Harriet and Gustav had announced they were going to get married several weeks ago. Harriet and Gladys were full of wedding plans and Gustav and Pete were playing out of sight. They wanted the wedding after Gladys had had her baby, so were planning for in five months time. Gustav’s mother and brothers had arranged for der Kupfer-Braukessel to be managed by friends who were familiar with what was necessary whilst they had a week off to attend the wedding. The adoption agencies had finally cleared Gustav as a suitable prospective parent and were looking for a sibling pair of opposite sexes under the age of five for the couple. Harriet and Gustave had said that the idea wasn’t set in stone, so if other opportunities came up to they would like to be contacted. That was six weeks ago, but so far nothing had turned up at all.

When Harriet had been talking to Adela, the wife of Bernhard Gustav’s eldest brother Adela told her that Clara the brothers’ mother would be at the wedding with Wolfgang. Wolfgang was she said looking like he was going to propose to her mother in law, probably before Harriet’s wedding. The brothers and their wives were all in favour of the match because Wolfgang was a decent man who’d recently retired after a lifetime spent working in engineering. Adela added, he clearly made Clara happy and she’d been lonely for over long. Harriet had considered it appropriate to tell Adela that she was trans, so if it caused any problems those with problems could back out and avoid coming to the wedding. Adela’s reaction was all that Harriet could have hoped for. “Do you love Gustav? She asked.

“Of course.”

“Does he love you?”

“I wouldn’t be marrying him if I didn’t believe that to be true.”

“Then there is nothing to discuss. Anika, Jessika and Clara will see it that way. I certainly see it that way. Bernhard, Carl and Ernst probably won’t care and in any case we live here in Bavaria and you live a long way from here in Cumbria. The men will remain silent on the matter if they know what is good for them no matter what their opinions. We will make that very clear to them, but I doubt there will be any problems. Clara will be delighted to hear you are adopting, and she will make it clear that she will be very disappointed if her sons’ behaviour means she will not see her grandchildren.” Adela who was an English teacher in a local secondary school laught and said, “There is a lovely English expression I have never had a chance to use before. Any trouble from the men and they will be recieving an excessive amount of preserved meat at every opportunity, hot tongue and cold shoulder. Don’t worry, Harriet, none in the family will be bothered, surprised, yes, bothered, no.”

Gustav’s brewery was to be set up in the old tannery which had been purchased for more or less the site value since the building was considered by its owners, who lived somewhere in Somerset, to be dilapidated to the point of potentially costing money to demolish before the claims for injury came in. The grumpy old men discussed the matter in the tap room and concluded it was possible to restore it economically if only just. Freddy a local and a retired bricklayer said the exterior was no problem to restore to it’s original condition. A major benefit was it fronted the site and looked perfect for marketing material. A huge prefabricated factory building was built by locals supervised by Bill behind the old tannery in such a way as to be barely visible other than from behind, and eventually Freddy and a gang of locals built a brick shell around the prefabricated building using recycled old bricks so that it blended in perfectly with the original tannery. The new building was where the brewing was going to take place whilst the restored tannery was used for offices and a number of other activities that had nothing to do with the brewery.

The UK suppliers of the brewing equipment had been surprised that they were not required to install and commission the equipment for which they had planned to charge an exorbitant price and had said that being the case they would provide no guarantee on the equipment. Gustav immediately cancelled the order and rang his eldest brother in Bavaria asking him to find a source of equipment over there. “Why do you need to buy new equipment, Gustav? When there is a complete brewery here. Our plans to extend the inn with more bedrooms for the summer trade are nearing completion and the brewing equipment has to be removed sometime in the next six months. If you will pay half of the dismantling and removal costs you can have the equipment. Mother, Carl and Ernst will agree and I’m sure father would have approved. I’ll need to find a careful company to do the job without damaging anything which may take time, but it can be done.”

“Bernhard, I shall speak with Alf who is a friend who lives here. He is a mechanical genius and I’m sure he could put together some men to do the job with no damage. Charlie, another friend, will wish to be involved and he speaks local German. Alf’ll be able to package all to transport safely and probably arrange the transport too. You talk to Mother, Carl and Ernst and I’ll talk to Alf.” The brothers were both happy at the arrangement.

