"Firing into the Brown" #34 - Christmas, last of the cowboys, and a public chortle..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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Here's the last of the cowboys, including the promised picture of Pancho - he's the one on the left in the following..

Pancho (front left) and the Moustache Brothers... 😀

"Drop them or I shoot!"

..I am very much looking forward to getting these on the table for a gunfight - perhaps between Christmas and New Year.. 

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Speaking of which, "A Merry Christmas!" to all my reader.. and by way of a festive snippet... 🎄 

This Christmas pudding is believed to be the last surviving from a batch of 1,000 sent to sailors and Royal Marines serving on the front during the Boer War at Christmas in 1900. 

The puddings were commissioned from London confectioner Peek, Frean and Co., by Dame Agnes Weston, known as Aggie, a philanthropist known for her kindness to sailors, and intended as a morale booster for for the sailors and marines on the front line. 

Aggie is best known for setting up rest homes (hostels) for sailors to stay in when in port – somewhere to help them avoid the temptations of drink and sex, in fact she campaigned actively against the evils of alcohol (they reckon one in six matelots abstained from the daily rum ration, and even beer, as a result of her campaign).

Any how, no one knows how this tin came to survive...  it either never made it to South Africa, or it was brought back by its recipient, but either way it was found at the back of a cupboard in a home in Poole in 2011 (I reckon I have a jar of Marmite at the back of mine of about the same age 😀)  and loaned to the Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth’s historic dockyard; its curators believe it’s the oldest Christmas pudding in the world.

Not sure I'd want to eat it after 120 years – despite “high-class ingredients only” inside apparently – but the tin still features instructions for preparation, as well as a message which reads: “For the Naval Brigade, In the Front, With Miss Weston's Best Christmas & New Year, 1900, Wishes.”

 The charity she set up [clicky] in 1876 still helps sailors and their families today. 

The lady herself, bless her..  when she died, she was buried with full naval honours
(the first time that such an honour had been accorded to a woman) 👏

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Beer of the Week Year..

Bit of brewing history..  so years ago this stuff was brewed by a brewery called RCH (the beers name, by the way, commemorates the basic weaponry carried by rebels in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685). 

Unhappily RCH closed it's doors in 2017, but happily the beers were continued to be brewed by a new brewery also called Pitchfork after the flagship ale - unfortunately they then had to close their doors earlier this year. 

It's a tough old market for brewers... costs have sky rocketed..  to say I was gutted at the thought of no more Pitchfork ale is an understatement. When the receivers went in I almost drove the 300 odd miles to get a few boxes of the bankrupt stock to keep me going!

Then Nuttycombe Brewery enter the scene - they are a new brewery (2022) that started up in the premises of another brewery that had closed down (Cotleigh) purely to make sure the Cotleigh beers continued - when Pitchfork closed down they also picked up the RCH/Pitchfork portfolio of beers...   

...and so it was that as I walked slightly despondently to my favourite pub in Bath this week, where I'd sunk gallons of Pitchfork over the years, you can imagine how gob smacking surprised I was to see it advertised on the board outside...

The stuff is glorious, it is golden, hoppy, sweet'ish, but with an almost tangy aftertaste - it's not rocket fuel, and I could drink it all day and never get bored..  this one's an 11/10.. 🍻

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..finally, lest anyone believe that Dickens was not possessed of a cracking sense of humour, let me leave you with this nugget from the excellent "Dombey and Son" (this years Christmas Dickens).. 

Mrs MacStinger resorted to a great distance every Sunday morning, to attend the ministry of the Reverend Melchisedech Howler [now there's a quintessential Dickensian name..😂], who, having been one day discharged from the West India Docks on a false suspicion (got up expressly against him by the general enemy) of screwing gimlets into puncheons, and applying his lips to the orifice [😆], had announced the destruction of the world for that day two years, at ten in the morning, and opened a front parlour for the reception of ladies and gentlemen of the Ranting persuasion, upon whom, on the first occasion of their assemblage, the admonitions of the Reverend Melchisedech had produced so powerful an effect, that, in their rapturous performance of a sacred jig [😂], which closed the service, the whole flock broke through into a kitchen below, and disabled a mangle belonging to one of the fold.

Pure and utter comedy gold.. I'm not ashamed to say I chortled out loud.. unfortunately I was in the pub at the time, so probably not my best moment.. 

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...  and enjoy the day between now, and then.. 🎅