I took Bartelt to the Royal Exchange in Manchester, once we'd had one of China Town's finest late lunches. Of course, being human, he was blown away by the place. And of course, being Bartelt, he wanted to take pictures of everything, including the pictures in the season's brochure. Yes, he was being even more Mr Beanish than usual. We just sat and had a drink and planned our conquest, through the medium of excellent theatre, of the building. Easy.
We then travelled first class to Bolton, found our lovely accommodation, and went to a twelfth century pub. In our rock 'n' roll way we sat and read our books, mine about the fiscal past, present and future of the USA, his about dragon riders, elves and dwarves.... in the present, I guess. Halfway through his pint, he revealed he was feeling quite drunk and that his cider was a bit odd. It was cloudy. I gave it a sniff: it wasn't cider, it was scrumpy. Dammit, but that barman, who had used a southern accent to talk to Martin The Foreigner, who had seemed so kind, had sold my lightweight director his first pint of scrumpy.
It was pretty urgent that I got him home. He was starting to talk about a further pint of scrumpy. We had to avoid the various bars with offers of exotic shots and the pumping Euro-tunes, the temptations were several for Captain Scrumpied on St Paddy's Day. I took his arm. We were going to get home. And then he stared barking, growling and sometimes whimpering, he started lifting his leg at every opportunity. He wasn't just becoming a dog, he was becoming a drunken dog, a dog of feeble mind.
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