pumpkinstrokemarrow

Which led me to wonder out loud what St Austell's brewery do, the people who have managed to flood at least the south of the country with quite a decent beer called Tribute. From nowhere, one can suddenly buy it all over the place. They must have hired a very bright and bushy tailed new sales director. I believe that there is a brewery at St Austell and that this beer was invented there. The puzzle is, does that same brewery knock out all the stuff being consumed out of county?

A fellow toper pointed out that a small brewery can get into a pickle by going national. 99% of its product rides the wave of some fashion or other, and then, all of a sudden, the wave dies away as quickly as it came. All of a sudden there is a lot of product which is not being shifted. One is left with the local outlets which one has quite probably rather neglected while strutting on the big stage. Is this is what has happened to Wadworth's 4X, another decent beer which used to be everywhere? And I have certainly heard of other kinds of small producer - say dairies - getting into trouble when they commit a lot of money to supplying some temporarily fashionable product to those hard nosed and fickle buyers from the big supermarkets.

Interbrew might be a better option. Small brewery creates the brand and gets it on the move. Then it cuts a deal with Interbrew to make the stuff in bulk and distribute it. OK, so small brewery has to share the profit but Interbrew, being so much bigger, is much better able to ride the waves of fashion. If it is not on one wave there will no doubt be another.

Second puzzle, is why does Epsom, an affluent suburban town, have fewer decent adult drinking holes than the neighbouring, but far smaller Carshalton. A visit yesterday established that there were at least five dotted around the place. Is it anything to do with the presence of a large Catholic girls school? Or the heritage water tower? Or the fact that John Ruskin did something to rate a white tablet? Why has the youth of south west London decided to descend on Epsom every Friday night?

One point might be that it is a former racing town. That a lot of liquid trade used to be generated by the races, trade, to the extent that it still exists at all, now tends to go direct to the downs and by pass the town. Were the town pubs able to float on this occasional but lucrative trade and not bother with building up a decent local trade?

Another might be the much larger amount of open space to mill around in in the centre of Epsom. Plenty of room for noisy interactions, chases, skirmishes, parades and posings. Wouldn't be the same in the more village like layout of Carshalton.

Third puzzle is more by way of a project. The sort of thing that 15 year olds might do as part of their art GCSE. The project is to catalogue, map and otherwise describe the various sorts of iron (or steel) column used to hold up the canopies of railway stations in south west London. Much as one might of done the same sort of thing with parish churches in my day.

This idea being brought on by observing that the columns holding up the canopies at Carshalton station were elaborate gothic revival affairs, presumably from around 1875. Held together with nut and bolts rather than rivets or welds. Far more to them than was strictly necessary for the purpose of holding up the canopy. Poor match of structure and function, a criterion used by some arty types of my father's generation. Those at the next couple of stations were similar, with a much larger variant being observed at the much larger Sutton station. Those at Epsom station were known to be much more prosaic, the difference perhaps being that between two railway companies of the day. Although this was not the whole story as at least one station between Carshalton and Epsom had new-build columns, not like the fancy jobs at all. One would need to think about whether the giant concrete bus shelters you get on the Chessington line instead of canopies were worthy of inclusion at all. The steel of the pillars having morphed into the reinforcing bars of the bus shelters.