Drink - Victoria Moore visits the world's biggest ale tent
Bowling home from a summer evening spent drinking crisp white wine, I am alarmed to find my path blocked by a bearded man in an old T-shirt. I edge round him only to encounter another. And another. And another. I stop in the middle of the street, close my eyes, count to ten and open them again. I am still in the midst of a thicket of beards and paunches.
I approach one and politely enquire as to the nature of the exhibition at the adjacent Olympia Exhibition Hall. "Beer festival," he says, with the high-wattage beam of one who has just emerged after several days in a well-stocked cellar. I think I had better go, too.
Beer fiends will be well aware that the annual Great British Beer Festival, organised by the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), is now in its 22nd year. People actually fly from the US to come here. Perhaps because until now I have never knowingly met one, I have always been as wary of Camra members as I have of ladies with overly sharp red talons. I imagine them to be tribe-like - suspicious of outsiders and contemptuous of those who do not share their thirst for knowledge about specific gravities.
And so I arrive with my cousin at the beer festival very highly strung, fearful of encountering evangelical tirades levelled against my undiscerning palate. After all, my short yellow dress picks me out from the milling grubby jeans-wearers like a beacon on an ancient hillside.
From the vantage point of the balcony, the image- conscious organisers try to pretend that there are lots of women here. I observe that most of the ones I can see below in the throng are being towed around by men. There is laughter and an admission that this is indeed the case. Displaying signs, at least, of outward normality, the organisers go further. "Camra is about choice," they state rationally, "and about ensuring that the market stays diverse."
We plunge down into the hall. I am bewildered by a list of some 740 beers that runs from Merlin's Magic to Pick's Bedlam Bitter. We begin on Bishop's Finger by Shepherd Neame, billed as Britain's oldest brewery. It's not to my taste and, to my chagrin, there is nothing so pansy as a spittoon. Everyone is drinking, and relishing it, though no one is drunk.
We decide we'd better get some help and accost a group of lads. Unfortunately, each makes a different recommendation. One says that Ossett's Silver King is the worst pint he's ever tasted. His friend, a Camra member ("I only wear my beard and beer gut at weekends") disagrees. After much discussion and none the wiser, we leave them.
I remind my cousin, who seems to be flirting somewhat, that we are here to drink the beer. She slinks over to the Adnams stall, where she cons them into letting her have half a Regatta without paying for it. This time both of us enjoy the beer. It's a good, light summer ale. "We're trying to keep people off the dreaded lager stuff," says the Adnams man.
We canvas more festival-goers for tips and though they are, to a man, scrupulously polite and impeccably friendly, no one seems to have much of a clue. They're just enjoying themselves. Employing a deliberate strategy stolen from Will Self, who says if you want to know where it's kicking you have to hang with the fatties, we aim for the biggest person we can find. So far, says Colin soberly, he has drunk 35 halves over two days. Here, indeed, is a man with knowledge.
Sure enough, Whim's Magic Mushroom Mild - Colin's top tip - seems to be a tasty little number, even to our uneducated palates. My cousin's mind, however, is on other things. "They were all super chaps," she says, reluctant to leave. "This is the greatest way to chat up blokes."
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