Abstinence - it's behind you!

Fairy Bubbles, not precisely
as she appeared in the panto

My course of antibiotics finished on Sunday, so last night I had a few pints after seeing the rock & roll panto at the Liverpool Playhouse in Liverpool. The panto, Jack and the Beanstalk, was good fun featuring, in addition to the usual characters, Wonder Woman, Mr Spock and Ernie, who rode the fastest milk cart in the West. Needless to say, it's not the most traditional version of the story, with dozens of pop and rock songs from the 1950s ("Hit The Road Jack", as Jack goes on a journey) to the present day (Adele's "Skyfall") cleverly selected to fit the story. The musical backing is provided by members of the cast when they're not acting on stage; they seem to be a multi-talented bunch. Enjoyable, and it finished early enough for us to have a few pints afterwards.

So we went to the Fall Well, an attractive Lloyds bar close to the theatre. I've found that my taste buds have been adversely affected by being unwell so that beer has been almost tasteless to me; I've had very little beer to drink over the last month, and none for the previous week. My first pints were George Wright Pipe Dream (£1.85 a pint), an extremely dry beer, and finished with a pint of Greene King Abbott, a beer I quite like when it's kept well. My sense of taste seems to be returning, so it wasn't a bad way of ending a week of abstinence.