Pass the mead. I need more mead.
Only mead can save us now – is that it?
Let’s listen to the mead. Let’s channel the mead. What’s the mead saying?
Share some mead wisdom. What have you learnt in your mead researches?
I’m lost in a mead-hole. It’s kinda like a k-hole.
Peasants drank mead. Peasants and monks.
We’re philosophical peasants.
Mead’s the drink for the serfs of the new technofeudalism.
Mead is made from honey, it says here. It’s also know as honey wine.
So it’s a wine?
In its fucking dreams.
What’s the terroir – dead peasants? Turnips? Jesters’ caps? Yorick’s skull? Authentic Python and the Holy Grail mud?
Mead was in the Rig Veda. They called it soma. The ancient Greeks drank it, too. Aristotle writes about it.
I thought they drank wine?
Mead was the drink of choice, in the ancient world. The same in the Dark Ages. Taliesin, the Welsh bard, wrote the Song of Mead. They drank wine in Beowulf, too. And in Germanic poetry. It’s what the heroes drank.
Must have been mead in Newcastle, too. All these monks were here. Back when we lived under Danelaw.
Of course there was mead. Monks kept bees, so they made mead. Newcastle was all about the mead, back in the day.
It’s making a comeback, apparently. The hipsters are all drinking mead.
We should forget philosophy and open a mead bar. Ride the mead revival.
There is no mead revival.
Shouldn’t we drink mead from a flagon? Does anyone have a flagon? On a tankard?
We should have departmental tankards. With our names on each one. And a departmental mead cellar.
Are you getting any mead visions, Fiver?
Mead is the antidote to poison. And lies. Maybe. Can you speak a lie when you’ve got some mead inside you? Just try.
What’s the mead terroir?
It doesn’t have a terroir. It grows from honey.
Honey’s from floral nectar, isn’t it? So it’s from flowers. Which means from the soil – the terroir.
Mead’s, like, nine thousand years old. It’s pre-agriculture. The oldest fermented drink.
We should start a meaderie.
Is that what they’re called?
A meaderie life … I can see it now. Experimenting with fermentation. Adding spices – cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg. Adding herbs – meadowsweet, hops, lavender. Adding fruit – raspberries or blackberries. Fermenting it with grape juice. Or mulling it for Christmas. Serving it warm … Meadsters, that’s what we’d be in another life.
See mead doesn’t have the class associations that wine does. Mead is about the common person. The common peasant.
Wine is Cicero’s drink. Mead is ours. The drink of the common person. Of the vassal. Of the serf. Of the peasant. And that’s what we’ll be, once they bring in digital IDs.
We’d go back to the soil. Back to the earth. Back to the bees.
Shame all the bees are dying. There are only about three left, apparently.
We should revive the ancient Northumbrian production of mead. Learn to learn to keep bees.
The mead life, that’s what I’m dreaming of. A Northumbrian cottage. With a garden of beehives. With a fermentation barrel …
Going round the markets, selling our homemade bottles of mead. Jesmond market, on the bridge. Hexham market, in the marketplace. Do you think we could make a living at that?
We wouldn’t have to go to meetings, anymore. No more Boards of Studies.
Mead’s the taste of summer.
Summer distilled into honey, and then distilled into mead.
Do you think Hölderlin drank mead?
Maybe he should have done.
Wow, it’s fizzy. Fizzy mead. Who knew?
Work in Progress 