Dirty burgers from questionable sources, late-night pizza dripping with cheese, sticky toffee pudding swimming in custard. For 27 years I stuffed my face with the lot.
Then a doctor dropped the coeliac bomb. And my diet changed overnight. Imagine Ronald McDonald waking in Gwyneth Paltrow’s body. Or if Hannibal Lecter was put on a raw juice diet.
I missed so much. Cake, obviously. But the biggest loss – the one that felt like a punch to my world-weary guts – was beer. Sweet, foaming, nut-brown beer.
I hadn’t always been a fan. I remember my first encounter, aged 13, sharing warm sips with my friend from an out-of-date dusty can of John Smiths we’d nicked from her garage. We both agreed it was vile but savoured every last, disgusting mouthful.
My teenage years in the 90s were drenched with the northern drinks of choice: half a cider and black, peach schnapps, Taboo and lemonade, Kryptonite-green 20:20, syrupy Aftershock, pints of Blastaway with a straw. Beer was for old blokes.
Slowly I began to see the error of my ways. I worked in many pubs before, during and after university. I still didn’t drink it but I strove to pour the perfect pint. The names of the beers made me laugh (Crossbuttock! Bishop’s Finger! Hoptimus Prime! Bitter and Twisted!). The people who drank real ales were nicer than the people who drank Stella.
My gateway beer was Hoegaarden. I could barely get my fingers around the fat, chunky pint glass. It was crisp and ice-cold and all the better for a wedge of lemon chucked in it. I developed a suggestion of a beer belly. I’m still not sure if it was the genuine article or simply wheat-fuelled bloating.
I went on a brewery tour for my dad’s 60th at Jennings Brewery in Cockermouth in the Lakes. I saw the work that went into making it and the pride people took in it. I breathed in lungfuls of air thick with hops and barley, ate pies and peas and laughed over pints of Cumberland Ale. Beer was interesting.
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But my love was cemented after I landed my first job on a regional paper on the south coast. The newsroom was filled with big sweary men with beards. One looked like Bluto and played the squeezebox.
I was soon out drinking with them in smoky real ale pubs – meeting people, making friends, finding stories. I became hooked on Harveys – an out-of-your-mind brilliant ale from an independent brewery in Lewes in Sussex.One pint wasn’t quite enough. Sometimes six wasn’t. I could match Bluto pint for pint. (I wonder if this was because my body wasn’t absorbing the alcohol properly due to my ruined intestines. Or that I have the constitution of a small elephant. Or a large fish.)
I sought out CAMRA pubs, bought books and amassed a collection of amusing beer mats. Beer gardens were for beer, not this wine nonsense.
And then she was taken away from me. The only alcoholic drink NOT safe for coeliacs. And it means you’ve got to watch out for soft drinks in pubs, too, as nozzles can be contaminated making shandies. Curses.
A few months after I was diagnosed, I went to a work Christmas party… at a beer festival. The cider had dried up by the time I arrived. I felt like a priest at the Playboy Mansion. The organisers took pity on me and fed me free pints of wine.
But things are looking up. I still can’t go into a pub and order a pint of gluten-free beer. But after eight beer-free years, I’ve discovered Wold Top Brewery, in East Yorkshire. It has three gluten-free beers. THREE. Against the Grain, Scarborough Fair IPA and Marmalade Porter. And I can buy them from a local deli.
It’s like I’ve been reunited with an old friend. It’s emotional. And that’s not the beer talking.
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Written by Kay Harrison, Journalist and director of The Safer Eating Company, Coeliac disease