17 July 2009 (Friday) - Canterbury Beer Festival

The morning’s haul of emails brought one from eBay. I have received an “unpaid item strike”. A couple of weeks ago I tried to buy a battery for my mobile phone. I paid for the thing, and received an email to say they’d posted it. Five days later they refunded my money. I asked what was going on. They’d refunded because they didn’t have what I’d ordered. So because they’d claimed to have posted the thing, they’d clearly lied to me. And so I gave them negative feedback. So in revenge they contacted eBay and claimed I’d never paid them, and I got an “unpaid item strike”. I wasn’t standing for that, filled out the on-line form to complain, and by return of post, eBay’s automated system removed the strike.

Bearing in mind the problems I had actually getting hold of my shed the other week, I’m a tad fed up with eBay at the moment. Its fine all the time things go well, but when things don’t, it would always have been easier to have dealt with a “proper” shop.

And then to Canterbury beer festival, via train and antique bus, picking up more of our number as we went. As always we made our way to Canterbury bus station and queued up with the Great Unwashed. And many of them were very great and rather unwashed. There was even a yeti in the queue. There queue is huge – it always is on the Friday afternoon session. Mainly because that is the free session – all the other times there’s a charge of about a fiver to get in. They must make thousands.

Once off the bus, some of our number queued. I zoomed in to bag seats and a table. Which in the event was easier said than done. But eventually we were ensconced with more beer, curry, peanuts and olives than sense. To everyone’s consternation I won three things in the tombola – last year’s Good Beer Guide, some lame CAMRA leaflets, and a false beard which I used to scare the normal people.

And then beer - as always I started off choosing the beer with the silliest names. “Dark Side of the Moose” was OK, but “Dartford Wobbler” tasted of raw potatoes. After “Wicked Women”, “Daffy’s Elixir” and “Old Stoatwobbler” thisng became rather vague, and so we left the festival a tad early so as to miss the last minute scrum in which several hundred people can’t all fit on the last bus.

A mooch round the piercing studios in Canterbury, then on to the Hobgoblin for a game of Farlke and a cigar. Both of which slipped down pleasantly. And then we walked out and…. I’m not quite sure what happened. All of a sudden we were half the number we were five minutes previously. So we adjourned to the Bishop’s Finger for a couple of pints, and (having regrouped) it was on to the Rose and Crown for a couple more.

Too much to drink, but a good fun day out. Same time next year……