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New Statesman
22-05-2025
- Sport
- New Statesman
In the presence of the Great English Bore
Photo by Getty To the cricket at Hove for some soothing, slow action. Sussex were playing Worcestershire in the County Championship and over the course of two and a half days were making Worcestershire rue the day they set off in the team coach. Don't worry, this won't really be about the cricket. But to set the scene: this is not the modern iteration of the game, where teams play a shortened and somewhat manic version in coloured clothes and give themselves names like the Sussex Sharks. This is the leisurely four-day version, where teams still wear white and play with a red ball, and there are breaks for lunch and tea. It is a glorious day and I buy myself a pint of Harvey's from the pavilion. I can afford to do this because I have strolled into the ground at about four o'clock, and they don't bother to charge anyone who comes in when there are only a couple more hours of play. It is a gentle 15-minute walk from the Hove-l to the ground and I have work I should be doing, even on a Sunday, so how better to evade it than this? There are about 200 spectators scattered around the ground. Gentle souls, I would guess, with a wider age range than you might expect: there are even a few kids, one of whom is wearing a Sussex CCC shirt which has been signed by the team itself. I settle into my seat with my pint and watch the game unfold. The sounds are those of my childhood, when every Sunday I would watch my father play for one of his two teams: the sounds of leather on willow, gentle applause, and the plunk of my father's stumps as he's out again for another gritty eight runs. Only this time there's another sound: and it is the sound of a man sitting a few rows behind me, talking continuously. It is hard not to listen, for he has a voice that carries and there is little competition, for the circumstances are not conducive to crowd hysteria. I can hear every word, as clear as a bell. And it becomes clear very quickly that I am in the immediate neighbourhood of a first-class specimen of the Great English Bore. His conversational topics come round and round again, like the horses on a merry-go-round. They are, in order: a) arcana about the game being played, b) details, minute to the point of pedantry, about various road trips he has taken, and c) a certain dissatisfaction with his wife. I could, of course, move. The ground has a capacity of 6,000, which gives me a choice of 5,800 alternative seats, the vast majority of which would place me out of earshot. But, dammit, I like my seat. It has a very good view of the scoreboard and, crucially, is very close indeed to the pavilion bar, and that first pint didn't touch the sides when it went down. Also, I thought, he has to stop talking at some point. But then I swear I hear him say these words: 'Well, I am boring.' He may have insight into his own condition but I underestimate the persistence and staying power of the Bore. Why is it you never get ones who speak softly and not so much? Why must they go on, like the Duracell Bunny, only not as entertaining? I take a look at him: he seems to be in his early thirties or so, younger than I expected. It also means he has the stamina of youth. I wonder if he has been going on all day. His companion, who does not say a word, for there is no space into which a word can be inserted, has a glaze to his eye. In the end, I move. The comment that gets me out of my seat is this: 'I don't see why I should spend my Saturday cleaning the kitchen just because she can't be arsed.' This raised a couple of questions. How do you spend a whole day cleaning a kitchen? Mine can get into a bit of a state but at its worst it only takes an hour to make it fit for purpose again. Maybe he does all the cooking, hence his grievance. I look around again. He does not give the impression of someone who does all the cooking. But he does give the impression of someone who eats it. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe I suppose there is a non-trivial risk that one will run into a person like this after tea on the third day of a County Championship cricket match. To the untrained or unsympathetic eye the format of the game has its longueurs; into these gaps the Bore's voice can take flight. I also find myself speculating ungenerously on how he voted in the last election. Still, in my new seat I can no longer hear him. When I get back home, I see some messages from my friend Ben. The thing that's been bothering him lately is that, as far as he can see, every rapper and gang boss currently incarcerated in the American prison system has his own podcast. Even convictions for murder aren't stopping them from getting hold of the equipment. This is driving him a bit mental. 'Why haven't I got a podcast?' he cries. And he'd be good, for he is most amusing. But life is not fair. I think about my companion at the cricket, unstoppably talking bollocks for hour after hour. It's quite a talent, in a way. Does he have his own podcast? I wouldn't be surprised if he does. [See also: Portrait of an 18th-century It girl] Related This article appears in the 21 May 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Britain's Child Poverty Epidemic
