Monday 7 September 2015

Fifty years ago last Friday, Scrobs learned a lot about diesel...

Scrobs crashed his Lambretta into the back of a parked van, in bad weather...

By now, the stitches would be beginning to tug, and they'd stopped poking my eyes out with a torch! A chum had visited me with a big bunch of grapes and twenty Senior Service... (I still had some duty- free Peter Stuyvesant then, but the Seniors were pretty damn welcome...) I would be in St Helen's Hospital, Hastings for another seven days.

Slowly walking past our local pub a few days later, I saw the owner of the van though the open door! Although it was never his fault, he had been distraught and very concerned about the accident, and he pulled me inside for a drink.

It was Whitbread Tankard, and I had three or five pints! The locals - and the landlord - always referred the fizzy bear as 'Diesel', and Scrobs spent the rest of the afternoon investigating the insides of his eyelids..

So I learned a lot about diesel that week...


6 comments:

Thud said...

A mod? heavens forbid!

rvi said...


..... and when offered the Seniors,the mad mod doubtless replied: Oh diesel 'avter do den won't day....

A K Haart said...

I remember Whitbread Tankard but for some reason I can't recall the taste.

Scrobs. said...

Thud!

Wash your mouth out, I wasn't even a Mod, just had my sister's scooter for which I still owe her thirty notes...

If you could see me now, you'd realise that Mod was far from my demeanour...

;0)

Scrobs. said...

Reevers, I was really so naive, that I thought Whitbread Tankard was a proper beer! And my dad worked for Guinness for God's sake!

I later learned that the barrels (oh yes Bob Seal had them, behind the bar), contained the real thing in 1965, and I never looked back!

Some chaps used to have a Light and Tankard mix, presumably to mask the taste!

Scrobs. said...

Mr Haart, there was absolutely no taste in Whitbread Tankard!

It was just hangover fodder, and more expensive than the usual tosh, which we all eventually loved!

Watneys did a worse one of course, and Red Barrel was just appalling! Courage weren't much better, and Charringtons seemed just 'odd'!

We'd really go for Youngs, and that brewery just over the Ealing border which escapes me for the moment...