Taking off my mirrored 2009 Beer Goggles to rub them on my frosty Bath Ales bar towel seems as good a point as any to look back on this journey so far.
And looking back through my reports of visits to a number of pubs, as well as the news files, suggests I have picked up on a battle raging, often underground, in the pub sector - between the corporate big boys, the McPubs, and a cherished English tradition which goes back centuries. Even in a sober moment, it does not seem overly dramatic to say this is a struggle which will transform an important part of the fabric of daily life...
A corporate pub in full fizzle, popular and profitable, often puts me in mind of that lie used by soured lovers the world over: it's not you, it's me.
To give one example, and as the North Devon Journal has already reported, The North Country Inn will re-open as a bar and food place. Nothing wrong with that. In March 2009 I blogged about why I thought that pub, the oldest in town and a handsome building with great cosy pub potential, had not thrived, to say the least.
What about our historical pubs, with their cosy corners and dusty shelves? What about the landlord or landlady who can make a living over a number of years without being squeezed to death by the money wizards? What about local character? These are questions addressed by Camra's latest battle with the OFT (see link earlier this month).
The truth is that when I'm somewhere like the Water Gate, which is the new Wetherspoon's pub on the Strand in Barnstaple, North Devon, I think what those soured lovers are really thinking: it's not me, it's you. And the customer is always right. Right?
Well, that rubs all ways, doesn't it? The gin palaces which have come to dominate English towns are popular, much as I, a pub fanatic, dislike them.
It was 8.30pm on a dank midwinter weekday when I arrived at the Water Gate to meet friends. They had got there before me and were half-way through pints of Christmas ales. I stood at the bar for what felt like half my lifetime while the barstaff, presumably new, tried to cope. As before, I had walked past a few almost-empty local boozers on my way to investigate an unvisited pub. The Water Gate was thrumming.
The beer was good. It always is in a Wetherspoon pub. They do beer like Ronald McDonald does burgers. Consistency is the thing.
But the consistency of the ale quality is mirrored in consistency in everything else; that is what happens with big business, a hangover from the industrial revolution, and manufacturing. The problem is that consistency in a business so closely tied to emotion, community, alcohol, and history can lead to blandness.
A pub should never be bland. A good pub can be cheap, and I believe Wetherspoon's decor and signage are always the epitome of corporate cheapness, in appearance if not in actual cost - but cheap with character.
We took our Christmas ales, which now all have unfunny-funny names like Santa's Testes or Christ Froth, to a table near the dancefloor. A dancefloor. My friends seemed intent on being near the horrific clatter.
"What in the name of holy God is this awful noise?," I asked my friend.
"This is Beyonce," he replied.
It was a name I had read in the broadsheet newspapers and heard on the tongues of excitable radio Five Live presenters. Bee-on-say. But I had before then managed to avoid ever hearing her at full tilt and volume. This was a new and cruel punishment for the privileged western man, I realised. Which sinister backroom broiler dreamed into reality this nightmare? I sipped my Sleighbell Shagger, or whatever it was called, and pondered the scene.
Men in smart slacks with hairstyles were dancing to bee-on-say, trying to lure pretty young women, also with hairstyles. A reasonable human endeavour, of course, but the music prevented Pub Conversation. I felt like I was in the airport lounge of a disturbed and restless outpost. This was not a time and place for men to discuss the finer points of life and death and sport and soured love affairs.
A Hamlet-y blanket of gloom: When is a pub not a pub? To pub or not to pub? But is that the question? After all, people were wedding-dancing and to my trained journalist's eyes they seemed to be having a fine old jig of it. Only a Scrooge would complain about that.
After all this, it is fair to say my love of the traditional English pub is conservative and old-fashioned in some ways but perhaps also chimes with a climate-change enforced future of modest living and a focus on local production and small communities.
The Water Gate is also conservative and old-fashioned in some ways: it provides cheap booze (responsibly, of course), loud music and lots of space to pack in the punters, much as the gin palaces of Victorian era (silly buggers like me complained about them too). The town now has two town centre Wetherspoon's.
Corporate alehouse. Traditional pub. Where is the harm in either type? My theory is that places like the Water Gate draw custom from individual and historical local pubs, which are superior in character and atmosphere and which are something to cherish. They also prevent the resurrection of that type of pub purely because there is only so much beer money to go around in a small town.
In many ways, it's too late. Barnstaple's oldest pub, the North Country Inn, was empty for months after the pub company and/or its tenants were unable to make it thrive. As I say, I have blogged about my visit there during its last, desperate, hours; it was like visiting a dear old relative in a hospice.
There is, however, a good way to improve your pub environment: choose wisely where to spend your money. When there is only one type of pub left, you will not have that privilege.
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