My hols

Just back from Germany. Eleven days of drinking that liquidy stuff with the foam on top. And that alcoholly thing going on. Beer, that's the word.

A series of posts, recounting in tedious detail every last beer and impulse schnapps a poured into my poor tormented body, were planned. I even took notes.

But there's been a technical hitch. I hadn't screwed on the top of that bottle of impulse Obstler I grabbed in Salzburg station before getting on the train to Munich. I noticed the stain when I put my bag on the seat in Weisses Brauhaus. Then the smell. The heart-wrenching smell of spilled alcohol. I sobbed quietly through two beers.

Giving me an eau de pisshead air wasn't the only downside of my top-attachment laxity.

I'm an old-fasioned sort of chav. I wear spats, drink laudanum and have an aspidistra in my front window. Before every expedition into the Urwald of Lager, I prepare a printed guide. All the information -  pub adresses, maps, bus timetable - in one place. The spaces inbetween I use for notes. None of this ticky-tacky digital shit for me.

I wouldn't put valuable information on a phone or tablet. Especially not when I'm hanging around in pubs. Too likely to get lost, broken, stolen, drenched in beer. Good old-fashioned paper is far safer. What can happen to that? No-one's going to nick it. And it can't get broken.

Not unless you drench it in schnapps.

I'll be working from memory. Poor fallible, distorted, fading memory.