its okay if stubby holders are your friends

good ol stubbie holders eh. who knew you could get so much enjoyment from a cheap piece of screen printed wetsuit sewed together?

i come from a long line of beer drinkers. real beer drinkers that is. none of this imported, cant pronounce it properly, i'm only having 1, designer bottle, low carb, low alcohol, light bubbles with a twist of lime bullshit. twist of lime! we're not in mexico anymore toto.

there is only one way to say beer in my family and that's 'VB'. those tasty hand grenades are unbeatable. but its not just about the beer. its about the culture of drinking beer. that fair dinkum sit down feet up kind of relaxation after a hard half day's work.

beer isn't beer unless it almost frozen. that's why, in our family, beer had it's own fridge. those kind of temperatures don't go down too well with bowling ball bogan lettuce and its distant cousin celery. uh uh.

if we were having a party the beer was moved out of the fridge and into iced packed eskies. as we all know, especially living in darwin, nothin tastes crisper than a cold one fresh off the ice. whoa oh oh its magic.

so you got your beer and its not only ice cold, its covered with small chunks of ice like a polar bear waking up from its chilly slumber. problem... how in jack frost's name do you hold this?

you could set it down on the table and watch it sweat an olympic size pool of water moistening elbows and shirt sleeves in its slippery wake. wait. hang about. why dont ya chuck some of this spare bit of wetsuit round its belly and keep ya hand from losing all circulation and put a bit underneath, catch some of that dripstone cliffs? great idea mate. you bloody beauty.

my dad got an old bit of piping, sealed off one end, cut a stubbie holder sized hole above the seal, nailed it to the wall. its stubbie holder dispenser. it fits like 10 regulation sized holders. ripper.

our humble little household they mean more, so much more. when my better half and i did a road trip from melbourne to darwin i took one photo a 1/2 hour in. then the camera went flat. we had no cord to recharge. dang.

oh i know. at every roadhouse, road stop, pub, club, hotel, motel, gift store, op shop, tip shop, tire repair shop (my fault) we would buy a stubbie holder to remember fondly (except that last place) all the fine establishments we visited to eat, drink, sleep or bomb the dunny.

what a fine collection we had saved. some would call it a practical photo album.

what's the moral of this story?

drink cold beer. tastes so good, once it hits your lips.