Now it was day two of the Beer and Cider Festival hosted by CAMRA in GMex and we were well over due a visit from Eric.*
Of all the people who contributed to our book on Manchester Pubs Eric has a special place.
I can’t say it is down to what he added to the book.
His stories, and his memories were at best inaccurate and more often just downright made up, but his presence has been felt in a fair few of the 78 pubs featured in the book.
We only bought him the one pint but there were the hapless punters who made that cardinal mistake of catching his eye and were then doomed to a night of uninterrupted conversation which only paused when Eric made it clear he “needed a wee bit more of the beery stuff” to carry on with his tales of ghosts, abandoned young maidens and disreputable landlord most of which were indeed pure invention.
And given that there were hundreds of different beers and ciders on offer at the Festival we reckoned he might show up and visit us as we sat selling the book.
But he failed to show and by a little after 2 pm on that second day we had sold the entire print run which had amounted to 200 copies.
The 200 had arrived at Peter’s house on December 21st and so in a month they were all gone prompting a reorder which will come in a couple of days.
Leaving aside Eric we met some very interesting people most of whom bought the book and were full of their own stories of Manchester pubs.
Nor was that all for as quite a few we encountered had travelled down from Scotland, across from Yorkshire and up from the south there were plenty of tales of breweries, pubs and other beer festivals which were fascinating.
Manchester Pubs is available from www.pubbooks.co.uk
Location; Manchester
Pictures, inside GMex at the Beer and Cider Festival, January 19-21 2017f rom the collection of Andrew Simpson
* The Festival began on Wednesday night and finished on Saturday.
I can’t say it is down to what he added to the book.
His stories, and his memories were at best inaccurate and more often just downright made up, but his presence has been felt in a fair few of the 78 pubs featured in the book.
We only bought him the one pint but there were the hapless punters who made that cardinal mistake of catching his eye and were then doomed to a night of uninterrupted conversation which only paused when Eric made it clear he “needed a wee bit more of the beery stuff” to carry on with his tales of ghosts, abandoned young maidens and disreputable landlord most of which were indeed pure invention.
But he failed to show and by a little after 2 pm on that second day we had sold the entire print run which had amounted to 200 copies.
The 200 had arrived at Peter’s house on December 21st and so in a month they were all gone prompting a reorder which will come in a couple of days.
Nor was that all for as quite a few we encountered had travelled down from Scotland, across from Yorkshire and up from the south there were plenty of tales of breweries, pubs and other beer festivals which were fascinating.
Manchester Pubs is available from www.pubbooks.co.uk
Location; Manchester
Pictures, inside GMex at the Beer and Cider Festival, January 19-21 2017f rom the collection of Andrew Simpson
* The Festival began on Wednesday night and finished on Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment