Since DM has been involved in schools, he’s learned a lot of new language – you know – the sort of words, phrases and acronyms that don’t exist anywhere else. One of the phrases he’s learned is “on the spectrum”. This, for anyone not involved in schools, is the term used to describe autism and Asperger’s syndrome.

He has come to realise that he is “on the spectrum”. He’s not been formally diagnosed of course but from what little I know about this, he certainly displays symptoms that seem right to me. One of which is “research” to the point of obsession. He can’t go and buy something without researching it in minute detail. For big items, his research can take days or months – it’s a good job we don’t have any money because if we did he’d never leave his computer for all of his research.

At the moment, one of his obsessions is Pale Ale. He decided that he was going to try some because somehow he got obsessed by what pale ale is. He started with a few tentative conversations with me like…”what is the difference between pale ale and bitter?” …”how is pale ale different from India pale ale (IPA)?” I replied “I dunno” and “I dunno” to the questions. You can see that you could juggle question and answer in a number of ways and the outcome would be the same – I know absolutely diddly squat about the subject and have never given it a moment’s thought.

So he started to research it. Now we both know that what most of the rest of the world calls “Pale Ale” is often called “Bitter” in the UK. We also both know that IPA is more hoppy than normal pale ale because it needed to stay drinkable after a long journey to India from whatever brewery made it. We also know that there were thousands of breweries in the USA before prohibition and the number reduced to a couple of hundred until the 1970s (I think that’s what he said anyway and I can’t be bothered to go and check for myself). The microbrewery culture in the USA is a reaction to nasty Bumwiper etc.

He also came up with the gem that Cobra is described as a Pale Ale by its makers – now I’ve drunk a few bottles of Cobra in my time and I’d definitely have described it as a lager so that was a bit of a revelation!

After the “desk” research, he decided he had to try some taste testing so he spent a good 10-15 minutes wandering up and down the bottled beer section of Sainsburys looking for pale ales and then whittling down the options into a few bottles to try. These are three of the ones he chose. I must say, I don’t approve of buying beer that’s been shipped from the USA for no other reason than it’s had to travel half-way around the world to get into our fridge and given that there is an abundance of small breweries here I sort of object to that. Buy local is one of my (boring and pious) mottos.

His main comment on his research? “How can Sainsburys own label beer possibly be described as made by craftsmen?” When I had the temerity to suggest that it was probably made by a specialist brewery and simply badged “Sainsburys”, he got cross saying “nevertheless if they’re making in that quantity it can’t be craftsmen made”. I suppose that’s a fair enough point but I also pointed out that the bottles from the small local breweries were cheek-by-jowl on the shelf of the supermarket and he deemed that OK. Hmmmmmmm.