Tessa and Charlie stayed with us last week end - Anne and I shared yesterday one of the bottled ales Charlie had brought with him - we had a bumper each of Chimera New Forest Ale - I fell into a reverie whilst I was drinking this clear marvellous elixir - I imagined that I was walking through a grove of ancient olive trees - broken statuary was wreathed with ivy - I could hear the sweet music of a flute -
I opened my eyes, and I was in East Stoke again - I read the erudite label on the emptied bottle - floral, grassy, aroma - cleansing citrus notes -
Charlie said brewing beer had all the fascination and calculation of science, together with the mystery of Art -
A year or so ago, Charlie and a friend had brewed some choice ale - they buried a score of bottles in a pit, outside Salisbury - there, under moss and pine needles, the ale had matured - recently, they'd dug up their ale hoard - they'd savoured the rare brew, sipping it from bottles still chilly from the dark earth -
I thought of the beer I'd brewed, in plastic beer spheres, when we lived in Kent - the beer was always cloudy - I would feel giddy and strange when I'd gulped two or three beakers - it was as though I'd become a shaman, ready to fly with my soul to a hidden melting world -
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