It's been a rollercoaster ride, this past day. Approximately now, 24 hours ago, I was sat in the Ship and Mitre pub in Liverpool. I'd been bamboozled – someone said the beer festival was on til the 20th – cue an excited yomp up Dale Street awaiting a ridiculous number of perries and ciders.
The festival finished on the 17th. My tastebuds were in a right old pickle when I wrapped my eager mouth around a moderately enjoyable Titanic Lifeboat instead of an Old Cock, or whatever was left in the barrel when they carted the final one away on Sunday.
So that was moment number 1. A trip to the Belvedere followed (in at 2), where another somebody had insinuated rich pickings from the pub kitchen. The student behind the bar, who appeared to be on a trip when we arrived, was slow to point out that nutrition wasn't on the menu that night, so we slipped a couple of golden halves down to tease the oesophagus and trundled down to the Philharmonic.
This is where things took a definite turn for the better (3).
I'd been led to believe the Philharmonic pub, on Hope Street opposite the theatre of the same name (minus the 'pub'), was a bit of a honeypot for pie lovers. Last time I went in there wasn't a real ale on draught for love nor money (and I certainly wasn't in the mood to dispense my body in exchange for some fizzy keg tosh so filthy lucre was all that was on the table) so I left dejected and swore ne'er to return.
I believe in karma and that book called The Secret says it all for me, so even though the evening was set to continue on a ski slope curve towards absolute despair, I figured a turnaround could be just around the corner.
And coming up Hardman Street, it was. The Philharmonic seemed to exude hope (4). And it didn't let us down.
Well it did, to start with. I'd chucked in my request for the steak, mushroom and cheese pudding. And it was off. Or rather, mildly unavailable. And news of my second choice, chicken and leek, didn't reach the order taker so I unwittingly settled for steak in ale pie (5).
What a happy accident that was. Lashings of chump steak, swimming in thick, rich gravy and surrounded on all sides by pastry so moist and standing so proud it could have rolled out of the ovens at Ramsay HQ.
Geoff Capes' fistful of mash and cabbage and carrots cooked to perfection (6), rolling in more of the gravy that made the pie headline news. It was all too good to be true. But it was – true, that is! A lovely pint of something washed the savoury treat away and then we marched across the road to the Philharmonic Hall for a performance by musos of all shades and sizes in The Imagined Village (7).
I figured only a couple of years ago that you can't write about everything, knowledgeably. Yet as a young and impressionable journo I'd flit from political analysis to car boots sales to restaurant reviews to concert previews back to car boot sales. You reckon you can take on any challenge when you're immune to reality.
So I won't stun you with an NME-style carnival of multi-syllabic words expressing the band's ethereal splendour. What I will say is you must, must, must go and see them. Helmed by Martin Carthy and his bosomy daughter Eliza, it's a creation that betters Bellowhead in defining folk's renaissance and bringing together some of the greatest performers in world music (8).
Today takes up the rest of the 10. I've been working like a hound trying to fit all the bits of this WordPress site together for a client who has no idea how much effort it takes to get things just so.
I feel like I'm relearning CSS from scratch. I've thrown in so many comments to the stylesheet that on occasions I've been hair-pulling when removing an errant comment /* would have done the trick (9).
It's all an incredible learning curve, however, and I'm duty bound to finish it, especially since the cheque for the finished job arrived today.
Character building, my old gaffer would say. I still throw darts at his head on a board, even today, although since the court case I replaced it with a photo (10).