A woman with two bottles on her head
Spotted in the pub last night
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Category Archives: pubs
Uncongenial
Our nanny government seems to enjoy nothing more than protecting us from ourselves by banning stuff, so doesn’t it do something useful this time and ban amplified music in pubs?
Times: The louder the music in venues, the faster you drink
Loud pop music in bars makes people drink more and down it more quickly, a study in France has shown…
The results, published online in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, show that the louder the music, the more swiftly the drinkers finished their beer, ordered more—or left.
It is entirely possible, Professor [Nicolas Guéguen, Professor of Behavioural sciences at the Université de Bretagne-Sud] admits, that they just found the atmosphere uncongenial, so accelerated their drinking and left.
Remember when you could actually hold a conversation in a pub? It’s getting increasingly harder to do so. It’s time to reclaim our bars from the alco-pop-sipping teenagers who only go there to get blind drunk. An amplified music ban would help achieve this—and protect us from ourselves by decreasing our alcohol intake.
Come on, Gordon, you know you want to!
And, in related news:
Liverpool Echo: Cains owners: We’ll fight to save our beer
… The Toxteth [Cains] brewery yesterday admitted its future as a going concern was in jeopardy after a “perfect storm” conspired against the 158-year-old business…
[Y]esterday their six monthly figures made for painful reading: £4.6m losses; higher raw material and energy costs; and the effects of the smoking ban all took their toll.
My emphasis added. Let it not be said we didn’t see this coming. For the record, Cains is one of my favourite pints.
Round
Fitz in full Ivor Cutler mode.
We hadn’t seen each other since the unnecessary and draconian smoking ban. Sadly, Fitz had to spend most of the evening standing outside the pub in the rain smoking roll-ups. This despite the fact that every single one of the pub’s other customers that evening (i.e. yours truly) had no objection whatsoever to his illegal, evil emissions.
Finally, the penny dropped:
Fitz: I think it must be my round.
Me: In that case, I’ll just have a pint.
Fitz: Are you sure I can’t persuade you to have a half?
Bastion
A pub for grown ups on Monday.
What a fantastic pub! Full of grown-up people enjoying grown-up beer and grown-up food in an altogether grown-up environment.
I was totally out of my depth.
On our way out, we couldn’t believe our luck when we saw a family of four reading the blackboard outside. “Oh, it’s not fair! Children aren’t allowed in!” moaned one of the sprogs.
“Just like it was when I were a lad, kid,” I wish I’d said.
Typo
Local legend has it that the chap putting up the sign had a few pints in the pub mid-way.
Impressive sausage
Carolyn yesterday:
Look at the size of your sausage, Richard! It’s absolutely enormous!
No, I know what you’re thinking, but Carolyn was, in fact, talking about a real sausage which I had ordered as part of a pub lunch in Chester.
The Albion pub, Chester.
THE ENGLISH PUB AT ITS VERY BEST
NOMINATED IN TOP SIX BEST CITY PUBS IN BRITAIN – NATIONAL PUB GUIDE
RECOMMENDED IN ALL MAJOR PUB GUIDES AND PUBLICATIONS OVER MANY YEARS -
A GROWN UPS PUB FOR GROWN UP PEOPLE – NO CHILDREN – FAMILY HOSTILE
Sounded like my kind of pub. I wonder where they stand on the cultural vandalism that is the smoking ban.
See also: More photos from our day out in Chester here, including one of Carolyn in her kinky boots. That one should up the ratings.
Eat, drink and be merry…
…for tomorrow they’ll ban it.
Serves us right for not cutting the smokers a bit of slack. It’s gone to their heads:
BBC: Tax alcohol more says top doctor
Tax on alcohol should be increased to reduce the damage being caused to people’s health, the Chief Medical Officer for England has said…
Increased taxation citing health reasons is already in use with regard to tobacco.
Because, as we all know, increasing taxation was incredibly effective at getting people to give up smoking.
Some Puritans yesterday.
See also: