Brett a life

Open saison: just get on with it and stop
piss-balling about

Sometimes you just can't help but fail. You know you're doing it. There's every chance to avoid it. Yet somehow, almost uncontrollably, you lurch toward cocking it up royally despite all opportunity to get it right. 

That's usually a preamble to me moaning on about having yet again botched some kind of romantic liaison or fouled up a particularly involved project or other. But tonight, it's nothing of the sort. It's just the general feeling I have about how I sometimes approach things that I've already decided are going to be good.

Chances are I've thought about it a bit too much. Given it too much potential. Set the scene for a perfectly knit plan of action to unravel. In practically every walk of life, I'm guilty of this. I'm not sure why. It's almost as if I need things to go wrong so I can point at them and offer them as proof of how bad my lot is in life.

And if I'd only put a bit of effort in - barely any, really - things could so easily be hugely different. I've been wondering this about stuff for a while. Do I honestly court disaster so life will be more interesting? Would things really be so bad if I just did the simple things that meant shite could be avoided? Am I one of the world's eternal masochists? Doomed to nearly succeed and then muck it up at the last so I don't feel like such an achiever?

Tonight's performance has made me reflect on this. Because I've been looking forward to today's beer all day. A French Week of work was accomplished in a mere eight hours; all that was needed was to head home and write eloquently about a terrific style of beer probably done exceedingly well by a skilled brewer.

Instead, I went to the pub and fired down several complex-tasting beers that have in all likelihood muddied the waters for what's about to come. In exactly the same way as I asked someone out in the third year of secondary school - with a positive reply, I might add - only to proceed to accuse her of fancying someone else a bit later on. WTF?

I despair sometimes. Not at my life and its prospects, just at my own idiotic treatment of all that's presented to me. Plain daft. It's unlikely this seemingly innate behaviour willl change all that much, but it's nice to get it out there all the same. In 20 years' time, I'll look back and laugh.

But in the meantime, I best just go through it and drink the beer.

Beer: Saison (with Brett & spice)
Strength: A typically ambitious 6.5%
Smell: Brilliant. Like massively off Champagne and cinnamon sticks. Soaked in mouldly blood orange.
Tasting notes: Hahahaha! Where do I start? A more fitting metaphor I couldn't ask for. Tantalising, flirty, chatty, interested. I'm in here. So much so that I sidle over with a stupid grin on my face, ripe for the playing. I'm suckered in. They say some fish don't even need bait to throw themselves on the hook and I can fully imagine. Agape, I wait till it's set. I put up as much of a fight as would a prostrate bream on mogadon, so utterly bewitched am I by it's allure. There's only one possible outcome. Disappointment. Ruin. Railing at injustice and the cruel fickleness of the tempter. But hang on. What's happening here? Instead of the heat of embarrassment ringing in my rejected ears, I'm being asked back for coffee. Quite unexpectedly, this is shaping up quite nicely. Instead of wandering down cold, isolated streets flagging taxis that aren't there, I'm walking up communal carpeted stairs to the warmth of a first floor rented flat. Of course, I'll never tell. I'm a gentleman.
Session factor: Not sure I could handle that kind of excitement every year.
Gut reaction: It's given me the stomach to handle whatever is thrown my way. Bring it.

Actual beer: Wild Beer Schnoodlepip. Had this before on draft, but not in the bottle.