit me between the eyes for the first time, was informed by the strong taste of one of Marston's finest, allegedly brewed to be shipped to India, though it never made it there. Whether that was simply publicity or fact, I was glad. It was a superb ale, and for the rest of my life I associated its taste with my true coming-of-age.
    On the second day in the cottage, I volunteered to walk to the local farm to buy some eggs. We'd brought sausages, bacon and mushrooms, but a fry-up is naked without fried eggs. I took a pocketful of change and a head full of morning-after with me. Not a hangover, as such, more a woolly feeling that made me more than aware that we'd had a good few bottles each the night before. We'd been talking about future plans, what we wanted to do with our lives, and for an hour or two we'd become frighteningly serious.
    Today would be different. Breakfast, a hike, then hitting the village pub for lunch.
    There was a stile in the corner of the huge garden that led into the neighbouring field. I climbed over and dropped into the corn, walking around the edge so as not to trample too many shoots. I entered another world. I hadn't realised how much the order of the cottage's garden had bothered me until I walked with the hedgerow to my left, thick with brambles, spotted with bloody poppies, holed here and there with rabbit warrens, rustling and whispering with secret nature that, I was sure, was far more vocal away from where I walked. I had the impression that I dragged a bubble of silence with me, a cautionary stillness that accompanied my every footfall, every breath. Perhaps if I sat and remained motionless for long enough the world would start up again around me, but that would make me feel deceitful. Nature fell quiet around me for a reason, and that reason was that I was a human being. I could hardly blame it.
    So I walked, and watched, and listened, and as I reached the gate that led into the next field I saw an auburn blur to my left.
    The fox must have been on the other side of the thick hedge, walking out into the