Thursday, August 21, 2008

Lord of the Ales


So I’m sitting down with the family to dinner last night and, for the first time in a while we were all at the table together. For one reason or another including choir practice, work commitments, beer commitments and the fact that the little ones just can’t wait till a civilised hour to eat, we seem to juggle meals and sittings to keep the planets in alignment.

But last night was really quite civilised. And I have just realised how funny it is that I have used the word ‘civilised’ to describe it. You’ll find out, too, n a minute.

Dinner was nice. I had been out on Tuesday night with the brother in law to the Local Taphouse in St Kilda (more in a coming post) and we enjoyed a stout evening. Not an evening in which we looked at jolly fat blokes but a night encompassing four different stouts and four tasting plates to match. As a result, I was suitably inspired to create a meal at home to suit a stout that I had in the fridge at the time.

Oysters from my good local fishy, Joe, and some smoked salmon for the two and four year olds (I should shake my head at their food tastes, but I guess it’s better than them having cravings for Mc Crap and such) and some eye fillet for mains meant that I could feed the littlies and then the rest of the family could sit down to dinner while they had their dessert. All of us at the table at the same time. Lovely. Until the littlies decide to talk.

To cut a boring tale short, the competition for conversation was of an Olympic standard. And not just the to-ing and fro-ing but the volume as well. And all about as synchronised as if the diving was done by sumos. All over the shop.

So Mrs Pilsner comes up with a piece of literary-inspired brilliance to solve the problem. My empty bottle that had recently contained a Bellarine Brewery Mussel Stout had been commandeered to be put to good use as a ‘talking stubby’. He or she what has the ‘talking stubby’ can talk and all that what don’t has got to listen. Civilised. In a very Lord of the Flies’ kind of way.

I am now going to put my mind to the task of implementing other works of literature into both the beer and dining experience.

Cheers,
Prof. Pilsner

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm never going to be able to watch synchronised diving again without imagining sumos!