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22
WINE
&
DINE
GEORGE THE bARMAN
I love pubs
George James:
I love pubs. I raised myself in them; as a teenager, I skipped school to sit in
dark and dingy corners, with a ten pack of cheap cigarettes and a warm pint
of watery ale and waste away the afternoons.
I
was a jumped up posh boy who wanted to
be a working class hero (self-indulgent, I
know, but I was 16) and pubs were the best
place to escape the trappings of being a
middle class, over sensitive Bob Dylan fan. In
the tired, smelly Victorian buildings of Worcester
I got to mix with all kinds of publicans and
regulars, who at the time were my idols. A constant
of the pub, each had their own particular
chair and staple drink. The staff behind the bar
became like substitute teachers, but instead of
teaching useless things like Maths or English,
TEXT GEORGE JAMEs
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they taught me the important things in life, like
how to roll cigarettes or how to avoid a hangover.
Pubs at this time were going through a revolution.
The Weatherspoons revolution. Weatherspoons
acquire struggling pubs, and because
of the sheer volume that they own are able
to provide cheaper beer, cheaper food, and
constant television. At the time, I used them
too, but I felt bad for every boarded up ‘Queen
Elizabeth’ and ‘Royal Oak’ that couldn’t afford
to compete with a ‘beer and a burger’ for a
fiver. But I soon got over that; after
all Weatherspoons helped keep me
full and drunk at university, and I felt
it was inevitable that pubs, like all
things in the modern world, would
become standardised in order to
survive at all.
A pub seemed like the natural
choice for my first job. I started
work as a bar man/waiter in one of
Britain’s 759 pubs called ‘The Red
Lion’. The Red Lion was a little village
pub, with its own group of regulars,
such as one who came early to tell us
about how he wanted to die. It was
also a chain pub, not Weatherspoons,
but one of its rivals, who shall remain
nameless.
The Red Lion particularly focused
on the family Sunday roast. Sundays
were manic. Everyone wanted a different
sauce to slather over their dry
turkey or crucified roast beef. People
were rude, it smelt, the carpets were
sticky and for the first time in my life
I got tired of the taste of warm beer.
The regulars also stopped being my
hero’s, when it turned out that actually
they were a depressing group
of alcoholics (Who knew?). The staff
were mean and the head chief obviously
had too much gravy in the microwave
to be able to communicate
without sweating and shaking like
he was about to explode. I couldn’t
take the place anymore, I had to get
out, not just the pub but the whole
town, I still wanted to sit in pubs, but
I wanted to do it somewhere where it
didn’t smell faintly of urine. The staff
didn’t like me either, the cracks in my
fake working class exterior were widening.
I asked the chiefs ‘where they
had trained’; I questioned everyone
on what they ‘really’ wanted to do in
life and asked for my staff meal of a
burger to be cooked blue. I eventually
resigned and just in time too, a
month after I quit there was a murder
in the pub toilets.
I went to london. I went to cocktail
bars and nightclubs and trendy bar
café’s in Brick Lane and Soho. They
were great, but they couldn’t give
me what pubs had done. In cocktail
bars you had to pay £8 for a drink
"I wAS A
jUMpEd Up
pOSH bOy
wHO wANT-
Ed TO bE A
wOrkING
cLASS HErO
(SELF-INdULGENT,
I
kNOw, bUT I
wAS 16) ANd
pUbS wErE
THE bEST
pLAcE TO
EScApE THE
TrAppINGS
OF bEING
A MIddLE
cLASS, OVEr
SENSITIVE
bOb dyLAN
FAN."
the size of an espresso. In nightclubs
you had to sit alone for hours on
end while your friends went to try
and attract potential wives, with a
strange tribal dance. In bar café’s you
had to listen to some nineteen year
old girl slaughter Neil Young songs
on an acoustic guitar her dad paid
for. I wanted my newspaper reading,
football watching, anyone can come
in. But I couldn’t go back to warm
beer and sticky carpets either.
But luckily I wasn’t alone. Pubs in
London have been going through
their own revolution in the last ten
years, and have changed beyond recognition.
Particularly in North London.
Landlords everywhere realised
they couldn’t compete with chain
pubs on price, but as the demand is
there for good food and interesting
beers, they can compete on quality.
First I discovered ‘The Flask’ in
Highgate Village, where on the beer
menu are beers such as blue moon;
a wheat beer (which is best served
with an orange slice) or Kwak (which
comes with a glass that has a wooden
handle). Then I stumbled upon
‘The Assembly House’ in Kentish
Town which is great for food and is
super cool inside. Then I needed a
pub to watch football in and was recommended
to go to ‘The Sheephaven
Bay’ in Mornington Crescent, an
Irish pub which not only shows football
but shows Gaelic football.
Pubs are fighting back, and they are
winning. The Common joke outside
of London is that in the capital a pint
of beer will cost you four pounds. It’s
a fair comment because it probably
will, but I will happily pay it, because
I love pubs but I want individual pubs
owned by Landlords and frequented
by everyone, from the sixteen year
olds skipping school to the old man
reading his newspaper.
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