Last year, Jeff, Andrew and myself sat out on the back stoop of the Dove doing our usual thing – drinking a few pints of foaming nut brown ale while concocting plans of what we could or should attempt next. We’ve always liked talking about beer. Liked drinking it a bit more than that if truth be told. So we thought we’d start a CBTR beer section. An ongoing conversation about ale, if you will. Hopefully it’ll be sporadic yet seasonal, informative yet slightly sozzled. It’ll be a bit like that conversation we had that day in fact.

St Peter’s India Pale Ale by Roger Clapham

You may have seen the distinctive, old-fashioned medicine bottles of the St Peter’s Brewery range in your supermarket. At their site in Suffolk within the grounds of St Peter’s Hall – originally a private residence that dates back to 1280 – they produce a wide range of different beers, some of which are based on historic recipes. Whilst the imagery may suggest a grand medieval pile long-populated with overly-refreshed monks, the truth is somewhat different – the brewery is a thoroughly modern affair, operating since 1996 in former agricultural buildings on the site. The brewing process itself takes place around a courtyard at the centre of the site and the required water is sourced from their own well, having dug a borehole deep into the Suffolk chalk below the site. (more…)

Winter Pike featuring Fred J Taylor and Richard Walker
Listen to it as a CBTR podcast or download free from our itunes page.

Review by John Andrews.

until the last surviving thames professional roger wyndham-barnes untied his punt at shiplake and took anglers downstream to his favourite weirpool, the best thing to have come out of the berkshire town of twyford was the fauna records label. the brainchild of ted fletcher, fauna’s most sought after release is this, ‘a year in fishing – volume 1′ winter pike’, a 33 rpm long playing lp, the record of a conversation carried on between two of the 20th centuries most influential anglers, dick walker and fred j. taylor. recorded on location using a lavalier condenser and mixed using an alice ad52 these committals essentially eavesdrop on a couple of day’s angling between two friends. in the grooves of this rare piece of vinyl you can smell the mud of the thames in winter, see the silouhette of dead reed beds beneath the surface and feel the gravity of the drop from the dam wall at tring. this is a world of d-i-y and homespun philosophy, a box car, backwoods manifesto for hinterland towns and villages that were swallowed up as London expanded. this is post war british folklore committed to a piece of plastic. a world confined in the 21st century to the archive of the car boot cardboard box and the attic sale. these are the conversations ted fletcher wanted the world to hear before they were drowned out by the drone of bait boats and the rancid whooping of robson green. an ordinary world populated by ordinary people, a lawnmower engineer from hitchin and a country boy. (more…)

Country Bizarre, Issue 5. Click HERE to view and download.

Click HERE for the story.

The second in our series of ornithologically themed music downloads will go out to our members on Wednesday the 24th. This time the tracks have been selected by Jimi Goodwin from the aptly named Doves. Once again the artwork has been done by Matt Sewell and features Jimi’s songbird of choice, the robin.

And as an additional treat this week, in association with Heavenly Recordings, we are pleased to make available for the first time the opportunity to hear a collaboration between Doves and another of our favourite artists, Chris Watson. This is a remix that Chris has done of the song ‘Birds Flew Backwards’ from the bands last album ‘Kingdom of Rust’.

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Don’t forget that you must be signed up to receive the download. Just put your e mail address into the box at the top of this page.

by Will Burns

You looked at me across the
table and held my gaze. Eventually
you said this city has nearly killed me
and told me you were leaving for home.

Now alone, I am thinking of
you riding a bicycle to work,
broad daylight in summer,
wearing some cotton dress.

And sequenced, rhythmic,
impossibly slow moving
streams of starlings
high above the pier.

You told me Rome had twice as many birds
that swarm and dance too beautifully for words.