Halloween Dark Ale... by Tony Walker

A northern lad takes a cheap room above a Wapping pub in ’87, where the Thames presses at the windows like weather. He wants to be a journalist not a barman, but he needs the money... He learns. that the cellar has secrets and that the beer is popular. Especially the Thames Halloween Dark Ale.

https://www.classicghost.com/supernatural-stories-by-tony-walker

I now discuss my own stories only with this list. You chose to hear from me, which makes it the right place for process notes. In wider forums the audience is mixed and the result is usually noise.

When I lived in London I spent a great deal of time in riverside pubs. The Prospect of Whitby in Wapping was the favourite. An Australian friend lived two doors down while working at the Embassy, so I was often there. The area had already begun to gentrify, yet the river still felt close. Execution Dock sits a short walk away, and the Thames presses at those windows with a physical presence. That combination of history and atmosphere lodges in the mind.

Greenwich offers the same quality from a different bend in the river. In winter you can sit with a pint while the light sinks, the mist thickens, and the barge lights drift past. If you go, use the public river ferry run by Transport for London. It is slower than the Tube but the view pays you back. Wapping has lost some character through polish, although the Captain Kidd and nearby streets still carry the old Navy and pirate associations that attract a writer’s attention.

The story “Thames Halloween Dark Ale” began as an attempt to pin down that riverside mood. Many stories begin with a vibe. This certainly is one. I adore this time of year as the dark begins to gather (by January I'm sick of it though...).

So vibe, but also I suppose, in this story, there is also a clear nod to Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of although the machinery is different. We are not in pie territory. We are in beer and blood instead of meat.

Another influence (though while writing I didn't think of it) is from Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark treats beer as myth without irony and ties it to the fate of a city under siege. If you haven't read that book, you should. Pretty much anything he wrote was good. But the power of beer is a real thing. It saved Vienna from the Turks and it could save you too. Depends how much you drink of it I suppose.

The detail about heads of beer is true. I worked in bars in both north and south. In Britain, attitudes to a beer head diverge by region. Northerners expect a firm collar of foam. Southerners often prefer a flatter top and call it honest measure. I learned this while pulling pints in both places. In the north I was accused of ruining the beer when I poured too clean a top. In the south I was to off for wasting volume with foam. These habits seem trivial, yet they are the kind of details a reader recognises without effort.

If you are in London, try the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping and the Captain Kidd nearby. Visit Greenwich on a cold evening, then take the river ferry back into town. If you wish to add a shiver, read about Execution Dock and then stand by the water. The place will explain itself.