Alf asked Gustav to have some photographs taken, so he could see what needed to be done, and spoke to Harry who owned and operated his own eighteen wheeler. When the pair of them examined the photos they agreed two eighteen wheelers with forty foot trailers would be required. “I’ll put the word out for you, Alf. There’s bound to be an owner operator dropping over there who’d appreciate a return load.”

Harry took Alf, Gustav, half a ton of Alf’s tools, a huge amount of construction timber for packaging and a team of six Bearthwaite men over to Bavaria. All was dismantled, boxed and crated in three days. Three very long days, but they were made easier with Charlie and Gustav being German speakers and able to explain to the four local workers provided by Gustav’s brothers what was required. Jake turned up on the second day with his waggon and an empty forty foot box trailer and pitched in with the work. They finished loading the waggons on day four and set off for Cumbria at six in the morning on day five. Gustav’s brothers had been amazed at the speed of it all, for they’d been told it would be at least a fortnight’s work just to dismantle everything. Alf’s price was so reasonable that Gustav’s brothers paid him in full without a qualm and told Gustav the entire price was far less than the half they had anticipated paying and they looked forward to seeing it all in operation sometime.

The following Saturday evening in the taproom of the Green dragon the men hadn’t even sat down when Dave asked “I’ve seen the stuff unloaded in the brewery. So did it all go smoothly then, Alf?”

“Apart from Bill scaring the shit out of us by setting Harry alight with a gas axe (1) a couple of times it went okay, Dave.”

“How the hell did that happen? Bill’s a really careful bloke and he’s magic with oxy.”

“Yeah I know, that’s why he was the one using the gas axe. Where they were working it was gey(2) tight for space. It would have taken another day and a half to do it from the other side. I’d have been happy enough to take the time, but Harry said if Bill wielded the gas axe and Joe a fire extinguisher he’d take his chances on pulling the hot pins out. Wearing all cotton, two pairs of pants, two shirts and a freshly washed cotton overall with no grease on it plus a flame proof face mask and gloves he told them to get on with it. I thought all fucking three of them were crazy, but they’d done in an hour with no injuries, and the tank was loaded and secured on a trailer in another. The time consuming bit was crating up all the small bits so as to prevent them getting damaged. Most of the stuff is copper, beautiful to look at, made by craftsmen to work of art standards. It would be criminal to damage it. We’ll have to build some supporting structures for some of it, but I reckon to do the job in coppered stainless so as to look the part.”

It took a month to reassemble the brewery and the inspectorate granted a licence after a three hour inspection. The customs and excise licence was a formality. It took a few weeks to find a master brewer to oversee the operation and to start training the initial staff of three locals and Gustav who were also taking evening classes in brewing at a local technical college.

“Changing the subject, Alf, how come you managed to free the oil drainage plug on Alice’s car when no one else could?”

“I have special sockets that are a perfect fit on the plugs no matter what they be. Tapered square male or female, hex, torx, whatever.”

“Where do you buy those from?”

“You can’t buy all of then because some are only available to the car dealers. They aren’t for sale to the general public, so I make ‘em. It’s easy enough. If I haven’t got a socket that fits, I use a piece of tool steel and get the male ones to rough shape by forging on the anvil, finish the shape by filing before hardening and tempering them. In the worst cases I have to use a die grinder. Females are more involved because I have to make a male drift to drive into the drilled white hot metal before getting the final shape by driving the white hot metal onto the plug. Then harden and temper as usual. In the past I’ve made three and four point sockets to get the drain plug out the first time. In dire cases I weld or braze something appropriate to the plug. If it’s a weird fitting, because it’s likely that I’ll be changing the oil on that vehicle again, I replace the plug with a conventional one, a Japanese type if it’s a Japanese vehicle and usually a Ford one if it’s anything else. I try to use a conventional plug off another vehicle of the same make if possible. If I have to make a plug by screw cutting a blank on the lathe or machining a standard fitting that is commercially available it’s no big deal. I’ve got a box of plugs. Jim at the scrapyard saves them for me. In return I do the odd small job for him for free. I’ve put a standard Toyota Corolla plug in Alice’s motor, so next time it’ll be a piece of cake.”

