Smoking lock-in
Tuesday, 16. June 2009, 13:08:28
Of course, having only consumed about 20 pints of beer and two bottles of wine over the course of the week-end of my birthday, my Scouse friend Paul Oakes readily agreed to my suggestion of popping out for a swift pint at 10pm on Sunday.
We'd pretty much visited all the really good pubs in Hertford, so I thought I would take him to a nice little pub on the Hertford/Ware border. Unfortunately it only served Greene King ale and although Greene King is a real ale brewer Mr. Oakes has decided that its products need to be vetoed because the company buys up other brewers, keeps their pubs and shuts down their breweries. The fact that 16 new breweries have started operating in the UK already this year, a number far greater than the breweries that Greene King has closed down, is neither here nor there so far as Mr. Oakes is concerned. All breweries must last forever.
(FYI, according to Wikipedia - so the info is probably wrong - Greene King has subsumed Morland, Ridley's, Belhaven and Hardy & Hanson's.)
So we exited the Royal Oak and headed for The Angel, in Ware itself. Same thing, nothing but Greene King.
With the McMullen brewery based in Hertfordshire, there are no shortage of McMullen pubs in the vicinity so we ended up at The Victoria, a canalside pub with two bars.
Oakes proceeded to explain, possibly at excessive length, to the barman why we had bypassed two pubs to get to this one, and the barman nodded politely.
Round about 10:45pm, which presumably is 15 minutes after closing time on a Sunday, the barman surreptitiously sidled up to Oakes and said: "You know what you were saying earlier on about Greene King being bad for the pub business? Well, I think the same thing about smoking. It's killing pubs in this country [must be the passive smoking]. Do you mind if I have a smoke?"
Oakes had no objection, whereupon the barman locked the door and said we were welcome to have another pint. I thought he was offering a freebie, but we had to pay for it. I did get a free packet of crisps (I was driving so could not have another pint), so I can't copmplain.
Mext thing I know, out come about 5 ash trays and everyone in the pub except the dog (a bulldog) and me & Oakes proceeded to light up like it was 1999. Presumably if the dog had been a bassett it would have had a fag too*.
So, the Sunday ended with us enjoying a lock-in, something I have not experienced since the early eighties, having started - now I think of it - with me, Oakes and Rob Thomasson standing outside the Old Cross in Hertford at ten minutes to twelve waiting for the pub to open. It opened late, at five past, by which time we were gone (beers waiting in the fridge).
Bloody liberal licensing laws have taken all the fun out of boozing down the pub.
* For the benefit of any American readers, I should explain that bassett hounds - or was it beagles? - were traditionally used in scientific tests on the effects of smoking. I presume I don't need to explain that the term 'fag' means something different in Britain to what it does in the US?
We'd pretty much visited all the really good pubs in Hertford, so I thought I would take him to a nice little pub on the Hertford/Ware border. Unfortunately it only served Greene King ale and although Greene King is a real ale brewer Mr. Oakes has decided that its products need to be vetoed because the company buys up other brewers, keeps their pubs and shuts down their breweries. The fact that 16 new breweries have started operating in the UK already this year, a number far greater than the breweries that Greene King has closed down, is neither here nor there so far as Mr. Oakes is concerned. All breweries must last forever.
(FYI, according to Wikipedia - so the info is probably wrong - Greene King has subsumed Morland, Ridley's, Belhaven and Hardy & Hanson's.)
So we exited the Royal Oak and headed for The Angel, in Ware itself. Same thing, nothing but Greene King.
With the McMullen brewery based in Hertfordshire, there are no shortage of McMullen pubs in the vicinity so we ended up at The Victoria, a canalside pub with two bars.
Oakes proceeded to explain, possibly at excessive length, to the barman why we had bypassed two pubs to get to this one, and the barman nodded politely.
Round about 10:45pm, which presumably is 15 minutes after closing time on a Sunday, the barman surreptitiously sidled up to Oakes and said: "You know what you were saying earlier on about Greene King being bad for the pub business? Well, I think the same thing about smoking. It's killing pubs in this country [must be the passive smoking]. Do you mind if I have a smoke?"
Oakes had no objection, whereupon the barman locked the door and said we were welcome to have another pint. I thought he was offering a freebie, but we had to pay for it. I did get a free packet of crisps (I was driving so could not have another pint), so I can't copmplain.
Mext thing I know, out come about 5 ash trays and everyone in the pub except the dog (a bulldog) and me & Oakes proceeded to light up like it was 1999. Presumably if the dog had been a bassett it would have had a fag too*.
So, the Sunday ended with us enjoying a lock-in, something I have not experienced since the early eighties, having started - now I think of it - with me, Oakes and Rob Thomasson standing outside the Old Cross in Hertford at ten minutes to twelve waiting for the pub to open. It opened late, at five past, by which time we were gone (beers waiting in the fridge).
Bloody liberal licensing laws have taken all the fun out of boozing down the pub.
* For the benefit of any American readers, I should explain that bassett hounds - or was it beagles? - were traditionally used in scientific tests on the effects of smoking. I presume I don't need to explain that the term 'fag' means something different in Britain to what it does in the US?
WIDGETIZE