New Statesman
23-04-2025
- New Statesman
Only real ale can rival fine wine
March's second day this year was a Sunday. My brother and I walked the Sussex South Downs. Almost three months since midwinter, the freshly peeled air drenched the leafless woods and hills with pale light. Yellow crocuses quietly exploded in the grass; the first larks unspooled their ribbon of song above. At lunchtime, we dipped down to the Ram in Firle. We sat at a bare table in its dark, womb-like dining room with our beloved hatchlings: two pints of Harvey's. I have lived in a thorny, stone-strewn Mediterranean biotope for 15 years, and visitors to my home in France sometimes ask what I miss about the UK and its latitudes. Broad-leafed woodland, birdsong and the British landscape, for sure: its endless seasonal costume changes; its soothing sweetness; the quiet nourishment of its rises, falls and folds. And with it, at the end of the path, cask-conditioned ale. Glorious and tragic. Glory first: if fine wine (Bourgogne, Barolo, Bordeaux, Napa: wines that cost hundreds of pounds a bottle) has an equivalent in the beer world, this is it. A great pint of real ale, served close to its brewery of origin, in perfect condition – only this fragile, complex, living brew can rival fine wine in terms of aromatic finesse and nuance, flavoury resource, textural wealth, fermentative subtlety, digestibility and overall sensual satisfaction. All other rivals (including bottled and canned versions of the same beer) fall weakly aside. Fine wine and great real ale are true peers. The price differential is staggering. Tragedy next. No one acclaims this parity. Yes, Camra (Campaign for Real Ale) members have known forever about the glory of real ale – but few have easy access to fine wine, while the minds of most fine-wine lovers are closed to beer. There's little palate crossover: the wine palate looks for fruity acidity, and most beer seems to have none (though its pH, in fact, varies from around 4 to 5.5); the beer palate is looking for the wealth that comes from fermented grain and the fragrant bitterness of hops, neither of which exist in wine. A bigger tragedy is that a great pint of cask-conditioned ale is a vulnerable cultural drink and not an industrial product, like other beers. It's in mid-transformation in the cask – its yeast engine still working, its dry hops still disbursing fragrance, its conditioning gas still bringing texture and freshness. Perfection relies not just on the craft of the brewer but also that of the publican, too. Break the chain of care from brewery to pub and the beer collapses into mediocrity. You'll only ever find such felicity in the British Isles; you'll find it most securely close to the brewery. It's the greenest of fine drinks: no glass packaging; the fewer delivery miles, the better. The distance from Firle to Lewes, where Harvey's Best Bitter is brewed, is just five miles. Harvey's is relatively soft and rich in the pantheon of great cask-conditioned ales: it has darker crystal malt in the recipe, and the four varieties of local hops have classic English delicacy to them. Other great regional ales in the native idiom include Timothy Taylor's Landlord from Keighley in Yorkshire and Batham's Best Bitter from Brierley Hill in the West Midlands, as well as cask-conditioned ales from Adnams in Suffolk's Southwold, Shepherd Neame in Faversham in Kent and Cornwall's St Austell. Newer, smaller breweries have brought fresh life to the cask-conditioned tradition, notably through the embrace of often sensationally fragrant American hop varieties, especially Citra. There have also been terrible collapses and betrayals, too sad to recite – and nothing's safe. Adnams has made a loss every year since 2019. Lunch in the Ram got better still: crusted fresh cod atop samphire atop crushed potato, the Harvey's Best Bitter a sublime partner. Might this experience go the way of Druid solstice rituals? The possibility is insane. Yes, it might. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: The Hokusai of Sussex] Related
