Quarantine Diaries XXXIX
Wednesday May 6th 2020
I think I might have some kind of quarantine-Stockholm-Syndrome. Now that the end is, at least partially, in sight, I’m experiencing huge surges of anger and frustration, not about the virus or lockdown, but about a million shitty real world things. Lockdown suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. There’s comfort and safety in knowing all that’s expected of me is to move from one day to the next in a contained environment, cooking, eating, drinking, attempting to garden and (very) periodically cleaning a little. Quarantine feels like something of a desert island escape from the constant everyday hustle of life, the perpetual brushing up against stressful things and people, the dog-eat-dog push where I always seem to be on the menu. I’m not very good at real life, but I have proven myself surprisingly adept at staying at home. Could this be the superpower I’ve been looking for all this time? As an extrovert, I would never have guessed that isolation could be liberating. Yet the gentlest flirtation with reality is making me frenzied and anxious, causing the sealed chamber of my worries and woes to begin leaking rapidly into my brain. Can I not just stay at home forever baking buffalo cauliflower and watching old BBC dramas? Please?! Lovely JB has suggested that this is a form of self-imposed mental conditioning, an adaptation to surviving quarantine, and that re-socialisation will take time. Surely this is a new level of unfair – that having just gotten used to this damn thing and now I have to get un-used to it? My brain is actually hurting. How’s everyone else doing?
Oddwood Ales Titta E Guido Pilsner & Casino Nights IPA
We have so much love for Oddwood Ales that when they dropped today’s triple-beer-release notification there was no way we could resist getting an order straight in! Lovely JB zipped up to their much-missed Manor Road taproom and was home in time for us to crack open the positively glacial Titta E Guido Italian Pilsner with my freshly baked Alamo Drafthouse buffalo cauliflower – what a totally ATX food-beer-pairing combo – boom. Oddwood are truly masterful brewers of light European beer styles and this was right up their with their best – bright, aromatic and crisp you could practically inhale it, and what a perfect foil for spicy cauliflower! I must also give some love to their fab Casino Night IPA, a beautifully balanced and superbly on-point IPA that manages to be gluggable and fancy all at once, kind of the beer equivalent of a great day-to-night outfit. We were having a pretty crappy evening and this lil gem managed to make us both smile. In fact, I’m smiling now just thinking about it.
Craft Beer Amethyst 