The price of beer

The price of beer has gone up. Sometimes it goes up and sometimes it even goes down.

Partly it depends on which bar you go to and whether or not they know you.

But in the last few years it has definitely gone up. Especially in the supermarkets.

The Determined Cyclist went shopping today to get some veg and decided to stop at the bar to avoid getting absolutely soaked when the sky became very dark.

It's only the second time this year he has been so he asked if the price had gone up. It had.

"Do you normally have a draught beer or a bottle?" she asked. (You can tell it was a long time since we have been).

"I'll have draught," he said, and sadly got out the 1.10€ to pay (previously a euro).

After she'd poured it and he'd paid, she added "The bottles are on offer, only a euro." And she went off laughing as he stood there cursing.

Then he had a long chat to a nice British guy who's been out here a while and they both bemoaned the exorbitant increase in the price of beer. In his village one bar has put the price up by 40% over the last six weeks. But the other bar still charges the same. So now he just uses one bar.

As for me, a couple of months ago I went to La Linea (across the frontier from Gibraltar) and after a hard day in Gib, fell into the bar for a beer.

It was near the frontier so I figured 1.10€ wasn't too much of a rip-off. Next time I went the guy obviously remembered me.

"A draught beer," he says. "Yes, that'll be great," says me. "A euro," he says.

It didn't stop there. The time after that I went to the bus station. There was a great woman in there who on a previous trip looked after my bags when I realised I had been a complete idiot and went hunting my camera which I had left on the bus.

She recognised me again with lots of nice Spanish smiles and I got a small bottle of beer. "Oh, is that 1.25€?" said the assistant (who was taking my money) to the other woman. "No, it's only a euro for her."

Sometimes us women get lucky.....