Lauren’s blog: What it’s like to go out with a beer geek

Oh dear, what have I done? Inspired by yesterday’s blog to/about my girlfriend Lauren, she has decided to write what it’s like from her side of things... This could also be subtitled: the view from the other half (or the other side of the table), as some of the pictures will confirm. And this is all her doing, too.


If you read Mark’s blog regularly you will know he has a long suffering girlfriend, I am that girlfriend and I thought I would give this blogging a go.

Mark is a beer geek and this has both pros and cons. Let me start with the pros, hmmmmm, yes the pros, actually let’s come back to that and let’s start with the cons.

I am most frustrated by the amount of Mark’s times he dedicates to his love of beer. He is either drinking, reading, buying or writing about beer, this leaves very little time for anything else, and most importantly no money for presents. When cleaning the flat I often come across bottle tops (Mark insists on hiding these on the top shelf where he thinks I won’t find them... wrong!) and empty bottles (he has taken to using these for flowers; I think this is to stop me throwing them out). Our wardrobe, commonly used for clothes, is used to store beer, and until recently a whole corner of the bedroom was taken up by a box of beer (it might be worth mentioning the 19 bottles I’ve just ordered from Brewdog... I’m eyeing up that corner again). The fridge is always full of beer which I am not allowed to lay down to make more room for my hummus and Coke Zero. I hate washing the odd shaped glasses and finding space for them in the cupboard (Mark is very precious about his glasses). I have been dragged along to beer festivals, often bribed with chocolate and biscuits and magazines. I am often the only female with her own teeth (I haven’t taken her to any good beer festivals, just the down-market smelly ones, so this is probably my fault!) and Mark always leaves me alone while he finds anther beer lover to talk to, and this seems to invite strange drunk men to sit next to me and strike up conversations about the odd band which have been deafening me. After a festival, beer night, pub, or evening in front of the tele with a few beers, I have been kept awake listening to Mark talking in his sleep when he has had one-too-many (yes, it’s quite odd, and he often laughs in his sleep when he has had more than 2 pints, weirdo). And I always know when he’s getting drunk because he doesn’t stop talking, yabbering on about everything and anything, usually beer-related.

And no, I don’t want to just try a sip. I don’t care how good you think it is, I don’t want to try it.

The pros of being with a beer geek are the sheer passion and enthusiasm which I find so infectious. I enjoy smelling the different beers, looking at the pretty labels and watching that smile on his face when he opens the special beer he has been waiting for all week. I enjoy listening while Mark tells me what people are saying on twitter, who is drinking what and where, and reading the lovely comments on his blog (I’m sure there are more pros than this... she gets to go on lovely day trips to different pubs... anything else...).

Sometimes I do wish Mark wrote about biscuits or cake because the tasting would be much more fun and I could share in his enthusiasm, but really I enjoy his passion, and I know it makes him happy. I think that my life would be quite dull without Mark’s interest in beer and the pros far outweigh the cons. I am so proud that this beer geek is all mine.

(During the writing of this blog I also discovered how annoying it is when you are trying to write whilst somebody talks to you. I will in future leave him to write in peace).

Lots of love from Lauren.


There we go. All I have done is a quick clean-up edit. I think this post is great and it made me smile. What do you think your other half would write if she had the chance? See if they’ll do it! And I’ll be reminding Lauren of this post on Saturday night when she comes home and sees six very drunk chaps and a lot of empty bottles of stout (plus general food carnage) spread around the flat.

The Spoon to my Pencil?

Lauren often asks me when I’m going to write about her on here. “What do you want me to say?” I ask her. “Just tell them how I’m the best girlfriend in the world.” “You’re the best girlfriend I’ve got...” I tell her, “but it’s a beer blog and you don’t like beer.” “Oh.” She says.

To begin, she doesn’t actually drink beer. This is both good and bad. It’s good because she can be my driver. It’s bad because I’d love to share these bottles with her and have her get excited about them with me. I’ve tried hard to get her to like it but it’s not going to happen. Lauren does, however, have a great nose for smelling beer. And a great ear for listening about it. You see, whenever I am anywhere with a beer or whenever I’m doing things which I write about on here, Lauren is usually always there. She’s the one next to me in the pub reading her magazine (the bribe to keep her there so I can have a couple), the one opposite me at dinner while I talk to her about something beer-related, or how I wish they had something else on, or how next week I plan to open this bottle or that, or she’s sitting on the sofa while I sit behind at the table tapping into the laptop, “spending more time talking to people on twitter than talking to me”, posting blogs, or she’s in the driver’s seat while I give (always bad or wrong) directions to some distant “old man’s pub”, or she’s listening to me describing why this beer is good and that beer isn’t or how this one could be better or how I wish I could go here or there, or she’s putting beer glasses back into the cupboard or moving bottles around in the fridge because they take up more room than the food, or she sees me putting away my latest beer order and wonders when I’ll spend some money on her for once, or she’s answering questions as I playfully quiz her on my latest blog post (“You’re my favourite beer blogger,” she told me once, “but then I don’t read anyone else’s blog”), or she’s patiently waiting for me to post a blog, or read a blog, or send a tweet, or buy the bottles I’ve been staring at for ages which took us an hour out of our way to get, or she’s following to a pub (“honestly, it’s just around this corner” I say, hearing the feet drag) only to walk straight out because there’s nothing on, or she’s waiting to start eating her dinner while I take pictures of mine, or she’s planning her next few weekends around my drinking schedule, or she’s kicking me out of bed when my 5am alarm clock goes off so I can get up early to write or she’s woken up late when I steam back in at midnight (I’m sure she’ll tell me what I’ve forgotten, too).

And then there’s the times when she talks to me about beer, when she mentions hops or buys me some of my favourite bottles, when she says she likes something I’ve just written or she suggests going to London to go to some pubs or she says, “I bet that beer would be great with chocolate cake”, or when I catch her looking at my blog and reading the comments people leave, or when she smells a beer and picks out aromas I hadn’t, or when she clears away all my empties and tells me that she likes this label or doesn’t remember me drinking that bottle, “what was it like?”, or when she genuinely takes an interest in what’s in my glass.

I’m quite lucky, I think.

I write this blog but there’s always someone else there, someone who probably should hate beer but tolerates it and listens and actually knows a lot about it because she cares about what I care about. I guess she’s the real Spoon to my Pencil.

Sorry if this is gushy and sentimental but that should keep her sweet while we go for a huge steak dinner at the Hawksmoor on Friday (she doesn’t eat meat) and then drink around Borough, followed by a massive and potentially messy beer night at ours on Saturday, followed by more beer on Sunday and Monday (she will also hopefully be cooking me dinner on Monday). Plus next weekend at The Bull’s huge beer festival, the weekend after at The White Horse’s Old Ale Festival, then the British Guild of Beer Writers Dinner (which she isn’t coming to) followed by the Pig’s Ear beer festival the next day and then the next weekend on a London pub crawl.