The View Through My Glass Bottom

Awake to the deadline

‘1st November, please…or thereabouts of course!’

On this occasion, I was especially grateful for the Editor’s tolerant approach to my dreadful deadline-keeping, for that date had just gained sad significance. In October, my ex-wife – and mother of my son – lost her three-year fight against cancer. So, on All Saints’ Day, instead of getting this piece finished, I would be at her funeral.

This latest loss has led me to moments of reflection about others – beer heroes all – who’ve departed over the last couple of years. Not that Christine would have welcomed that description for herself during the eight years we spent together – though she was with me when I first became a real ale fanatic, and actually joined me in husband-andwife CAMRA membership after we’d settled in Lincoln. And this in spite of the accusation she’d once levelled at me when we were newly-engaged History undergraduates in Leeds: ‘You love Tetley Bitter more than you love me!’

In some cases, the following commemoration of acquaintances, colleagues and friends might be overdue, but please believe my words are no less heartfelt for that.

Where more appropriate to begin a tribute than with St Austell’s director of brewing Roger Ryman? I met Roger at many SIBA and industry events, and he stood out as a true star in the rapidly evolving world of British brewing. For over two decades his commitment, inspiration and innovation grew the fortunes of the Cornish brewery – and genuinely enriched the wider national portfolio of quality beers – before his life was tragically cut short by cancer, at just 52, in May 2020.

Roger, you made a proper job of a brilliant career.

I really only got to know Bram Lowe, through mutual friends, at CAMRA AGM weekends. But his good-natured warmth quickly made me feel like a much closer friend than that would suggest – and I expect others who met him in similar circumstances would say the same.

He was one of the founders of Norwich CAMRA, and organiser of the earliest Norwich Beer Festivals; and he became the first full-time sales rep, and subsequently sales manager, for Woodforde’s Norfolk Ales, whose Old Bram beer was brewed in his honour.

Bram died in his mid-eighties, also in May, 2020. To date, he is still the only COVID-19 victim I’ve known personally.

Mark Wallington was SIBA’s finance director when I was appointed chief executive, in 2007. But he had played a much broader part in the early years of the microbrewing revolution. After starting Archer’s Brewery, in 1979, he was one of the twenty pioneer small independent brewers to set up their own trade association the following year. And his support for the cause never waned, until a stroke took him from us, aged 76, in January 2021.

On one SIBA business away trip, I found myself sharing a room with Mark. I have to say the class of his nightshirt completely overshadowed my ordinary pyjamas. Sleep well, Mark.

I was friends with Tony Eastwood for forty-four years. He was chairman of Lincoln CAMRA when I was secretary; I went with him to my very first CAMRA AGM weekend, in Cardiff, in 1978; we were both partners in Tynemill/Castle Rock Brewery; and I was honoured to be on the shortlist of just thirty people allowed to attend his funeral. He was 72, and had fought cancer for a long time before passing away, in November 2020.

Tony and his wife Jude began Small Beer, in 1980, with a modest real ale and specialist beer off-licence. No-one could have predicted then that it would become the outstanding and unparalleled wholesale business it is today.

Of all these heroes, Neil Kelso is perhaps least well-known across the industry, since his working life was perfectly encapsulated in the name of the Hands On Pub Company he established to own and run the Victoria Hotel in Beeston, Nottingham. Neil spent his career at the sharp end, equally at home in bar, cellar and kitchen. We shared many happy times together, including our 1986 ‘Pub Van Tour’ of England – just before Neil followed me full-time into Tynemill.

Castle Rock’s Chris Holmes and I took our last trip with Neil – a nostalgic weekend in Norwich – eleven weeks before his long cancer battle came to an end, in June 2019. He was only 63.

I’m truly privileged to have known, liked – and maybe loved – these fabulous people, and ask you all to join me in raising a glass of your favourite beer to their memory.

Julian Grocock