A few of you will probably know that in normal circumstances I would have been spending this week of the year working my arse off for no pay in a gigantic greenhouse in West London - otherwise known as volunteering at the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia. It’s something I’ve done annually since 1998 - so this would have been my 23rd year. Last year we added the duties of looking after the British beer order to our previous roles too - MrEH is a Manager of one of the bars and I am a Deputy Manager. It’s a hot, exhausting, sweaty, physically demanding and above all pretty stressful week, but it’s spent with some of my best friends in the world and as a result, yes, I love it!
The festival was one of the earliest victims of the pandemic - we reach the stage of increasing commitments both in terms of workload and financial outlay from March onwards - and so as soon as it became apparent that the Covid-19 crisis was going to have a huge impact not just on the U.K. but all over the world, decisions had to be made. At the stage we first talked about it it was becoming very obvious that large gatherings - particularly indoor ones - were going to be banned for a significant period of time, potentially with no end date. With so many “unknown factors” the decision was reluctantly taken by our Festival Organiser Catherine to cancel this year’s event - a hugely brave and tough decision so far in advance, but one which was backed unanimously by the entire working party. A fair few folk on the outside said we’d jumped too soon - that it would “all be over by August” - but as we now know this is far from the case and had we tried to press ahead it would have proved a very costly mistake.
There’s much joking on social media this week amongst the volunteer staff about all the things we are “virtually doing” - imagining that in fact we were at Olympia as normal. Right now for example, at the time I am writing I would be making final checks on any beers we were expecting to need to put on sale later tonight - Friday evening is one of our business sessions on the bar - so tasking the cellar team with making sure that anything we would be needing shortly had a tap in it, as well as making decisions about anything that would not be ready to sell this evening, but would instead be tapped last thing tonight or first thing tomorrow ready to see out our final day open to the public. With my other pair of hands (!) I’d also be checking that the two teams under our “control” for want of a better word (actually they are staffed by exceptionally competent and experienced individuals) on the beer order side; Wet stock control and wet stock logistics were happy with their tasks and workloads and also dealing with any problems that needed our attention.
It feels very strange to be sitting here quietly on the balcony, writing this at a time when usually I’d be incredibly busy - and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t to a degree missing the bustle and fun that comes along with it. I’m not missing the sore feet - by this stage of the week no matter how much you obey the first rule of GBBF (never stand when you can sit) the heels are always letting out a low yet relentless throb - although this is much improved from the days at Earls Court with it’s unforgiving concrete floor. I confess I am also not missing the stress - today’s 54BPM is the lowest my resting heart rate has been during August since I got my FitBit in 2017!
There will be a real “Virtual GBBF” happening next month - although aside from putting together some lists of beers which will be featuring in that we have little to do with that as we’re unavailable during the time it’s happening - and we have a plan to get our bar team together for a meet-up at some stage before the end of the year too. For now though, there will be a glass or two raised this evening to “what might have been” and also to all those pals we are missing this week. For now, that’s the best we can do.
Robyn
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