Clothes to be worn at all times.

We just want to take a moment to dispell the rumour that there is free beer for anyone turning up topless at any of the bars.

Oh heck.  Who are we kidding.  Anyone topless deserves a free drink!

Well … within reason …

A week or so after a festival the committee plus helpers hold a de-brief session, sometimes referred to as the ‘drinking up do’, for pretty obvious reasons.  We’ll make a few notes about what worked well, what might not have gone great, and what we might consider improving next year.

Over the first half of the year the committee tend to worry more about admin than they do about the next festival.  Making sure all the bills get paid, working out the final amount raised and deciding which charities and beneficiaries get what donations.

Around summer (ish) or just a little after the thoughts turn to the next festival, and then over the coming months the plans are put in place.  Different committee members tend to look after the same areas of the festival year after year, be it the beer itself, liason with the hall, sponsor co-ordination, finance and accounting, music, food, staffing, publicity and the website or a host of other key activities.  Problems get resolved one by one.  Changes are discussed.  Some will be fully implemented at the next festival, some will be tested, and some get put back for any one of a myriad of reasons.

As the winter nights start to draw in, the planning for the festival swings into top gear.  The beer list(s) start to take shape around November, and then get refined over the coming weeks.  Most of the orders, or provisional orders at least, are with the brewers and distributors by Christmas.

   
The January Committee Meeting, held in the conservatory at The Pendle Witch, Atherton.

And then January!  The last committee meeting in January often feels like the calm before the storm.  All the organising is done, it’s just a case of doing a final tick-back across everything and resolving any last minute issues that might have cropped up.  Anything from potentially having to change the format of the programme to wondering if we have enough gaffer tape.

And then, when everything is sorted, the committee have one last pint (this year with our main sponsor – Mary at The Jolly Nailor, Atherton) and that’s it.  The next step is the setup the Wednesday before the festival … but that’s a whole other blog …

In case you don’t remember them, the priority entry tickets bypass the queue.  (Scream!!!!!)

These tickets are only available as part of a sponsorship package, so for a way to beat the queue, read on …

The 2012 Standard Sponsorship Package

The standard package for 2012 includes:
- 10 tickets for general admission
- Entry to Thursday’s 5pm – 6pm sponsors’ only tasting session
- Your name over a barrel
- Your name and details mentioned in the programme and linked from our website

The 2012 Premium Sponsorship Package

This is where it gets interesting as the premium package for 2012 includes:
- 10 general admission tickets
- 4 priority entry tickets (yes, these bypass the queue)
- Entry to Thursday’s 5pm – 6pm sponsors’ only tasting session
- Your details displayed alongside the item you sponsor (see below)
- Your name and details mentioned in the programme and linked from our website

The best thinking to date is that the premium packages will sponsor a ‘thing’ related to the festival so that we can give your company more exposure.  This ‘thing’ could be one of the bars, the tickets and tokens, the wristbands, etc.  Basically anything that we can string a banner over or shadow print your company details on.

Entry to the Thursday 5pm – 6pm sponsors’ only tasting session is by ticket only, but once you are in the hall you are in for the night.  It’s a beer tasting session, so while we don’t expect you to pay for the beer until the clock strikes 6, we also don’t expect you to take the mick either, and we reserve the right not to serve anyone we consider to be doing this.  Basically – come early, well before the general public start queueing, have a few halves on us, stay for the night and have a great time.

A reminder to our premium sponsors – make sure you use the general admission tickets for admission to the Thursday sponsors’ only tasting session.  The priority entry ones will get you in as well, but once they are used they are gone for good, and it would be a shame to waste them!

Prices are £120 for the standard package and £250 for the premium package.

To take out a standard package, just download our sponsorship form, fill in the details and send it back to the address shown.  If you are interested in a premium package, please get in touch with us by emailing sponsors@bentnbongs.com and we’ll take it from there.