Alf continued, “Actually I wanted to tell a tale tonight.”

The others nodded, and Dave said, “Keep going, Alf lad.”

Alf took a deep pull on his pint and continued. “The so called horticultural experts all talk Bullshit. They all agree Egyptian onions, also known as tree or walking onions don’t flower. Every book I’ve ever read and every TV programme I’ve ever watched said it’s only possible to propagate them vegetatively from offsets. All expert authorities say they never produce flowers. I think they all talk shite because never is a bloody long time. The other day I was walking round my plots with a bottle of IPA(3) in my hand because it was a hot day and I’d done four hours graft by nine o’clock. I was gobsmacked by what I saw and so I took photos with my mobile. One of my Egyptian onions was in flower. The flowers were among the bulbils of a secondary growth growing out of the first set of bulbils. There were vegetative bulbils in the secondary cluster but half of the cluster was flowers. It was the first time I have seen it happen in sixty-odd years, and I have no idea what will pollinate them, maybe some other allium, maybe they’ll self pollinate, maybe they won’t be fertilised this time, but they flowered and I can prove it. I have always believed that all the plants that the experts say can only be propagated vegetatively, like say saffron crocus, do actually reproduce sexually. It may be so rare an event that none has yet recorded it, but I believe it does happen for all such plants, even the genetically weird ones like saffron crocus which has three sets of chromosomes, triploidy they call it. Funny thing is when I got home I looked it up on the internet and there for the first time I saw a reference to Egyptian onions being able to flower. It said the competition from the bulbils was too fierce for the flowers to develop and the author said he or she had never seen seeds. However there was a copy of a letter dated 1780 included in the article which referred to bulbils and seeds being produced. The article also said the modern genetics studies indicated they were a result of a cross between Welsh multiplier onions, Allium fistulosum, and ordinary onions, Allium cepa. The only conclusion I came to was that every so called expert since at least 1780 was nowhere near as widely educated and well informed as they claimed to be. They certainly weren’t as well read as they should have been.”

There was a long silence as the men in the taproom considered how to respond. Eventually Dave said, “I don’t understand, Alf. I want to because I reckon it matters, so explain in more detail please. You’ve always said you don’t understand why the rest of us bother with you, but this is the reason why we do, Mate. You’re fucking clever at things we have no understanding of at all. For fuck’s sake explain what the hell you’re talking about. I truly believe it’s significant, but honest to God, Mate. I just don’t get it, and I can see from the looks on the faces of the lads they don’t get it either. I can also see that we all want to understand what you are going on about.” Dave had a seriously perplexed look on his face and the other men in the taproom both locals and outsiders were nodding in agreement with him.

“You all know that inheritance is from your genes which are on your chromosomes?” All nodded. “You know that a baby gets one set of chromosomes from its mum and the other from its dad?”

All nodded again and Dave added, “I even know that the mother is XX so always supplies a female X chromosome and the dad is XY so can supply either an X or a Y chromosome which decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl.”

“Yeah well, in most cases inheritance is similar. In some cases the father has two chromosomes the same but the mother has two different ones so she determines the sex of the offspring. However some are nothing like that at all. Bees for example are genetically super weird. Males have no father. I’m no expert, so if you want to know more Tony can tell you about it.”

Tony nodded, “Sure. If you want to know I’ll have a think about it for explaining sometime. Mind it’s damned complicated and new stuff is being discovered all the time.”

