Orwell: Author, Social Critic, Pintathlete

We all read 1984 in high school. I read it in 1984. And if you followed it up with Animal Farm, you'd permanently associate the name "George Orwell" with socio-political commentary. [I've also spent quite a bit of time at Orwell's Pub, but that's a different story.] So who would have figured George Orwell for a Pintathlete? Certainly not me. Nonetheless, Orwell managed to find a little time for some serious thinking about the Perfect Pint Experience. In a 1946 piece for the Evening Standard, he describes his ideal pub in considerable detail, a place called "The Moon Under Water". Although Orwell admits that TMUW is fictitious, you'd never know it by the way he talks about it. You'd swear he had spent many evenings pinting at his favourite watering hole. What's most striking about his account of TMUW is how it lines up with the Pintathlon criteria: atmosphere, service and tap selection. Orwell appropriately ascribes the greatest consideration to atmosphere, in keeping with Pintathlon's 52% weighting on that category. He even gets into some of the detailed attributes like the vessels they serve their beer in, the noise level, or the kinds of decorative fixture that create the right feel. Orwell does go on to talk about how great it is to have kids running around the place. But that's limited to the garden, so I suppose that's OK. It's his dream, after all. The main point is that TMUH is an ideal, a beer Eden of sorts, and Orwell knew of only one pub that even came close to that ideal. This underscores the tagline to Pintathlon - The Quest for the Perfect Pint Experience. Like Orwell, we have yet to experience perfection, but it is this elusive experience that truly drives the Pintathlete to keep searching.