Landlady who served up insults to cherish
sir – I was amused by Christopher Bird’s letter (September 3), in which he reminisced about the Ring o’ Bells pub in the parish of Widcombe, and its landlady Rosie.
Rosie was a legend in her own lifetime, and when she died her obituary in the local paper fondly described the Ring o’ Bells as the pub where the customer was always wrong. It went on to say that people came from miles around to be insulted by the landlady.
On one occasion I went to the pub at lunchtime to meet my husband. I was late arriving, and when I got there my husband was eating a pie. He got up to go to the bar with me, and Rosie’s cat jumped up on the table, knocked his pie to the floor, and then started to eat it. Rosie wouldn’t give my husband another pie. “You should have ate the bloody thing,” she said.
The Ring o’ Bells, alas, has gone the way of many an old boozer, and is now an upmarket gastropub. But at least the customers no longer have to worry about the cat stealing their lunch.
Irene Murdoch
Bath