Alf continued, “Sometimes things go wrong, for example if there is a full or even partial third copy of chromosome number twenty-one, people normally have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, the individual has Down syndrome. That sort of extra chromosome is called trisomy. Most things aren’t that severe, but some can be lethal, and they reckon the fœtus aborts often before the mother was even aware she was pregnant. In the case of the saffron crocus there are three complete sets of chromosomes which is called triploidy. More sets is referred to as polyploidy. Recently it was discovered the saffron crocus originated in Crete or Central Asia and is descended from wild Crocus cartwrightianus. Experts still insist it’s completely sterile but also say it has some genetic variability. Those two statements are kind of mutually exclusive I reckon. We all know spuds are grown from tubers and any one variety is a huge clone. King Edwards are genetically identical all over the world. The same can be said for a lot of commercially grown plants, especially fruit cultivars. However, if there is any genetic diversity at all in the saffron crocus they can’t strictly speaking be called a clone. So I believe you can’t rule out entirely the possibility of successful pollination and seed setting. It may be near enough true, but I don’t believe it is one hundred percent true, whether it’s been seen to occur or not.”

Stan breathed out a huge breath and said, “Fuck me, Lads! Was that really Alf speaking? Where did you learn all that, Alf?”

“I’ve always been interested in plants. Dad used to take me to the allotments before I could walk. The rest I looked up on the internet last night ready for my tale. It’s easy to remember if you think it’s interesting.”

“You got a spare cucumber plant I could have, Alf?”

“No problem, Phil. I’ve got some spare courgettes too if you want?”

“Thanks. If I could have a couple of courgettes that would be good. I left it too late to sow them this year. I went to Dobbies at Cardewlees Carlisle, but only found a sorry looking courgette and no cucumbers. They’d got sod all left. I did manage to pick up three peppers and seven tomatoes. Then I went for a coffee in the cafeteria but the lass on the till wanted all sorts of details for track and trace. I said she was all right but I didn’t want to. She said I had to, so I telt her I didn’t want a coffee that badly and walked out. When you see the fuck up that mobile phone app is causing with this pingdemic it’s sensible to avoid all of it. They did, however, take my money at the till for the plants with no questions asked. No truck drivers to deliver stuff, and workers by the tens of thousands stuck at home because the GPS on their smart phone shews they went somewhere near someone with covid means the shelves in all the shops and supermarkets are three-quarters empty. There’s no difference made for someone sleeping with someone they met somewhere who has covid and someone else who was in a car in a traffic jam near another driver with covid when both had the windows shut. Tell you it’s nuts. Anyone who puts that app on their phone has a wheel going in the wrong direction. Anyone for a pint? Oh and that damned courgette I managed to buy turned out to be a bloody cucumber.”

After all had had their glasses refilled Sasha said, “I’ve a tale to tell, well I downloaded it off the internet and printed a copy for my files. It was posted anonymously by a woman, but I thought it was an amazing tale of life as it truly ought to be. I’d rather none commented on it when I finish telling it, for I’m only telling it for us all to think about.” The men wondered what was coming, but all respected Sasha enormously, so they just nodded their acceptance of his terms.

“She was an old woman who’d had six children, and that was enough to have impaired her bladder control.

“Years ago when both were in their early sixties, when they were making love she’d sat over his face and he’d said, ‘You’re peeing on me, Love. Go take a leak and we’ll continue.’ Ten minutes later he’d gone into their en suite bathroom to find her and said, ‘What’s the problem? I thought we were making love.’

“Deeply embarrassed she’d replied, ‘I feel so ashamed, and I couldn’t return to bed.’

“ ‘Don’t be silly, my Love. I want you, I need you to enable me to be a man. You are not the young girl I married. You are the mother of my children and the grandmother of theirs which has naturally taken its toll on you. I am not the boy you married, so I can’t perform the way I could once. Not yet, but one day soon I shall probably need Viagra or something similar to manage at all. Time has passed, but it has not passed us by. We are merely ageing. There is nothing to be ashamed of about that. For those it doesn’t happen to are the unlucky ones who died before their time. Come, enjoy the night, for whatever occurs we can take a shower before we sleep, and that will be enjoyable if we shower together.’

“He was she knew not the most intelligent of men, yet she’d always known he was the one who managed their relationship for he was far more perceptive and empathic than she. From the day he’d met her he’d always said, ‘I shall be able to cope with age and whatever it does to me. For most men that is a worry, but not for me. I take a vigorous enjoyment in your body as we are. As we move into middle age I shall accept the slowing of desire for both of us. As an old man I shall enjoy whatever our age affords us. When young I shall pursue you for pleasure. In our middle years doubtless we shall both enjoy what we can provide each other. However, in our twilight years, doubtless you will be more able than I, but I accept that and I shall do my best.’