Marfan’s syndrome is a genetic connective tissue disorder that can affect the eyes, heart, skeleton, and the body’s other soft tissues.  To imagine how dangerous it can be, one area it can affect is the aorta, the main artery straight out of your heart.  Marfan’s can weaken the walls of this artery with the result that it just tears open.  As you can imagine, the results are most often fatal.

It’s as common as cystic fibrosis, affecting an estimated 1 in 5000 people; yet few people know about it; including doctors who typically do not test or screen for Marfan’s.

Simon Taylor, who worked for many, many years at the beer festival suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome.  And he never even knew it.  Nor did his parents, his friends, or his family.  He died suddenly towards the end of 2010, and it was only the post mortem that revealed Marfan’s.

Could you have it?

Signs worth worrying about include tall, thin builds, slender limbs with long fingers and toes or thin, weak wrists.  Think Nicholas Lyndhurst or Peter Crouch and you’re on the right track.  Undue fatigue or breathlessness are signs, as are cold arms, hands and feet (due to reduced blood circulation).

Is it something you should worry about?

We’re not doctors, although some might refer to us as beer doctors, so we can’t give you an answer on that one.  However it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time to read a little about it.  The Marfan Association have a wealth of info on their site, and if you want a more scientific or technical explanation Wikipedia have a page about Marfan’s.

In honour of Simon Taylor, who worked for many, many years at the beer festival, The Bent and Bongs Charitable Trust has selected the Marfan’s Assocation as one of the main beneficiaries of the 2012 festival.  We hope you’ll help by spreading the word about Marfan’s wherever possible, as knowing about Marfan’s is the first step towards beating it.  You could also sponsor the festival, or just turn up for a few pints of fantastic beer.

The photo below shows Claire (center) and John (Simon’s father) presenting a cheque from the Bent and Bongs Charitable Trust to Beryl (left) from the Marfan’s association.  We fully hope that in 2012 we’ll be making another cheque presentation to the Marfan’s Association; next time for a significantly larger amount.

It got me to thinking about the music for the 2012 festival.  Here’s where we are currently at:

Ladies, you’d best be bringing your dancin’ shoes again as Juke Box Heros have confirmed for the Friday night slot.  If we can twist their arm into doing a longer set than usual we might have a re-jig on the Friday night, return to just having the one band, and let The Heros play the night away.

Subject to us being able to get them, Cracked Flag will be back for a bit of music and merriment on the Saturday afternoon.

But Thursday night is still open and potentially Saturday night too as our usual band, The Spider Monkeys, are reworking their set.

Sadly I doubt we would be able to pursuade The Police to get back together again just for us and The Pet Shop Boys are perhaps a little beyond our budget, but other local bands, if you believe you are a good fit for the festival, get in touch and let’s get talking.

p.s. Sting, Neil, Chris - if you ever read this and are feeling a bit charitable, let’s get your people to talk to, errrr, our people and make it happen!

As the song goes, I’ve seen a horse fly, I’ve seen a house fly and I’ve even seen a dragon fly. I’ve heard the story of a fish with a wish but I’ve never yet heard of a fish on a mission.

So what is MissionFish?

MissionFish is eBay’s preferred partner for certifying the charitable status of organisations before allowing them to sell (as charities) on eBay.

We are in the process of registering the trust with eBay to allow us to sell the festival tee shirts and polo shirts, and perhaps some of the other merchandise and promotional items (branded glassware, etc.) that our suppliers send us. With the amount of information that MissionFish want you’d think we were applying to install the phone system at MI-5 or polish the propeller on a Trident submarine.

If all goes well we should have a handful of the 2011 staff polo shirts for sale any time soon. That is as long as we aren’t called in to have our fingerprints checked or to take a polygraph test.

Thursday 26 January, 2012
Friday 27 January, 2012
Saturday 28 January, 2012

For sure, some people believe that the Olympics will be the biggest event to take place in the UK in 2012; but hardened beer bashers know that this simply isn’t true.

