‘How much for a private session, miss?’ called Tom N.

‘Tenner for twenty minutes,’ said Billy. ‘Fiver, I’ll stay the full half-hour.’

We walked out of Llandudno station and plumb into a headbutt of heat.

‘Blood and tar!’ I cried. ‘We’ll be hittin’ the lagers!’

‘Wash your mouth out with soap and water,’ said John Mosely.

Big John rubbed his hands together and led the way – Big John was first over the top. He reminded us there was business to hand.

‘We’re going to need a decision,’ he said, ‘about the National Beer Scoring System.’

Here was kerfuffle. The NBSS, by long tradition, ranked a beer from nought to five. Nought was take-backable, a crime against the name of ale. One was barely drinkable, two so-so, three an eyebrow raised in mild appreciation. A four was an ale on top form, a good beer in proud nick. A five was angel’s tears but a seasoned drinker would rarely dish out a five, would over the course of a lifetime’s quaffing call no more than a handful of fives. Such was the NBSS, as was. However, Real Ale Club, Merseyside branch, had for some time felt that the system lacked subtlety. And one famous night, down Rigby’s, we came up with our own system – we marked from nought to ten. Finer gradations of purity were thus allowed for. The nuances of a beer were more properly considered. A certain hoppy tang, redolent of summer hedgerows, might elevate a brew from a seven to an eight. The mellow back-note born of a good oak casking might lift an ale again, and to the rare peaks of the nines. Billy Stroud had argued for decimal breakdown, for 7.5s and 8.5s – Billy would – but we had to draw a line somewhere. The national organisation responded badly. They sent stiff word down the email but we continued to forward our beer reports with markings on a nought to ten scale. There was talk now of us losing the charter. These were heady days.

‘Stuff them is my view,’ said Everett Bell.

‘We’d lose a lot if we lost the charter,’ said Mo. ‘Think about the festival invites. Think about the history of the branch.’

‘Think about the bloody future!’ cried Tom N. ‘We haven’t come up with a new system to be awkward. We’ve done it for the ale drinkers. We’ve done it for the ale makers!’

I felt a lump in my throat and I daresay I wasn’t alone.

‘Ours is the better system,’ said Everett. ‘This much we know.’

‘You’re right,’ said John Mosely, and this was the clincher, Big John’s call. ‘I say we score nought to ten.’

‘If you lot are in, that’s good enough for me,’ I said.

Six stout men linked arms on a hot Llandudno pavement. We rounded the turn onto the prom and our first port of call: the Heron Inn.

Which turned out to be an anti-climax. A nice house, lately refurbished, but mostly keg rubbish on the taps. The Heron did, however, do a Phoenix Tram Driver on cask, 3.8 per cent, and we sat with six of same.