Do you know, it took me quite a long time to get the joke.  Not until at least half of my first pint had been drunk.  I was simply taking ‘sesh’ at face value.  I was enjoying my ‘sesh’.  It had been a long time since I had had a good ‘sesh’, and this 4.2%ABV IPA from New Bristol Brewery was a very drinkable pint.  Nice pale golden colour; strong hoppy taste.  The Joy of Sesh.  It seemed an appropriate name for my pint.

I don’t know what it was that got me transferring from thinking about beer to thinking about sex?  God knows, it doesn’t take much.  The Joy of Sesh?  Of course, it was a play on words.  Referencing that classic, but controversial, book from the 1970s, The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort.

Why is it that it is only the illustrations of the man from that book that are ever remembered?  The woman is anonymous.  And, given the subject matter, why is it only his beard that is recalled?

Beards and sex.  Do they just not go together?  Beards and sesh.  Now that is an altogether different story.  Real ale; knocking back the pints: what is it that comes to mind?  A big bloke with a beard.  Sex, though.  Maybe beards and sex are just not compatible?

The popular image of history’s great seducers tends to be of someone clean-shaven.  Casanova; Lord Byron; Spencer Matthews; Mata Hari – perhaps it is unfairly skewing the statistics to include women in this assessment?  Ony Rasputin springs to mind as someone who bucks the trend.

Whatever, I regard it as a sign of a good pint that whilst drinking it, it allows me to roam off into such a left-field flight of fantasy.

Although, it does not augur well for my own dating future.  As I pull the first unwanted hair from my own chin, I wonder if I will have to ultimately rebrand myself as Beardy Sue.

© Beery Sue

Beery Sue: CAMRA pin-up 1994.

Beery Sue is the author of the book, One for the Road.