I had an afternoon in Keighley recently, where I spent my time sampling beers from the Town's most famous brewery, found out the story of its most famous beer, and paid a visit to a few of the pubs in the town.... I'd had loads of plans during the week of different places to go at the weekend for a research day for the blog. Gradually, one by one, they were all dismissed, mainly in light of the cold and extremely blustery weather brought to us courtesy of the latest celebrity strong wind event, Storm Darragh. In the end I settled on going to Keighley, a town I had not stopped in for years, my only visits being the slow and frustrating part of a drive on the way to or from the Dales or Lakes. There is an hourly daytime bus service that runs between Halifax and Keighley, which for whatever reason I hadn't been aware, so I decided to give it a go. The journey takes you through the hidden suburbs of north Halifax, the large linear hilltop village of Denholme, nearby Cullingwort...
The lights are going up, Santa's sleigh is back from its annual service, and the elves are going through their final refresher course before it all begins. Meanwhile all across the country pubs and bars are gearing up for what they are hoping will be a busy few weeks. Yes, it's that time of year again, although sadly all is not well everywhere.... We say it every year, but Christmas does seem to begin earlier all the time. OK, the shops have been full of it for weeks, bagged up Christmas trees welcoming you to every supermarket, but the general mood out there does seem to have started to feel a little bit more festive earlier. Now you could also say that there seems to be a collective willing of the coming of Christmas as it allows people to escape from the reality of their daily lives, and with the current state of things out there, you can't really blame them. Last Friday I went to a Christmas do, still in November, which would have been deemed too early not that long ago...