Tuesday 31 July 2012

Leeds

I'm in Leeds for a few days with the family. A chance to wallow in nostalgia, or so I thought*. I'm a decade or two too late.


We're staying in an apartment just south of the river. Opposite the Tetley's brewery, of what was it. From my bed I can watch heavy machinery chopping and grinding the last pieces of the brewery into dust. There's some sort of metaphor there.

It's much the same in town with Tetley's beer. Some run-down or derelict pubs still bear Tetley's signage, but the majority of their former tied houses have no sign of the Tetley name. Only one pub I've been in sold Tetley. OK, there's a much wider range of beer available now, but it still makes me feel sad.

On a happier note, Andrew's had his first pint in a British pub. A pint of Guinness:


He could have startede with something worse. Much worse.

Guess what I've got planned this morning? An archive visit. Not to actually look at anything. I've an appointment for that Thursday morning. Hopefully to continue the Tetley theme of the trip.








* I lived in Leeds for seven years as a young man. I drank almost exclusively Tetley's Mild all that time.

5 comments:

Bryan the BeerViking said...

If he's drinking that stuff, I can only assume he *didn't* drink at the brewery tap while he was in Waimea!

Anonymous said...

The town hall tavern has a nice timothy taylors dark mild on at the moment.

Arctic Alchemy said...

Cheers to Andrew !, he's got a good mentor.

Bill said...

They grow up so fast. In the US Tetley is known for their tiny little tea leaves.

Beerprole said...

A lot of places stopped serving Tetley when the brewery closed, for obvious reasons. The Adelphi, just beside the brewery, switched from Tetley to Leeds Pale before the closure, and I was in one day just after it happened to see an elderly gentleman be told that they didn't have Tetley any more. He looked a bit lost.