Pubs bring us together and it’s something you just can’t put a price on
COLSTON CRAWFORD reflects on a good fortnight, meeting with good people in good pubs. We need them more than ever
AS we are left to wonder whether or not further restrictions may yet batter the hospitality industry before Christmas – surely not? – I have been reflecting this last week or so on just how valuable the public house can be for our mental health, for sociability.
It needs to stay that way.
This column’s a bit personal but I think most of us who value pubs can relate to the situations I describe here.
You see, I’ve had a good fortnight, pubswise, not that I get to pubs quite as often as people imagine the writer of a beer column does.
It started in the Smithfield when I met up with the friend I’ve known longest in the world, Pete Mycock, my neighbour when we were both toddlers on Breadsall estate. We’ve both lost our parents now and Pete lives in Cornwall, where he is a brilliant handyman who can turn his hand to anything. We’re chalk and cheese in many ways but we’ll never not be friends and the superb Draught Bass we quaffed with enthusiasm was a common denominator as much as anything else.
Above all, it felt natural to meet not just in one of Derby’s best pubs but one in which his late dad had been a regular.
Moving on, colleagues and I had a get together at the Bless in the city. We were raising a glass to people who had left during the pandemic who never had a traditional leaving do, to new people we had not met because everyone is working from home and to long-standing colleagues we’ve only been talking to online for too long.
We, the organisers that is, feared not many might turn up but a great many did. It was boozy, it was fun, hugely satisfying… and it had a pub at its centre.
Every week, I attend a pub quiz at the Malt in Aston on Trent, where my youngest daughter went to primary school and where I see other parents from those days, although Molly is now 28.
That quiz, at which we compete hard but also laugh a great deal, is as therapeutic as, well, any number of sessions of therapy might be for me. It’s a pub in which I feel completely comfortable and you cannot put a price on that. The best was yet to come.
A rare day off at the same time as my eldest daughter, Sharon, only meant one thing for us. We were headed for a walk that would begin and end at the wonderful Holly Bush at Makeney, with Sharon’s elderly dog Max in tow.
There had been a lot of rain and it was pretty muddy but we were ready for that as we picked out a three-mile route. There are so many routes around that way that you could do everything from a few hundred yards to 10-plus miles and finish back at the pub Dick Turpin is believed to have frequented.
Max, one of the world’s most placid dogs, is a great ice-breaker. We had to sit in the corridor at the Holly Bush on arrival and Max, tired out from his walk, plonked himself down in the way. No-one minded as they stepped over him but they all stopped to speak.
After a while, precious seats became available in the Bush’s famous snug and we settled to baguettes and, Sharon assured me, “the best pint I’ve had in months”, a pale ale from Ilkeston’s Urban Chicken brewery.
A couple of fellas wandered in, debating good naturedly over the beer they might choose, asking our opinion, and we recommended the Urban Chicken beer.
When one finally headed for the bar to order, we got chatting to the other and found, to our delight, that we we were talking to the owner of the near-legendary Scarthin Books in Cromford.
“I run a bookshop in Cromford,” the gentleman told us matter-offactly. I suppose people in the area are familiar with him. We were starstruck.
My grandson, Riley, a prodigious reader way ahead of his age, at 12, had been beside himself with delight when we took him to Scarthin’s for the first time and we showed off the pictures.
Soon, we had to be on our way but it had been a special time and, once again, the common denominator was a brilliant pub which, if the point is not laboured too much by now, is the main point of the article.
The next day, I watched the football team I have supported for 40-odd years, Burton Albion, bow out of the FA Cup with a whimper against Port Vale, a salutary experience.
But the day was salvaged by pubs; first the superb Weighbridge Inn, the micropub near the railway station, where laughter is never in short supply, then by late evening visits to the Old Royal Oak and The Dog in Burton town centre, where the welcome was just as welcomes should be.
The Dog, especially, is an exceptionally pleasant place to be under its new licensees and, for outand-out beer enthusiasts, boasts an exceptional range.
Every one of the pubs mentioned here is different; the quality of service and beer and the way each of them, metaphorically, puts a welcoming arm around customers, the way they are all set up to encourage strangers to talk to each other – that is what they have in common, in keeping with a great many others.
That is what we must never lose, something you cannot put a price on and what, it seems to me, property developers, accountants and all too few politicians understand.
We can but hope that, one day, they will.
It seems to me that property developers, accountants and all too few politicians actually understand pubs