I have a simple, beautiful dream for my dotage. It entails being able to walk from my home to a brown pub that sells brown beer. I sit on a stool at the bar. Behind it, a much younger person smiles, says hello and asks how I am. They know my name.

I’ll be happy to be alive, to have my existence acknowledged, and for the froth from an exceptional ale to gather on my ‘tache like the incoming tide on a tranquil beach.

Bairds Malt

That’s it. That’s the dream. OK, I’m no Martin Luther King, but you can’t say I lack focus.

First, though, I need to reach those winter years. 2025 will see me celebrate 50 years since my first beer—a pint of Courage Best at the Black Horse on Sidcup High Street—along with my 64th birthday. (Things were different then, obviously. I can’t imagine my 14-year-old son having, or being the slightest bit interested in, a pint at his age. Kids today.)

Perhaps it’s no surprise that my GP has had a word. And it wasn’t “Congratulations!”

I was ready for the question about my units, but when she said, “You need to halve that,” I thought to myself: “I already had!”

The doctor gently suggested some lifestyle changes. More (or some) exercise. Improved diet. The usual stuff. Then she proposed I take three consecutive days off alcohol a week to avoid gout attacks and otherwise unnecessary medication.

“I’ll do you one,” I said, not terribly wisely.

She reminded me that it was for my benefit, that I was the only one in this ‘negotiation’ that had any skin in the game, as it were. Not just skin, but actual organs.

I have friends who have gone sober and are very happy about it, but that’s not for me, despite their increased vim and vigour. I needed a Third Way. A strategy for survival that still involves my beloved local pub.

I began walking more, cutting down on delicious, empty carbohydrates and beautiful, calorific snacks. Fine. But the real challenge was not drinking from Monday to Wednesday.

““As soon as I started chopping an onion, I reached out absent-mindedly for a glass of wine that wasn’t there, as though compelled by the spirit of Keith Floyd.””

The first hurdle was, surprisingly, cooking for the family. As soon as I started chopping an onion, I reached out absent-mindedly for a glass of wine that wasn’t there, as though compelled by the spirit of Keith Floyd. I realised I needed a bridge to Virtuous Monday, and thankfully the world of alcohol-free beer has produced some stellar refreshment in recent times. Big Drop’s Pine Trail was my first revelation. Then I came across Brulo’s Lust For Life, and by the time I reached Track’s Sonoma AF—a miracle of missing but unmourned intoxicant—abstinence became a doddle.

Temping at temperance soon became routine, and I stopped needing the bridge. The placebo became an occasional treat, a bonus for completing some mundane task. For what is the point of shopping without the reward of popping in for one? Just like the before-times, I might find myself quite happily at the Green Goddess after nipping out to M&S for provisions, where something like Cloudwater’s Fresh AF or Psych! from Verdant may be on tap.

***

The Goddess is an independent beer cafe and microbrewery in south-east London, opened in 2022 by Stephen and Maryann O’Connor. While it’s more brightly lit than the cosy brown pub of my dreams, I am also drawn to less traditional spaces that focus on quality, independent beer, especially if they are as welcoming as the GG.

Stephen and Maryann met while working at Transport for London. They married and started a family, but Maryann had other ideas for their future.

“I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we opened a brewery?’ I’d never realised what I wanted to do before that,” she says. “When we got together in 2000, we fell in love with beer. The endless variety of it, the science of it. And we realised one of the things we liked most was the social aspect of it.”

After homebrewing together, Stephen retrained in brewing at Brewlab in Sunderland, while Maryann completed beer sommelier training at The Beer and Cider Academy.

“We called our brewery Common Rioters as we live in Plumstead,” Maryann explains—a tribute to the 1000 or so people who gathered outside the Old Mill pub in 1876 to defend Plumstead Common from being stolen piecemeal by private landowners. Their actions led to legislation that has protected common land throughout the UK ever since.

““The battle for public space is important.””

— Maryann O'Connor, The Green Goddess

“It's the connection between beer and people,” she said. “We see beer as social, like the history of humans. Beer was one of the reasons we became less nomadic. The battle for public space is important.”

They ran a stall at the Royal Arsenal Farmers’ Market in Woolwich, selling their first brew on Artillery Square, right by where thousands of women did vital and dangerous work in both World Wars.

“We decided to call our first beer Munitionettes after the women that worked there. It felt a way of connecting the history of people and beer. It was a cross between a pale ale and lager, with a fresh, bready feel. We sold loads of it.”

