A controversial standpoint and a pizza-making mishap...

The day before yesterday, my wife and I made pizza. It was great fun, pretty straightforward and absolutely delicious too, but something bad did happen, as illustrated in the above photo - Yoko dropped a piece of cheese into my shandy.

Now, I can already hear the screams from friends and strangers - into your what?!

The fact is, despite the fact that I enjoy beer immensely, as the likes of Diamond, Johnny Alpha and Gerard can attest, I firmly believe that shandy deserves a better reputation than it's currently got. After all, what's so bad about shandy? Beer with a little lemonade tastes grand, and provides an alternative to beer when you don't necessarily want to buzz.

Growing up where I did, and going to the high school I did, shandy was always in the background, but never partaken by anyone that didn't much fancy a good kicking. Shandy was seen as something your deeply unfashionable Great Uncle would order from a Sunday pub, and was deeply believed to be the sole reserve of limp-wristed fairies. Even mentioning shandy at high school would guarantee you at the very least a dead arm and a long-term place in the ridicule section of your friends brains.

I think everyone has been duped. There's nothing wrong with shandy. Lots of people drink shandy as an addition to their regular compliments of beer and spirits. And even those that can't face proper beer, does that make them somehow inferior people? Can you still be a real man and drink shandy? Of course.