Real Ale?

A few years ago, in a fast food restaurant in London, I ordered a beer with my hamburger. The girl at the counter said they only had root beer and asked if I wanted some of that. Considering myself an open-minded person, I accepted, although I did not know what it was. I had no idea that I wasn’t going to get any beer at all, but a brownish, sticky, syrupy, non-alcoholic type of liquid, one of the worst things I have ever tasted. So much for open-mindedness. Certainly the substance did not have any resemblance to what is normally understood by beer. This is just for those of you who do not believe that language sometimes plays dirty tricks on us.