There is every chance that the 2012 beer festival will have an Olympic feel to it, just so that Seb Coe and Boris Johnson don’t feel too upstaged.

We’ll have some details about the sponsorship packages available for 2012 real soon.  Unlike the Olympics there will be no dubious process for how to order them, no ballat, no secret handshakes and definitely no cloak-and-dagger for whether the whole process is fair or not.  We see it working such that you order them, we confirm it and that’s it.  No online ballats.  No not-knowing what you may or may not have bought.  No re-counts.  No secret stash suddenly found for resale in another country.  We’ll advertise them for sale, and then just like the beers … when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Don’t forget those dates …

Thursday 26 January, 2012 -> Saturday 28 January, 2012

Twelve months ago Paul the Fish was denied the chance of completing the swim due to the outbreak of algae in Lake Windermere.  This year offered no such excuse and so on the morning of June 19 he donned his wetsuit and dove straight in to the choppy waters of Winderemere, completing the swim in a time of 36 minutes and 55 seconds.

In Paul’s own words:

‘Not bad for a pie eater swimming breaststroke’.

All humour aside, this is a great achievement, as the following figures show:

The sponsorship monies raised are going to The Christie to help them with their fight against the big C.

All in all, a great achievement!

Let’s be brutally honest about this.  The North West Air Ambulance saves lives.  It’s as simple as that.  They save lives.  They get to places that road based ambulances struggle to reach.  They get there faster.  And from there they get straight to the hospital.  No roads.  No corners.  No slowing down for traffic lights.  They’re there in a matter of minutes, and with the kinds of accidents they deal with, minutes count.  It really is the difference between life and death.

The operation to provide this service comes at a cost.  A big cost.  Somewhere in the region of £4 million a year at the time of writing.

The Bent and Bongs Charitable Trust selected the North West Air Ambulance as one of the main beneficiaries of the 2011 festival, and so on the morning of May 28 a couple of members of the Bent and Bongs Charitable Trust Committee ventured out to a windy and chilly Barton aerodrome to hand over a cheque for £5,000.  This donation might seem like a drop in the ocean of the £4m required to operate the service each year but every bit really does help.  We were told by the crew that this amount might well cover the cost of the next flight; and that’s potentially a life saved.

So as you think back to the beer festival, that tenner you swapped for a handful of beer tokens might just be one of the tenners that went towards the donation to the air ambulance.

Drink beer!  Save lives.  There are worse things to do!

We are one second faster than Eusain Bolt!

We have the fastest bar in the West.

The North West that is, Atherton to be specific.

At the 2011 festival, the Friday evening session set a new record for quantity sold across the lager bar.  During the six hours the festival was open, 1,022 litres were dispensed; at least as best we can estimate.  Measuring the quantity of beer dispensed isn’t yet a precise science.

1022 litres is near enough to 1,800 pints for the workings out.

1,800 pints sold during the six hours the festival was open.

On average that’s 300 pints an hour.

Or 5 pints a minute.

Non-stop.  Every minute!

If we guess that half of these pints were sold as halves, and half of these pints were sold as pints, this means that three glasses were filled (either half or full) for every two pints sold.

At 5 pints a minute that’s 7 1/2 glasses a minute of lovely lager being delivered across the bar.

Or, to put it another way … a glass left the bar every 8 seconds.

AND THAT’S BASED ON AVERAGES!!!  One wonders just how fast that beer was moving when the bar was running at peak capacity in the middle of the session?

As we are now hitting limits in terms of just how much beer we can sell to the people in the hall I don’t think we’re going to be beating that figure any time soon.  It’s a bit like the 100m.  Usain Bolt’s world record time of 9.58 seconds (set in Berlin on August 16, 2009) was only 11 hundredths of a second faster than his previous one.  The faster one gets the harder it becomes to improve.

But if the lager bar can stay one second faster than Eusain Bolt I think it’s a deserved title to call them The Fastest Bar in the West.