POTTERS BAR

MERVYN’S MUSINGS
Local historian Mervyn Edwards with his thoughts on life, the universe and local pubs
GO SMELL A CLUB!
Recent CAMRA discussions have embraced the notion of
promoting Real Ale in workingmen’s clubs, a bally good
idea that I wholeheartedly endorse.
Clubs and yours truly go back a long time. When I was
a nipper, my parents would take me up to Wolstanton
Working Man’s Club on the High Street, it being the
case that it wasn’t always easy to acquire the services
of a babysitter. Back in the 1960’s, the local clubs were
enjoying their hey-day. Many were built or re-built during
this period, and people like Dick Scarratt were writing
regular columns in the much-missed Newcastle Times
newspaper about the various goings-on in Clubland: the
days out to Blackpool, the Christmas parties, mounting
issues with kids running around the concert rooms when
blokes were bringing large trays of Double Diamond back
from the bar, etc.
Those nights at the club – which were a tremendous
respite for my parents, both of whom had to work long
hours in order to muster sufficient spondulicks to buy
me models of Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds and Ken
Dodd’s Big Doddy Book of 1966 – seemed interminable. I
recall the endless games of Bingo, during which time I had
to be kept quiet, pacified by bottles of Hubbly Bubbly and
packets of Golden Wonder crisps. This was some degree
of compensation for the torture of having my eyes sting
all night, it being the case that virtually everyone and his
granny smoked in those days. Packets of Woodbines and
Park Drive sat on most tables and the fug of tobacco hung
heavily in the air. The gents’ toilets at Wolstanton WMC
were at the rear of the premises, and the top windows
were often open for ventilation purposes. Through these
came the “breath” of the club – expelled fag-smoke that
you could smell about twenty yards down Russell Street,
mingling with the pong of empty beer bottles stacked in
wooden crates, plonked in close proximity to the dustbins.
I remember the smells of my youth as if it were yesterday:
the over-boiled cabbage they used to serve to Wolstanton
Grammar School lads; the crisp, clean odour of a brand
new Beano Annual at Christmas; and the manly whiff of
beer and fags on my Dad, following his Sunday lunchtime
session at the club. To me, it was what all fathers
should smell like – strong, pungent, earthy. The whiff of
dependability with a faint suggestion of Brylcream.
It was not until twenty-odd years later that a friend of
mine, remarking on the beer and baccy odour that always
escaped from the front door of The Globe in Tunstall, said
to me: “If they could bottle THAT, I’d use it as aftershave.”
I know what he meant.
My first taste of beer came in the late 1960s when Dad
offered me a sip from his dimpled pint mug. My first
reaction was, “Now I know why they call this bitter.” I
hated the sharp flavour and couldn’t have imagined then
that one day I would guzzle beer with zest and gusto. My
infant tongue would have been ill-equipped to assess the
standard of the WMC beer on offer in those days, but in
years to come, I began to wonder how so many clubs got
away with selling such pretty vapid stuff.
Thankfully, much has improved since then, and though
the Real Ale Revolution has not properly embraced clubs
to date, yet do I hear the distant drums, the shrill cries
of the insurgents and the rumble of the tumbrils. Several
Wolstanton clubs now sell Real Ale of some description,
and among the best pints I have sampled at Wolstanton
Social Club in Pitgreen Lane has been the highly satisfying
Ringwood’s Fortyniner.
I’d like to think that this has been achieved by CAMRA’s
capacity to educate people as to what a quality pint
actually is - though it perplexes me that some old blokes
have been drinking John Smith’s bitter for years and
swear by it rather than at it.
I don’t see that CAMRA – for all its present introspection
and talk of Revitalisation – is doing much wrong, but I think
there’s a good opportunity to push back the frontiers and
sell such as Sarah Hughes’ Dark Ruby in clubs. Though
not while the Bingo’s on, of course.
18 POTTERS BAR AUTUMN 2016