“Well the twilight years had come upon them long ago, and all he’d told her as a young man had come to pass. She’d not believed him then, but he’d been and done exactly what he’d said he would be and do. Both now well over eighty, diabetes and blood pressure issues precluded him taking Viagra and its like, but they made love at least once a month, and still they both enjoyed it. They had discussed the future when one of them would be left alone and had plans in place for both of them to cope with that, but for the present life was still good.

“The piece ended with her reflecting, ‘I am that old woman and Joseph passed a few months ago. I miss him terribly. I miss the prospect of making love. I’m neither morbid nor depressed, but I hope to join him soon.’ ”

All knew the tale couldn’t have been of any they knew else Sasha wouldn’t have repeated it, but there were a few, both locals and outsiders, who knew the tale was applicable to them though none other than they and their wives knew that. Pete nodded when it was clear Sasha had finished and said, “I see why you said there is to be no comment on the tale, Sasha. I agree, however, I think a goodly drop of the hard stuff rather than a pint is in order after that. Stan help me fetch a selection from the cellar will you?”

As the two men went to fetch some of the ‘rare stuff’ those in the tap room carried on drinking. All looked serious and none met any else’s eyes. The ‘rare stuff’ was privately owned, mostly illegal, distillates which the men acquired from all over the world. A lot of it was toxic in large quantities, None had ever had any form of tax paid on it and all was prohibited from being sold. However, if an outsider fancied a drop, a donation of a couple of quid into the children’s Christmas party collection box would solve the matter.

After Michael, the local police sergeant who was born and had grown up in the village of Bearthwaite had passed the collection box round for the donations, all who required a glass of serious chemic(4) had been served and beer glasses had been topped up the dominoes were produced for the second part of the evening’s entertainment.

1 Gas axe, common term used for an oxy acetylene cutting torch.
2 Gey, very.
3 IPA, India pale ale. A common style of beer in the UK.
4 Chemic, a colloquial term for spirits, probably derived from the word chemical.

I just copied these three mesages from ‘My Messages’ because I thought others may be interested. I have cleaned up the copy somewhat to make it more readable.

Snarfles Sep 12
Loved the story!
However I do need to make a correction to your definition of IPA. It does indeed stand for India Pale Ale, but most people believe it was a style of ale discovered in India and brought to Britain. The opposite is actually true. India pale ale was first created by adding hops to the brewing process, as a preservative, to enable Britain to ship ale to India without spoilage. In the 1400s the official ingredients list for ales was updated to include hops, by royal decree. At present, there are more than 140 varieties of hops, and nearly a dozen ways in which to use them in the brewing process, each with a distinctive flavor. The hops from various regions generally carry a discernable flavor note as well; floral from Europe, citrusy from the Southeastern US, Woody from the Northern US, and earthy from the Western US.
In addition to the individual flavor base, the variety of usages ( such as inclusion in the primary brewing, dry hopping, pre-roasting, etc ) and the ratio of mixing various hops in a single brewing, the combinations are too numerous to list; just as the preparation of the barley pre-brewing changes the resultant flavors. Add to that the nearly 150 varieties of yeasts, brewing temperatures, and the length of the brewing cycle, and you can see where the artistry of crafting ales lies ( pilsners and lagers not withstanding). Finally, expand the list again with porters and stouts using oats rather than barleys, Shandi’s which add fruit juices to ales, wheat ales, and a host of other creative combinations such as coffee ales, chocolate milk stouts, etc..
Imagine! We must give thanks to the shoddy builder in Sumeria, whose poor roofing skills allowed a storage hut to leak and ‘spoil’ a harvest some 3000 years BC.

Eolwaen 9:16 am
Agreed. I am well aware of such history and will gladly discuss such matters. However, brevity is sometimes necessary for a more general readership. Would you have any objection if I posted this discussion for others to read?
Regards,
Eolwaen.

Snarfles 1:16 pm
Absolutely no objections whatsoever.