A Dream Of Beer And Time

News this week tells of the discovery of a 5,000 year old brewery in Egypt. The ancient nectar factory, located near the lost city of Abydos, dates from around 3,100 BC, during the reign of King Narmer, and apparently boasted a production capacity of 22,400 litres.

He’s not that drunk, is he?

Archaeologists are quoted as saying they believe the beer was brewed for rituals concerning the burial of Kings, but then archaeologists are always saying that kind of thing about ancient Egypt. It’s as if the entire society over 8,000 years did nothing but bury Kings. Your average, workaday ancient Egyptian must have endured a life that was unbearably empty if long years went by without the death of a major royal personage.

‘Phooey,’ as another significant beer drinker, the fictional detective Nero Wolfe, liked to say. Your everyday ancient Egyptian must have sought ways to fill in the time between royal deaths. If he did, then it’s reasonable to imagine beer must have played a significant role.

They once brimmed with beer

Human beings have always sought to mediate glum experience through the filter of intoxicants: it’s just part of what we are. Barley and hops have been, like dogs and cats, our fairly constant companions since before the journey of civilisation. Beer, whether amber, dark, cloudy, or not very good, has flowed through the veins of civilisation since the very beginning.

The very first civilisation recognised as such dates from around 7,500 BC in what is now Southern Iraq. There may well have been other civilisations around at the same time (and indeed, we’re pretty sure there were) but they have not left behind anything we can recognize as a written record. The human story – past, present and future – is just like that, there are too many gaps in the data.

But whatever about that, beer was right there in the cities of Sumer. Translations have identified Sumerian words to describe different types of beer, such as ‘light,’ ‘dark,’ ‘cloudy,’ or ‘sweetened with honey,’ apart from the last, it sounds not a million miles from a craft beer menu in our lost, lamented pubs.

From the little we can glean, it seems that residents of Sumerian cities such as Ur and Uruk liked nothing more than to take time off in the baking heat and get gently smashed.

I’m unlikely ever to be able to hop in a time machine and spend an afternoon under the shade of a hostelry in Ur, sampling the local hooch and listening to the banter. This may be just as well, because the banter would be incomprehensible, the hooch might be revolting, and I might not get served on account of my strange hair and lack of a proper loincloth, but it is a pleasing dream nonetheless, especially in the absence of present day hostelries.

Sumerian civilisation is thought to have flourished for around 3,000 years, having arisen partly because of favourable conditions in the so called ‘Fertile Crescent’ between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq. The reason we know about them is because they left behind a kind of official writing, known today as cuneiform, which was whittled into clay tablets by specially employed scribes, and many of these were hardened and preserved by the fearsome Iraqi heat.

Sumerian barmen were amazing, and could apparently remember orders this complicated

They eventually came under pressure, as all civilisations seem to do, from the usual array of sources: climate change (no snowflakes, it didn’t begin in 1982), internal rivalry, plague, and pressure on their borders (at least 3 of these factors, for example, were instrumental in the fall of Rome).

Nearly 10,000 years after the Sumerian rise, it feels these days as if our civilisation, once thought to be invincible (and is there any civilisation which hasn’t at some point believed itself to be?), is now in retreat, or at least under pressure. ‘So it goes,’ to steal from wise, kind Kurt Vonnegut.

But isn’t it reassuring, in some obscure way, to know that civilisations rise and fall, but beer remains a constant? Yeah, mine’s a pint, thanks.

By the way, Sumer is also the source of what is thought to be the oldest recorded joke in history. It goes something like this:

‘Now here is something that has never happened before: a young wife sat on her husband’s lap and did not fart.’

Like beer, fart jokes are the gift that keeps on giving, and the relationship between the two is probably older than recorded history. I guess you had to be there, but I’m sure it had something to do with the beer.

Six Horribly Bad Book Reviews

The story: having been fooled by a friend into entering a book review challenge, I appear to have misread the rules and come out with these turkeys. Always one to repeat a mistake (my relationship anthem is David Bowie’s ‘Always Crashing in the same car’), I’m putting them up here. If you haven’t read them already, then don’t let me stop you.

‘Wuthering Heights’

Wuthering Heights was written by Kate Bush in 1982. This was just as well, as it sustained me and others through many a moist teenage night. It’s an intense tale of confused erotic and curry preference, and it also appears to involve a lot of yodelling on windy moors at night.

It is better known in some countries by its subtitle ‘Bitches Be Kwazy.’ In short, it’s bursting at the seams with valuable life lessons.

Little known fact: Heathcliff was originally going to be called Bob, but Kate lost a bet with her brother Dubya, who was a bit of a little bollix by all accounts.

‘Love in the Time of Cholera’

Basically, before Colombians discovered cocaine, they had to make do with something called ‘magic realism.’ This involved staying up all night in low slung tavernas, drinking insanely cheap and nasty rum until you either blacked out or started having visions of women walking through walls or descending from ceilings and offering you unconventional sexual favours.

The only survivor of the famous Cartagena rum massacre of 1957 was a certain Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who later went on to win a Nobel Prize.

This is about a man who falls in love with a puddle, and who realizes 60 years later that he still loves it even though it’s now riddled with cholera. My buttocks have been clenched for months in anticipation of the hundreds of derivative titles that will fester in the bookshops, if the bookshops ever reopen. ‘Harry Potter in the time of Covid’ anyone?

The Blind Assassin

In this, Margaret Atwood proves that the knockabout, convulsion inducing comedy of The Handmaid’s Tale was no mere flash in the pan. Much of the hilarious physical comedy here stems from the fact that the assassin of the title is indeed blind, and thus his elaborately planned murders are apt to go wrong in all sorts of unpredictable ways.

