A Pint At The Fat Cat

by Alistair Thain (Canada)

Making a local connection United Kingdom

Sheffield usually has a grey filter over it. The city isn't too dissimilar to any other outpost in the Northern part of the UK in all honesty. It can feel a bit grim – you don't come to this part of the world for the weather after all. There is, however, some beauty and charm amongst the remnants of the Steel City's illustrious past. I'm back in Sheffield for the first time in nine years and have gone somewhere that is all too familiar to me, The Fat Cat Pub and its beer garden. This corner of the world is where I learned to enjoy pints of Pale Rider a.k.a. The beer that spurned me on to work in the beer industry in the first place. I owe it a lot, or it owes me, we haven't figured out that minor detail yet. The pub is also where I started to enjoy good beer, but understand and appreciate the culture, history, and people behind it. I'm back here now with my best friend from University, Liam Watson. We were reminiscing over old times. It all feels very clandestine. Like two old flames who have since gone onto different paths, but reuniting for a catch-up. No ill-intent on either of our parts, mind. It's more of sizing each other up to see where we both are in life. Liam is far better off, he became a policeman, and this is what chasing a career in beer does to you. Pale Rider was always around or thereabouts during seminal moments of my final year of University. It was the beer I drank when I decided to apply for my first ever working holiday visa to Canada, it was the last beer I had at The Sheffield Tap before I left Sheffield as a student. It became a staple, always available in bottles from the local Tesco, and stored away in the common area fridge, but somehow you felt tinged with guilt when you could drink the beer from the source. Local connections can be associated with the people of a particular place. Sheffield, like most of Yorkshire, is no-nonsense. People either like you, or they don't, there isn't much room for embellishing. They reward honesty with decency and call out a scam when they see one. Pale Rider is the object that connects me to Sheffield. The practical approach that people take to life comes across in this beer. The grey filter is about to give way to rain. It always does. Liam and I collect our empty glasses from the beer garden table and make our way into the pub. We always used to make a habit of cleaning up tables whenever we were in University. We got how crappy it was to be a bartender dealing with young adults. Somethings never change. It's 3 pm now, the twilight of the daytime. Old boys still supping the dregs of lunchtime pints and almost finishing reading the days papers. There's a stillness that's reminiscent of closing time. My train back is an hour. It feels like the right time to leave before the after-work crowd cut through the calmness. As I trudge along the rain-swept main drag of the newly revamped Castle Market, I'm struck by how much it has changed. Then again, we are all just passing through at the end of the day. There are still Orwellian buildings lurking in the distance that are relics of a not so distant past, no wonder bands like The Smiths wrote such bloody awful poetry. I have no idea when I'll get back to Sheffield again. All I know is that there will always be a pint of Pale Rider waiting impatiently for me at The Fat Cat. Something that brings me back to this area and at which I can sing ballads of glorious deeds at or either curse until the end of time.