Big in Norway

As I will no doubt be out getting thoroughly pissed for the next few days, I've decided to do this post a few days early (links and pics are tricky to do on Blogger's Android app).

Yes, it's that day.  This blog has now been around 1 whole year.  My 12,000 hits in 362 days has not set the world alight, apart from a couple of instances.  As I've often said, I'm not a chronicler like Mudgie, a journalist like Boak & Bailey, an activist like Tandleman or a historian like Ron Pattinson.  I just point at stuff and laugh.  But such things have their place in the world, surely?

So, in the spirit of this undoubtedly significant anniversary, I've decided to do a beloved beer blogger trick and self-mine my year's worth of posts for the highlights :

Twinned with Stockport

Roaming Through Mudgie Land : Prompted by The Pub Curmudgeon extolling the virtues of Dumpy Old Men's Pubs (© Cooking Lager 2011) and having a bus ticket giving me unlimited travel for a week, I decided to have a wander round the local family-owned brewery houses.  For some reason, this post was very popular in Norway.  I like to imagine there being a Mudgie Fan Club in Oslo, where the members sit drinking bitter in a replica Sam Smith's house while complaining about Smoking Bans and encroaching modernization.

Not the author of this blog

The Future Of CAMRA and The Point Of CAMRA : By far my most popular posts.  By number of pageviews, if not for the views expressed therein.  This got me referred to by a CAMRA Branch Chairman on another blog as "I have to say I have found Mark Lawrenson (solely from his blog so I may be doing him an injustice) to be a slightly odd individual whose rather hackneyed and at times clicheed views of CAMRA are largely influenced by his local branch". Slightly odd I will admit to, but never being called 'Mark'.

Any resemblance to the activities of other Craft Breweries is entirely coincidental

BrewCat Meets a Journalist and BrewCat Gets a Customer : Being a longtime reader of Cyanide & Happiness, I thought "Those bastards must be making millions out of stick figure comics.  Where's my share?".  So I decided to create my own.  How wrong I was.  It typically took me 4-6 hours to do each one, and they're the least visited posts on the blog.  After doing six of them, I decided that for the forseeable future, it would be wiser to spend 20 minutes bashing out some nonsense in the pub over a pint.

As used by local bloggers

Guest Post - Johnny Whitepebble of Beer Traveler : As it happens, the writer of a well-known (at the time) local blog made an official complaint about one of my barman friends.  Never met the bloke myself, despite being in the same pubs at roughly the same time.  Parody was my only weapon it appeared.  And it was good.  So good, that said local blogger ended his blog a week later.  I'm a harsh man.

Sensible times ahead!

And that's the alleged highlights of a year's worth of blogging.  I hope to still be around this time next year to do this all again, providing I still have some liver function left.  And to all my Norwegian friends, I'll be raising a bottle or two of Nøgne Ø to you tomorrow. Skål!