The politically correct brigade had a bit of a go at poor old Mags for making fun of the assassin’s disability, but I think they should get a life.

The End of the Affair

Graham Greene was one of those weird Englishmen who converted to Catholicism for a bet way back when. Unlike a lot of lifelong practitioners however, he very quickly figured out that the whole thing is founded entirely on guilt.

Basically, if you’re not feeling guilty then you’re not doing it right. If you don’t feel a surge of self-loathing every time you visit the bathroom then you’re probably not a real Catholic,

This cheery little tale is about how nothing – not the thud of falling bombs or the imminent extinction of existence – offers the slightest justification for any form of hanky-panky whatsoever, and how the only release from suppurating guilt is a quick and violent death. Proper bloody order too.

The First Circle

Never before has the non-stop party that was the USSR been brought so hilariously to life. Seventy characters, endless side splitting (often literally) and gut bursting anecdotes, and you even get to meet Joe Stalin, the man who put the animal into party.

Voted most feelgood romp of 1970 (or whenever they managed to smuggle it out), and certified by WHO as the most fun you can legally have with your clothes (and you don’t even have to have your clothes on).

Dune

This is probably the most ripped off book ever written, with Star Wars and Game of Thrones being the most insanely successful offenders.

In recent years, Frank Herbert’s son has engaged in a particularly odious form of grave robbing (are there non-odious forms of grave robbing? – Ed), publishing ‘prequels’ allegedly set in the Dune Universe.

Alas, he has none of his father’s talent or vision, and the series has thus become a kind of zombiefied white walker parody of itself, so in death it kind of ripped off Game of Thrones in reverse, so to speak. Moral of the story: great writers probably shouldn’t have children, or at least shouldn’t acknowledge them (that’s quite enough of that – Ed.).

YouTube’s Diamonds In The Rough

YouTube is the most amazing dustbin ever created. It is a hypnotic, addictive, infinite browse through the ultimate car boot sale of ideas. Like the very best car boot sales, much of the stuff is true garbage, but every now and then you turn up an absolute nugget, a neglected diamond squatting there amid all the chaos and mental illness.

It says a lot about human nature that one of the initial motivations for setting up the global superpower in the first place was the frustration experienced by a couple of nerds because they couldn’t find images of Janet Jackson’s left boob online.

For the increasing numbers of us who can’t remember anything prior to last Tuesday: Janet was performing with Justin Timberlake on the half time show at the 2004 Superbowl, when she experienced the legendary ‘wardrobe malfunction’ which led to her nipple being exposed to a suitably shocked and confused nation, who genuinely thought it had all been about the football.

Naturally, at the time everyone got worked up into one of those 24 hour frenzies so beloved of ancient media, but the massive unintended consequence was the foundation of arguably the most powerful media engine in the world. Janet’s nip truly launched a trillion searches. Thugs and porn are the engines of history.

Janet and Justin seconds before conceiving YouTube

What a legacy the most famous ‘nip slip’ in history has left. YouTube is often criticized for what is seen as lax censorship (but really, considering how it started, what do people expect?), but its laissez-faire attitude contributes to what is, like it or not, the most incredible social archive on the planet.

There humanity is in all its mucky glory (largely apart from the porn, of course): bizarre, spectacularly ignorant, often incoherent, boring and even mentally ill, but weirdly mesmerizing all the same.

Time and again, I’ll abandon some worthy plan to watch some virtuous documentary or highly praised new drama on Netflix, and just disappear down the rabbit hole, emerging hours later, tired and confused, yet obscurely entertained. And as mentioned above, sometimes the rabbit hole yields the most unexpected delights.

One such is ‘Pioneer One,’ a free web TV series which aired during 2010 and 2011, and which was apparently funded entirely through donations. I had never heard of it before, and consequently adopted the rather silly, yet very human hypothesis that ‘well, if I’ve never heard of it, then it mustn’t be any good.’

I ended up being hooked. The first episode, reportedly made a at cost of just $6,000, is a testament to how all good drama really needs is energetic writing, tight direction and beautifully composed performances.

What did they wear under the suit?

I was amazed I’d never heard of any of these people. The show was created by Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith, who have gone on to do other things, but nothing like what this shop window on their talent suggests.

In the first episode, what appears to be a huge meteor comes down over rural Montana and Canada. A terror alert is declared when radiation is detected. The spectre of 9/11 still looming very large, the US office of Homeland Security decides that terrorists have set off a so called ‘dirty bomb.’

With considerable style, and some pitch perfect understated acting – most notably from principals James Rich and Alexandra Blatt (again, where are they now?) – it is revealed that what in fact came down was an old Soviet spacecraft, and there was an occupant on board, a seriously ill young man.

Pioneer One’s ‘Maguffin’ is no more or less improbable than many, vastly more expensive sci fi shows (spoiler alert: it’s about Mars), but the skill with which the show introduces its twists is highly enjoyable.

Repeat: the budget doesn’t matter once all the other things which are supposed to work (and frequently don’t. Avatar, anyone?) do so spectacularly.

One tiny tribute to the skill of those who made Pioneer One is that its innovative opening credit sequence – featuring schematic drawings of the Soyuz spacecraft – were, uh, ‘respectfully referenced’ by the snowflakes, sorry, talented persons who made Star Trek Discovery.

Pioneer One is a wonderful example of what it is possible to do even within severe limits. Personally, I can’t understand how all those involved didn’t end up as billionaires, but then, alas, talent doesn’t always out.

There are six Episodes in all, and things remain remarkably tight until the last ten minutes of Episode Six, when there’s a rather desperate lunge to throw out hope for a sequel.

For whatever reason, that sequel was never made, which is a genuine shame.