When Covid restrictions eased, Stephen and Maryann were invited to open a temporary bar in the cafe at Charlton House, the Jacobean mansion that backs onto Charlton Park, between Woolwich and Blackheath. Charlton House appeared to be the only vaccination centre that had a bar; a far-sighted operation in my view.

They patiently waited for the right place to become available and settled on a vacated Barclays Bank; a sturdy old girl with neo Greco-Roman columns and borrowed Georgian flourishes. It was appropriate that Common Rioters would move to Blackheath, the launchpad of so many insurrections, from Wat Tyler’s Peasants' Revolt, the Cornish Rebellion, and Jack Cade’s Revolt, the Chartist Rallies, and gatherings of suffragettes.

Stephen and Maryann then named their bar after Ninkasi, the Mesopotamian goddess of beer.

“How many pubs are called The Green Man?” poses Maryann. “Why not a green woman? A Green Goddess?”

She has a point. The Green Man doesn’t even relate to brewing, specifically, just nature, though he does have testicles. Probably green ones.

***

Though right opposite the long-established Royal Standard pub, The Green Goddess became an instant success. The cashier windows are long gone, replaced by a wooden bar, with calming blue slats below the hand pumps. Behind them is a wall of taps, 20 carefully curated offerings reflecting the spectrum of modern British beer, and occasionally beyond it. The Pride flag bunting behind the bar announces its inclusivity.

I’m welcomed by Raine behind the bar. Their fingernails are painted fuschia. Bold, floral tattoos decorate their left arm and on top of their head is a purple and yellow woolly hat with something like teddy bear ears perched on top. We chat about beer. We always chat about beer.

There’s no escaping the ex-bank layout as the four large windows invite light to give it more of a cafe feel than a traditional pub, confirmed by the pale wooden tables and floor. Work by local artists hangs, for sale, on the walls, alongside notices for the pop-up food offerings at upcoming weekends.

There are tables outside in a nice little suntrap but, with the sun hiding behind clouds, a mum comes inside with her young son and a baby in a stroller. There’s room to easily manoeuvre the buggy towards the board games cupboard in the vain hope that something might hold the boy’s fleeting attention awhile, so she can enjoy a cheeky sour without needing eyes in the back of her head. But she manages to balance child care and self-care masterfully before reinforcements arrive in the shape of her partner.

“We wanted a place that everyone feels like they can come to,” Maryann says. “If you don’t let children come to pubs, it excludes women, who are usually the main caregivers.”

It reminded me a little of the Continent, where people actually like children.

A couple of old boys come in (i.e. at least two years older than me), and opt for the delicious cask pale from Berkshire’s Elusive Brewing.

““If you don’t let children come to pubs, it excludes women, who are usually the main caregivers.””

— Maryann O'Connor

“Haven’t seen you lately. How have you been?” Raine asks.

“Don’t ask.”

A time-honoured exchange, just as in my dream, though I would never discourage someone from inquiring about my welfare. But maybe that’s just my youthfulness talking.

Maryann and Stephen have worked with Mechanic, Merakai and Elusive breweries and produced a very popular American-style pale under the Common Rioters name—I Live By The River—but they haven’t started brewing on site yet. Their shiny brew kit is in and sits in its own dedicated space, visible past the wooden doors at the end of the room. They are almost there, but running a bar and a young family can play havoc with deadlines.

“We’ve never built a brewery before,” Stephen says with a laugh.

But not long ago, they had also never run a business, brewed beer, started a pop-up or opened a pub before.

And I have learned not to go mad in my four days of approved intake. Of course, Leo Sayers—all dayers—do happen occasionally. Mistakes have been made. Football matches can prompt early starts, and, if it’s a non-league game, beer may continue to flow throughout the afternoon, leading to a less than disciplined evening. Tap takeovers are similarly perilous. But generally, I don’t want to undo my good work from earlier in the week.

My favourite widely available session beer is Dark Star’s Hophead, but that has been scandalously reduced to 3.4% ABV to save Asahi the excise duty, as if that is somehow more important than my pleasure. Yet despite my outrage, even that can be viewed positively as it lends a gentle reintroduction to fluids on thirsty Thursday. I even try to stick to a four-pints-a-night maximum at the weekend. OK, five.

But nobody really needs ten pints, do they?