fire walk with me

Here's a selection of random pub encounters from the last few days, for your edification and possible future drinking and dining pleasure:

• Last Thursday we went to The Ship Inn at Alveston for a few drinks and some food after work. Food very good, beer also good (the Charles Wells Bombardier I had was, anyway), just a suspicion of the pub decor being out of the Cottagey Country Pub In A Box Kit, and just a suspicion that they were more focussed on the dining experience than the drinking experience, but overall a nice place.
• On Saturday we went over to Chepstow to meet up with my friend Alex for some lunch as it was her birthday. We met up in the Rising Sun at Woodcroft, which, as it happens, is now owned by Alex's father. Food very good indeed, beer (Reverend James - just the one unfortunately as I was driving) also excellent. We then went for a walk with a selection of dogs owned by various family and friends - a black labrador, a Great Dane, and a collie/lurcher cross (no, really) - who then proceeded to attack each other, which was nice.
• On Sunday evening Hazel had a photography assignment in Bridgend photographing a fire-walking event to raise funds for the Gofal Cymru mental health charity. I tagged along as it sounded like it might be interesting - I'd seen fire-walking on TV before and it's been an impressive-looking fire-pit in a field with some mystical Native American stick-waving going on, not to mention people stomping across bellowing "cool wet grass, cool wet grass" as they go. That said, there is something inherently annoying about fire-walking, what with all the mystical bollocks about the Power Of Positive Thinking and summoning the mystical shade of Johnny Two-Sprouts, your Cherokee spirit guide, to usher you into the state of Zen-like calm required, etc. etc. Sure enough the people doing this one seemed to have been put through a two-hour pep talk before being unleashed on the hot coals; Christ knows what they filled the time with once the basic safety instructions (shoes off, walk, don't stop) were out of the way. I should imagine there was a certain amount of fist-clenching and whooping.
  Anyway, it transpired that the event was taking place in the car park of the Riverside Tavern in Bridgend, round the back of Tesco's. A less impressive setting than I'd imagined, and I can't in all conscience recommend the pub to you, on the grounds that it appears to be a bit of an arsehole of a place. However, here's some firewalking pictures for you.