What a joyous treat it used to be to crowd into your local on a Sunday lunchtime, full of bustle, chatter, hard, fast drinking (only 2 hours remember ), sausages and cheese chunks on cocktail stick, aah, sheer bliss.
'The best drink of the week' a dear departed friend used to tell me.and he was right. and yet today with extended hours the whole exercise is drawn out, you've no idea when you mate will be there, or perhaps he won't, perhaps his 'partner' has persuaded him to go for a meal in one of those new 'boutique pubs'. You know, the ones which have 'Bar and Kitchen' written on the faux etched glass or Eau de Nil signage..
So, you see what has happened, and what in my view has caused the decimation of decent British Boozers, is the emasculation of man. We all know that the fairer sex has always had the whip hand in most matters, after all they're the ones that meter out the other treats. But the pub was at least one bastion where man could count on fellow man for some respite against the battle of the sexes...
Alas no more. where once we had cockles, pickled eggs and other bartop delicacies we now olives, hummous and other foreign muck - not cheap either.. hell no, the boutique 'Bar & Kitchen' charges like a raging bull in the full knowledge that you will pay-up or pay the consequence for your parsimony upon your return..(yes no more treats for Daddy).
So chaps let's start the backlash now, gird your loins, support your local boozer and eschew any place that cannot serve a decent Ham Egg and Chips for under a tenner ( a fiver preferably). Insist on a Schweppes tonic for her G&T, Walkers cheese and onion crisps, a plastic sword with a cherry in the children's squash, Double Diamond, Harp Lager, Matt Munro in the background, the sounds and smells of the 70s. Hurrah !!
