We went to our local pub yesterday evening. When I say 'local' I mean one of the closest pubs to our house, about two miles away. I'd heard that the bar was decorated with an amazing quantity of lights and decorations, so we thought we'd go up there in the early evening and have a drink, just the one round before supper, and admire the glitz. We checked the opening times on their website and got in the car and drove over (a round trip of four miles is a long way to walk in the dark to see some Christmas lights), and it was dark and shut. Whatever the website said about opening at 6.00pm on Tuesdays turned out not to apply to Christmas bank holiday Tuesday. We drove home again.
Pubs have a lot to contend with, quite apart from the issue of drink-driving. If the Systems Administrator and I want to have a quiet drink we know a splendid venue. There is a log fire for winter evenings, and a secluded garden for summer. We always get seats, and the chairs are comfortable. There is free wi-fi, the music, if any, is to our taste, and there is no giant television screen on the wall showing football. A friendly cat is likely to come and see us. The drinks are relatively cheap, the food is genuinely home cooked, not out of a food service company van, and nobody will try and charge us £7.95 for sausage and mash. You can see the punchline coming. It's our house. Our friends have equally pleasant and congenial houses, so when we meet up it's generally for a meal in somebody's home.
I do actually like pubs, or at least I like pubs in attractive buildings with quirky characterful decor that doesn't smack of the pub designer's formula, that keep their beer well, don't play loud music, and don't make me feel as though I'm intruding into somebody else's boozer. That rules out a lot of pubs, but still leaves quite a few. When the SA and I are on holiday we go to pubs for lunch or for a pre-supper outing to see some fresh faces before retreating to the self-catering cottage. A not too long country walk with relatives or friends ending at a pub can be very nice as part of a weekend visit. The rest of the time I rarely go to a pub at all. Several of my friends don't like beer, and by extension don't like pubs. When we meet we are more likely to go to an art gallery or garden and a cafe than a pub.
Pubs are supposed to be at the heart of the community, bringing people together. The trouble is, when I consider the people I know and would like to share my spare time with, they are scattered in an arc across Essex and London, and dotted across the rest of the UK. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, compared to the golden days of pubs when everybody lived two streets from where they were born, we can keep in touch by phone and e-mail and text. If we want to see each other it's easy to arrange. We don't have to go and hang about the local pub in the hope of bumping into each other. I'm actually quite keen on community. I take part in beekeepers' events, and the music society, and do talks for the woodland charity and sometimes about gardening or beekeeping, and so meet people living in my area, if not my village. Some are good friends, some people I don't know well but see on a regular basis, others I probably won't see again. Just the same social impulse that would have been filled in the past by going to the pub.
So I fear there are more pub closures to come. I hope the industry will eventually reach an equilibrium, whereby those that are left are the best ones, with good beer and proper food and a nice ambience, which will be able to survive on the trade generated by people celebrating high days and holidays, boosted by extra events like live music and quizzes. If, when the SA and I go out for the day, we can no longer find a pleasant pub to have lunch in, then my life will be diminished and it will serve me right for not having supported my local one, since every pub is somebody's local. But it might make it easier for me by at least posting when it is closed on its website.
No comments:
Post a Comment