Beer Compurgation

Six Years.  In the year of social distancing, venue closures and quarantine measures, I’ve tried to avoid the lamentation of missed annual events, supporting others who have found the special dates the hardest to cope with. When people are sad that there will be no birthday or anniversary celebratory get-together, I remind them that the key part is that we make the following year’s. And the one after that. And as many as we can. We can sacrifice one to make the rest. With this, dates in 2020 have mostly passed unnoticed or forgotten. Except one, Six years. I never forget July 3 rd . It isn’t a date for celebration or for family gatherings. It is a day of reflection; for me to pause and gather my thoughts on another 12 month cycle and any hint of progression. Six years – but it could be any number. It feels as though it could have been a longer time ago, yet equally it could have been just last year. Six years since I stopped fighting, like the hens we...

I’ve struggled for many years as a beer enthusiast and a sufferer of Depression to try and correlate the two. Whilst I’ve written about the two in different ways, I’ve never really considered how the worlds collide on a consistently balanced knife-edge. Either one could take control at any moment and kill me but both are defining characteristics of Mark Johnson. I want to finally explore how it is to be a Beer Enthusiast and a Mental Health sufferer; to explore how the two can live together. I want to look at the ways they’ve destroyed people but also at the way they’ve saved lives, the way it saved mine. The media perception of the two removes the humanity from the stories that I want to return. There are unhappy stories but there are many happy ones to coincide. After Part One looked at one man doing it wrong and Part Two looked at how the pub saved me, we now look to the influence beer blogging had on my health I wrote much of this beginning of this part ...

Saved by the Pub I’ve struggled for many years as a beer enthusiast and a sufferer of Depression to try and correlate the two. Whilst I’ve written about the two in different ways, I’ve never really considered how the worlds collide on a consistently balanced knife-edge. Either one could take control at any moment and kill me but both are defining characteristics of Mark Johnson. I want to finally explore how it is to be a Beer Enthusiast and a Mental Health sufferer; to explore how the two can live together. I want to look at the ways they’ve destroyed people but also at the way they’ve saved lives, the way it saved mine. The media perception of the two removes the humanity from the stories that I want to return. There are unhappy stories but there are many happy ones to coincide. The Passion of St. Raphael's  In July 2011, the church my mother went to mass in every Sunday said its final mass and closed its doors. It was a sad day for us all, as it ...