Wild ale and theme parks

A sort of odd blog post today. A hybrid.

First, a note about a rather good beer I'm drinking. It's Wild Hare from Bath Ales, and it describes itself as an organic golden pale ale. Slightly murky brownish/gold colour. Extremely fresh, hoppy and bitter, which I love. It's as refreshing as a cold lager but much more flavourful and complex. There's a citrus freshness here, together with lovely hoppy bitterness, and it counts as my current favourite bottled beer. £1.70 from Asda.

Second, a blog post I wrote yesterday but didn't post until today:

I’m writing this sat at a table in Burger King, in Thorpe Park. I’ve brought my elder son and three of his friends here for elder son’s birthday treat. So I’m here for 7h 30, which is OK because I’m not going on any rides and the nine-cell battery on this laptop has 89% of power left which apparently is enough for 7 h 39 minutes. Why Burger King? Because it’s the only place with a seat that’s serving coffee (of sorts). There is a Cafe Nero here, but for some unexplainable reason it is closed. Some more observations. Thorpe Park is Chav heaven. I’m quite an open minded guy, and I like theme parks generally. Loved taking the kids to LegoLand and Eurodisney because they were both done so well. Thorpe Park, in contrast, is hideous. It’s crassly commercial, of course, but worst of all it’s ugly. There’s no beauty here. There’s none of the creativity or imagination that the best theme parks have. There’s no sense of magic. It all focuses on the lowest common denominator.

The rides are all extreme, for people whose brains are so atrophied by constant immersion in popular culture, and whose souls have been numbed and bloated by modern living, such that the only stimulation that will reach them is being centrifuged at 5G for four minutes on a Thorpe Park ‘attraction’.

Lunchtime is approaching, so I may have to vacate my seat as the noise levels rise to a crescendo and the smell of fast food becomes overpowering. I’m meeting the kids at 12.50 for lunch. Don’t get me wrong, you can have fun here, and I think my boy will have a great day with his friends. But I hope that by the time he’s 18 he may have developed enough of an awareness of beauty and ugliness that he will choose something else for a day out.

My expectation is that by 6 pm I’ll be high on caffeine (having consumed regular cups of coffee such that I don’t get expelled from my various writing spots) and have got a fair bit of work done, while still being a good dad because I’ve given my son freedom to have fun without the presence of his embarrassing parent. My slight worry is that by standing out from the crowd – I think I’m alone in coming here to work on a laptop – I’ll be expelled from the park for being a weirdo. They’ve probably already got someone in the CCTV room following my every movement.