If pubs did not exist, humans would invent them – come to think of it, humans did invent them. In the UK, a ‘public house’ is not like a ‘bar’ as the term is understood in other countries. Cut to the chase, we’re talking about premises in which alcohol is consumed and crisps are eaten.
There is a multiplicity of terms for establishments serving different combinations food and drink in different permutations in different cultures and at different times of day. And here are innumerable synonyms for the UK’s ‘pub’ – ‘tavern’, ‘inn’, ‘alehouse’, ‘boozer‘, ‘hostelry’, ‘rub a dub’ … I could go on … but I won’t.
It’s pretty surprising that, despite the heterogeneous origins of our language and culture, a pub in medieval times, say the twelfth century Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham, which claims to be ‘the oldest inn in England’ would be largely recognisable to a modern drinker – a lout hogging the darts board, unfriendly locals eyeing up crusaders who had popped in for a quick one, the jukebox playing ghastly lute music. (I made that last one up!)
This is not the place to describe the customs and practices of the English pub – the ‘invisible queue’, convention of the melee around the bar (ignore that at your peril), their peculiar relationship with food, coffee and children, those English institutions ‘last orders’ and ‘lock-ins’, how layouts and terminologies have evolved over the centuries and how these subtle conventions are imprinted within our culture and how we understand ourselves. Let’s assume these as a given.
Me and pubs go back a long way. I was born the in the late 1950s. When I was a child, my parents would leave me outside, in the car, when they went for a drink during Saturday shopping, or one of their Sunday ‘drives’. My dad only ever drank bitter, my mum Barley Wine – syrupy beer of almost lethal potency.
Having selected the location for their libation, my dad would periodically bring soft drinks and packets of crisps to the car, in which I had been left, to check that I was all right. That would count as abusive behaviour today. Times have certainly changed. This is not a criticism of my parents by the way – it was normal behaviour in those more innocent times.
That’s how my relationship with beer began, at first surreptitiously. It has been the longest and most constant relationship of my life. I have attempted to be faithful to my dad’s tipple, but it’s getting harder and harder, with rise of pale ales (not as they used to be) and ‘craft beers’.
Note: in my own submission, I am not an absolutist, or a beer bore, just a person of my generation. I never really took to lager, or daily showers instead of weekly baths, or moisturising creams. I like my beer to be bitter and to be called bitter.
Quite often, for me, sitting in pub provides the starting point of a poem. For me, the optimum point of creativity is after two pints. The first pint is just a warm-up. I maintain that beer should go into your body at room temperature, in order to work its alchemy. After two pints, you either want to stay or to leave. You may be putting some thoughts and lines together, in your head. With luck you have written them down in a retrievable form. Notebooks are good. It took me years of fumbling in my pockets for scraps of paper to realise that.
After three pints, you have reached the point of no return and recording lucid thought is unlikely. Imaginative fluidity has surpassed cognitive and motor skills. Landing point has now been reached – the ears have become attuned to the thud of darts and the blurred banality of Sky Sports, the palate has adapted to the texture and flavour of the pub’s chosen crisp brand and the ears to the treasures and surprises of the juke box.
Isn’t being ‘in the moment’ poetry it itself – the state of grace that we are all seeking. We are all both insiders and outsiders in different contexts and It’s possible to experience an epiphany, and, later, to record it. That’s what art does. ‘Emotion recollected in tranquility,’ as Wordsworth, explained.
Ultimately, it’s more important that people get along and don’t kill each than poems are written or paintings painted. Pubs offer us an opportunity to sit cheerfully with other people, commenting on the news, or a football game, or learning how to zumba, secure in shared identity. Isn't that what we all want – whether it's in the Frog and Duckpond, the Dog and Disc Drive or the Angry Vegan?
Search for the perfect pub
In 1946, George Orwell, wrote a column for the London Evening Standard, outlining the characteristics of his perfect pub. He chose to call it the Moon Under Water. But it didn’t exist. The place that he described was actually a composite of all of his favourite elements – you know, the cozy log fire, the dimpled mug with a handle, the absence of boozed-up rowdies. He reflected, sadly, that all of them are almost never found in the same place.
He wrote: ‘If anyone knows of a pub that has draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, a garden, motherly barmaids and no radio, I should be glad to hear of it, even though its name were something as prosaic as the Red Lion or the Railway Arms.’
I suspect, from the evidence of his ruminations, that Orwell would have liked J.D. Wetherspoon’s pubs. The chain began in 1979. Its business model, cheap well-served pints for a broad cross-section of the population and affordable, no-frills food served all day long – has undoubtedly benefited from the poverty and economic inequality that deepened since Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.
Ironically, or possibly not, the owner of the chain, Tim Martin, has always been a fervent Brexit believer (although he has recently professed that it was the ‘wrong kind’ of Brexit). His leave credentials caused some people to boycott his pubs. I did, briefly, but was lured back in.
I’m pretty sure that Orwell, an old-Etonian and a puritan and an outsider both to his own class and to the working class, would have enjoyed drinking in a Wetherspoon’s pub. Their characteristics tick off almost all of his Evening Standard wish-list – the absence of music, generally decorous behaviour, plain homely food and tobacco-friendliness, for example. There’s nearly always a garden to smoke in.
The fug of proletarian solidarity in a ’Spoons would undoubtedly have put a contented smile on Orwell’s face. He would have gone outside for his roll-ups. Funny thing is, they don’t work for me – creatively. I’ve often tried writing poems in Mr Martin’s establishments and they always come out the same. They evoke most strongly sitting in the waiting room of a bus station or an A&E department, suffering from a lingering chronic affliction. There’s always a melancholic feeling of failure and hopelessness – a suspicion that that life is going on elsewhere. Maybe it’s the low lighting, or the smell of instiutional food, or the laminated menus. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Do we ever find our ‘perfect pub’? I have a feeling that some people have. It may be close to their house, literally their ‘local’. They may have chosen their house because of a particular pub or have been gifted it by serendipity. I haven't found mine. Yet. I am still searching. I am drinking hopefully.
Will Hatchett has been a journalist since 1986 He was editor of Environmental Health News from 1998 until 2018 and his written for many publications including The Guardian and The Observer. The views expressed here are purely his own. Or are they?
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