Flat Beer and Flat Caps
The sad demise of the traditional English pub
Sunday was spent visiting my thirteen month old Godson and his parents in Cambridgeshire. I was introduced to the delights of nappy changes, teletubbies and fits of screaming and gurgling in no apparent order. Child care is not one of my better qualities, I hold a baby like a live grenade and, like a grenade once it’s in my hands I am looking to pass it on as quickly as possible. My godson is surrounded by toys yet, to my and his fathers (also a chef) deep alarm he only ever wants to play with a pan and a wooden spoon!
His father and I decided to celebrate my virtuoso parental performance with a pint in the local village pub. A five minute walk in plummeting temperatures saw us safely inside an old English public house. A welcome reprieve from the stress and strain of bringing up a small child for three hours.
No sooner were we through the door than a small child, screaming in a go-kart nearly ran us over. Good start! We approached the bar, Ethel from Eastenders greeted us with a toothless smile garnished with boils, facial hair and 1970’s NHS glasses. I perused the beer selection, as ever my eyes are drawn towards the Stella but I tell myself I am getting too old for it. I go for a bitter called IPA.
Ethel pulls the flatest pint of brown liquid I have ever seen, I want to congratulate her, in twenty two years of drinking beer that’s the worst I’ve ever had. We find a spot next to the television showing a snooker match. A large dog lays across my feet and the small child continues to grate on my nerves like a dentists drill. As the pub is so quiet the management decide to save some money and turn the heating off. We sit and freeze, my friend puts his jacket on and goes outside for a cigarette, for a moment I consider starting smoking just so I can put my jacket on and feel the warmth of a cigarette lighter.
With typical English stiff upper lip I finish the beer. I am reminded of Thesiger’s account of using sweaty sheepskins as water bottles as he crossed the Empty Quater, the taste was the same but at least he was warm.
I decide that I shall try every beer barring the stella and guiness with the presumption that one has to be alright. I am wrong, all of a sudden the teletubbies seems like a better alternative, my friend runs out of money, we ask if they accept cards, ‘Sorry’, says Ethel, ‘We’re not that modern’, ‘No’ I reply pulling out my wallet to bale my friend out, I remind him of how many years I have been coming to his financial rescue in public houses the length and breadth of the country.
Six gut wrenching beers later and we walk back, freezing and tired. We talk of nights in small pubs in Cumbria with log fires and plates of sausage and mash washed down with a pint of locally brewed ale. A pub run by a landlord who cared about his beer and enjoyed a busy trade as a result of it.
We all bemoan the demise of the English pub but with ones like this whose fault is it?
Miles,
If in doubt, bottled beer is safer. Considering the above I would also have had to check the “Use by” date!
Rod might have said “That’s what happens when you leave Lincolnshire”.
Your friend might consider a Takeover and turn it into a proper good old english country pub.
October 23, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
Miles,
Great read.
I must admit I have not visited a local pub for years, even the one in the village I live in, neither do I intend to.
I think the pub especially the village pub, started its demise several years ago as did village life. I grew up in a small Lincolnshire village, which had three pubs all within a very short walking distance of each other, says a lot for the population at that time supporting three.
It all happened in those three pubs, you wanted a plumber, you went and asked around in the pub, needed a builder, he would be in the pub, at that time everybody knew everybody in that village all because of those pubs. I can remember visiting them with my father, possibly a little too often at times.
The village and the atmosphere changed in those three pubs once people started moving into the area, snapping up what were then cheap houses. At this time you could see the village was changing, people who had lived in the village for years were moving out, the atmosphere in the pubs was not the same, the people moving in were not so chatty or friendly, things were changing, not for the good though. This was the end of village life as I knew it and the local pub.
I think the pub game in these times must be hard, the generation of agricultural workers that visited these places after a hard days work are long gone, most have tried the microwave cookery book, but very few have succeeded in the food game. I suppose those that do make a go of it are relying on the younger generation to spend the parents hard earnt cash on a Friday or Saturday night, and then for most there is the expense full stop of a night on the razzle. I mean at the end of the day there are better places to spend your cash than a pub, though I will be the first to admit it took me a few years to realise.
October 23, 2007 @ 2:42 pm
Christine,
I did eventually succumb to a bottle of Newcastle Brown! But then why should I have to?
Miles
October 23, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
SC,
Excellent comment thanks. You make some very valid points, I don’t believe people in general socialise as they used to, in or out of a pub. I don’t think the smoking ban will do many favours either. Pubs thrived on the working class man having a beer and a smoke but at £5+ for two beers how do they expect to sustain a worthwhile trade.
Thanks again.
Miles
October 23, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
“Smoking Ban and a Fiver for Two Beers”.
Why ban smoking anyway, especially in a pub, when everyone knows a pint and a smoke for most drinkers go together, you can-not have one without the other. And another thing have you noticed the state of the streets since this smoking ban, everywhere you go you are treading in dog-ends. I know we have to keep everyone happy, but to ban smoking in a pub, especially when the sort of people that moan about smoking “would never be seen in a pub”. I can remember a couple of years ago being out for lunch, which was only one of these microwave cremate it-in a bag type places, anyway it had smoking and non-smoking, needless to say everyone was crammed into the smoking section of the establishment, along with one non-smoker, who sat there winging and whining about the smoke, why were they there, why did they not go in the non-smoking part, anyway they were eventually told, “nice-one”.
October 23, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
SC,
I remember when pubs had an area for the drinking and smoking man/woman to go, usually a smaller bar next to the main bar and away from the lounge.
It didn’t seem too complicated then!
Miles
October 23, 2007 @ 11:02 pm