Shires Ale

Pint of Shires, Joe?

And on the 8th day, God created the pub. The only bit of the bible worth reading, imo. And even then I made that up. So we’re in the pub. Specifically The Bull in Ambridge, where lashings of Shires Ale are abound. As a disclaimer, you’ll have to forgive me for a lot of the backstory on this one, as I largely don’t know what I’m talking about. And I’m talking about The Archers. An audio soap opera that I have largely not heard. I struggle with the soaps even in visual format, tbh.

Anyway, The Bull in Ambridge – a small village in the county of Borsetshire (supposedly somewhere in the region of Worcestershire and Warwickshire awlroight babz). From what I can scrape from the internet, said pub is the only one in the country that sells Shires. Which doesn’t seem right, even for a work of fiction. It has been called a bitter, a cask beer AND a lager on the show, so I dunno…I assumed from this that I could just go ahead and do what the fuck I wanted with the design.

So with that in mind, I’ve gone for a sort of old man-esque crest-driven affair based on one you’ve probably seen if you’ve ever been in a pub ever. In Britain. In fact, it’s named after the capital of the United Kingdom, no less. It features some of the above info and also the Stourhampton Brewery, that make the stuff (I mean, they don’t actually make it because they’re not real but you know what I mean). Yes, 5.1% does seem quite high, but that’s a reference to the first programme being broadcast in 1951. If you *can* make it mean something, why wouldn’t you, hey?

That’s about your lot with this one. Another round of applause for the concept of pubs. I thank you.