I have been alluding for a long time to developments in our lives that needed to be kept under the hat. Developments that have been a real time sink for me (and probably will continue to be, although the pressure is off to some extent now). Anyway, things have finally come together and I can put it down here: we have bought a microbrewery, and are up and trading.
This is the culmination of a dream born at the 2005 Great British Beer Festival. After a few too many pints, some of them quite dodgy, we agreed, my mates and I, that we could do this, and do it better than at least some of the entries we had tried.
After the buzz had worn off and we looked at it again more soberly, we still felt the same way. We would start a brewery.
And then, while we were putting together the basic idea, we came across an advert in the Campaign for Real Ale magazine listing a trading brewery for sale. And a pretty hefty price tag.
But we did our sums and realised that, relative to trying to do this from grass roots, it did make sense to buy a going concern. I don't want to go into the particulars, but that was October of last year, and now, come September, almost a year later, we've sold our houses, moved our families and are set up in rural Norfolk. We've moved to the country. I haven't quit my day job, but I do work from home to be closer to my family most of the week, and two of our team are working full time in the business.
Me, I live vicariously. Every one of our team - two couples - are extremely well suited and bring their talents to our project. I am focused on the parts I love, or the parts that I'm good at. Business admin, beer design, quality control, marketing, the website.
We've got a lot of work ahead of us, to be sure. But I prefer to dream big. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to do some real foodie good in this world and really enjoy ourselves in the process. We didn't buy the farm, in the end. We bought the brewery instead.
An interesting week of milestones worth noting this week:
60 - the 60th anniversary of BBC's Radio 3, formerly known as The Third Programme, 29 September.
80 - the 80th birthday of John Coltrane, 23 September. Radio 3 had a suitable tribute to him over the weekend.
100 - the 100th birthday of Dmitri Shostakovich, 25 September. They played his Jazz Suite No. 1 over the weekend. I keep threatening to listen to all of the symphonies. Haven't made it past the major ones yet.
I had the opportunity to spend a few days on the West Coast of the US last week. A meeting in metro San Francisco, and then a holiday weekend spent with my mother in Las Vegas. It was a whirlwind trip, but I have to say that I really enjoyed my time in the USA. San Francisco is so beautiful - I had no time in town, only a flyover and a drive around - but it just took. The lovely hills outside, covered with browning grass; the way the suburbs stop short of the real hills; leaving them a bit wild.
While I was in the US I picked up a new CD - a rare occurrence for me these days. I bought La Llorona by Lhasa de Sela and I am getting very tight with this record.
I also picked up a "portable audio system" for my iPod, which solved a very big clutter issue for me. In a go, I got rid of mini-stereo and about 100 CDs that were filling up my bedroom in my home-away-from-home, and I also stopped having to haul my iPod charger around with me.
Last night we made our own version of ziggizagna. And a thing of beauty it was, too. I got the kids involved in making the fresh pasta, and in building the pasta. We did it different to the linked recipe, in that we did a more conventional bake, but we did put a lot of interesting stuff in the layers, especially for the grown-up servings - I made a saute of sweet red peppers, onions, mushrooms and some balsamico, blanched some purple sprouting broccoli, grated up some courgettes, slathered on some tapenade as well as the usual cheesy suspects and some homemade tomato sauce. This was not a light summer supper, but it was a good hearty feed, and everyone, kids included were involved and ate it right up.
Which reminds me - my daughter starts school next week, and this is the first term that there are new food quality guidelines in British schools. Given how much effort we have put into feeding our kids quality healthy homemade food over the years, I am very pleased to see it won't be countered by a cost-cutting mentality on the school front. As one commentator reported this morning, giving kids a choice at lunchtime where one of the choices is the tasty but unhealthy option is really not an acceptable policy. I'm pleased she won't have the fish-fingers-and-chips option, at least not very often.
Finally, I'm just getting started with Google Talk. I like this!