I renewed my acquaintance this evening with Belhaven Best. What a delight after five months slaking my thirst after golf with Kronenburg 1664 and similar bilgewater. There is a chap in the Creuse, an Englishman, who brews what I'm told is a decent drop although I have never got around to tasting it. I shall check it out and if satisfied insist as a condition of renewing my membership that Les Dryades stocks it.

Nursing the first pint of Belhaven I made the acquaintance of Bobo Stenson and his trio, or at least of his music. He plays piano in that jazz marriage made in heaven of piano, double bass and drums. What's more he plays my favourite kind of jazz. I expect it has a name although I don't know what it is. It's the antithesis of trad although it doesn't lack rhythm or melody. Maybe it's the absence of stomping that makes the difference. The sound is crystal clear and clean. I expect you have to say it's modern despite one of their numbers being by Purcell.

Despite loving modern jazz I'm a sucker for costume dramas about the wonderful days of yore when honest yeomen doffed their caps, and butlers and pantrymaids ministered to the needs of the gentry. So visually I adored Brideshead Revisited with its beautiful twenties/thirties costumes and sets and stunning glimpses of gracious living in town and country. But I wasn't so engaged by the presentation of the characters and the story. I'd recently read the book so I was aware of the fact that a few liberties were being taken to condense the whole thing into movie length. No big deal perhaps for a straightforward narrative but Waugh's tale is quite dense and time is needed to allow us to accompany Charles in his journey of discovery through friendship, love, life and religion.

I'll just have to get hold of the highly praised 1981 TV version which I've never seen and which covered the same ground about five times as slowly.