I imagine that not all Englishmen like beer, but a great many of them do. I’m one of them.

When we go to a restaurant I also seem to have a knack of ordering something from the menu that they don’t have. At first I thought that this was because I order “out of the ordinary” or exotic dishes. After all you can’t go to a diner in suburban New York and order Mulligatawny soup and expect them to have it – even if it is on the menu. However, this happened so often (including once when I ordered a burger in a cafe on Second Ave. in Manhattan) that I finally came to realize that it’s just something I have to live with. I used to get angry. Now I don’t. On occasion I’ll even ask if there’s anything they don’t have before I ordered.

Yesterday we went shopping at the Pallisades Mall. It doesn’t usually take me long to shop: a quick trip to Barnes and Noble just about does it. So while I was waiting for Eirah to finish I thought I’d sit down and have something to drink. I’d noticed the “Yard House” before but had never been inside. In I went.

They have 180 different beers. I perused the menu and decided I’d have a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale. The guy disappeared and came back shortly after to say that they were out. I actually didn’t feel too bad. After I’d ordered I’d asked myself why I’d ordered Newcastle Brown (which I already know very well) rather than one of the other 179 beers. He’d brought me a sample of another brown ale, which was very tasty so I had that instead.