Balls Brothers

Last weekend I returned to the Truman Gravity Book. I hadn't transcribed anything from it for months. I'll be honest, the format is a pain in the arse. The Whitbread Gravity Book is far easier to work with. And it contains more details. That's why I'd been concentrating on that.

Saturday morning, I decided to give the Brown Ale entries a go. Most are for the the late Twenties and early Thirties, about when most breweries starting producing one. So pretty interesting. Some of the beers still exist, even. Mann's, Newcastle Brown. But that wasn't what made me stop in my tracks. No. It was one at the very bottom of the first page. For Balls Brothers.

Who are Balls Brothers? A wine merchant based in the East End. If you look carefully you can spot their warehouse on the train from Stanstead to Liverpool Street. Fascinating, eh? But why did I feel a frisson when I saw their name in the Truman Gravity Book?

Because of my mate Pete. It's the firm owned and run by his family. He isn't involved himself. I always found the distance he put between himself and a warehouse full of booze a little strange. He must have his reasons. I'd be stocktaking the whole time. That's stocktaking in the sense of taking stock away, of course.