Time I brushed off the old Beer In Music Project as that the same theme has now been announced as the next topic for The Session to be held 2 November 2007.

Good thing, too, as while I am obviously having a lesson in UK culture these days here at beer blog HQ, in large part at the direction and correction (youch!) of Stonch as well as from Paul's festive posts, there is so much more to learn. And even with all that quality contemporary English fluid anthropology, this story remains a bit odd to me - a town council in Lincolnshire considering installing a beer celler in its town hall to stop wasting the stuff:

More than £1,300 of town council money is being poured down the drain each year – in stale beer. The amount of drink wasted at the Festival Hall has emerged as a justifiction for turning old public toilets into a cellar. Steward Karen Richardson said that increasingly bookings were cancelled because of bad beer but that a cellar would undoubtedly help.

While cellar work does seem to be a big issue in the town, I am not sure why the local council has so much beer and why it goes bad. But the real story (and a bit of a hint) may be that the town is allegedly the scene of one of the greatest boozy pop tunes of the last 50 years:

The 1973 Elton John hit "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" is rumoured to have been inspired by the Aston Arms on the market square although there are similar claims for pubs in Louth and Grimsby (all places where [song]writer Bernie Taupin once lived).

You know, that is almost a dollar per resident per year of lost beer and given that it might have been the site of such a crucial event in beer and music, one you would hope the community would get behind the plan. You know, maybe they could even spend a little less on the closed circuit surveillance of each other...though given the song maybe that is as good a use of public funds as any.

But I still don't really understand why the beer is going bad.