Music in a Local Pub

After a very pleasant lunch at Highgrove, we had something very different planned for the evening. One of my friend's colleagues plays guitar in a band, and that night just two of them were entertaining at a pub called the Cross Hands on the outskirts of Bristol. It was Johnny on guitar and Steve on vocals, set up at one end of a bar. They were playing punk and ska with a bit of Elvis thrown in.
I wasn't much of a fan of punk in the 70s - as far as I was concerned it was music for people who couldn't sing - so I was surprised to find that I actually knew a lot of the songs they played, such as songs by Madness (Johnny had a fez with 'Madness' written on the front of it, and a tassle that kept dangling in his face). And I was singing along loudly to Tainted Love - it was the favourite song of one of my housemates at college, so I learned all the words by osmosis because they played it all the time.
It was a real ale pub, the sort with pump clips hung up all round the bar, and I was pleased to find Uley Bitter there. It was also a real locals pub - in the afternoon they'd held a colouring in competition for the local kids, with prizes of selection boxes, and there were still a few boxes hanging around. One or two of them even had some chocolate still in them - one of my friends bagged a finger of Fudge, and I got a Wispa bar!
Steve's (adult) step-daughter was there, pretending to play a toy saxophone, and very enthusiastically encouraging people to get up and dance - which we did, though there wasn't a lot of room.
It was a really fun evening, and it was nice to meet Johnny, as we'd heard so much about him from the friend who works with him.

Boscastle

On the Sunday of the Pagan Conference, we all went down to Boscastle for the day. Boscastle is a small coastal village which is home to the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, and they had agreed to let Conference goers into the museum free when we showed them our badges.
There are a lot of artefacts relating to the history of witchcraft, and information on famous witches of the past. One room is done out as a typical witch's cottage, with a tape on in the background talking about charms and spells. Upstairs is a case full of 'poppets' with pins in them - one sad case was a doll dressed as a nurse, with a nail through her belly, apparently made in 1941 by a nurse who had become pregnant, and who was hoping to cause a miscarriage.
Everywhere we looked there was something interesting, like the figure with a goats' head mask, holding a stang, (a sort of trident cum pitchfork) which was used in ritual magic.
It's a fascinating place, and we didn't really spend enough time there, because the Gloucestershire Pagans had booked lunch for 1pm at the nearby Cobweb pub, for 26 of us. The carvery was pretty good, and the pub itself was all flagged floors, low beams and local beer.
By the time we'd finished lunch the weather had worsened, but I was determined to get to the end of the harbour. I left my friends either sheltering in a gift shop or struggling along the path behind me, while I leaned into the wind, felt the hailstone coming in horizontally on my face, and danced along the path to the first harbour wall.
Up there, even I thought it was too windy to go any further, but I did take a photo to prove I'd been that far:

Back in the village, I treated myself to a yarn bowl from Roger the Potter at Boscastle Pottery. It's decorated in their unique mochaware style (with the use of a secret herb to make the tree like markings on the purple and green glaze). I've already used it to keep my ball of wool from rolling around the floor while I'm using my lucet.

Victorian Pubs of London

It was research for my story, honest!
The Young Man told me he knew of some wonderful Victorian pubs in the centre of London, which would be just perfect for some scenes in the story I'm writing.
And Victorian pubs are cool anyway.
So he took me to the Salisbury:

This is a magnificent pub, all etched glass mirrors inside, with a staircase with wrought iron bannisters, lots of brass candelabra, and a white marble top to the bar. They've also been serving fish and chips since 1860, so what to have for lunch was an easy decision! The fish and chips were really good. And it had all the features I wanted my fictional pub to have - we could even point to the table where my characters sat down for a drink!

Having enjoyed a real Victorian pub, we waddled across the road (full of fish and chips) to a fake Victorian pub. Mr Fogg's Tavern is also a very pleasant place to have a drink. It's a bit lower class compared to the Salisbury - the bar top is zinc rather than marble - and there are all sorts of things suspended from the ceiling, including a model Chinese junk and a spinning wheel!

I had a half of Whitstable stout, which was very nice, and admired the barmaid's Victorian skirt.

Another wonderful Victorian pub nearby is the Princess Louise, which has excellent tiling, snugs right up against the bar, and more etched glass:

While we were near the British Museum we went into the Plough, which is not far from the Atlantis Bookshop - we went in there because I remembered that they have a portrait of Macgregor Mathers in the shop, who was one of the leading lights of the Order of the Golden Dawn, and he has a cameo role in my story. This pub has an upstairs room that was once used as a meeting place for London pagans. The beer I chose was Naked Ladies from Twickenham.

On the last full day I was in London, I foolishly failed to pack my raincoat in my backpack, and when we got off the bus near Trafalgar Square in the afternoon, the rain was bouncing down! Fortunately, the bus stop was right next to The Old Shades, and we huddled in the doorway for a moment or two before deciding that we might as well enjoy a half there while we waited for the rain to ease off. This pub dates from around 1898, with lots of wood panelling and pictures of Prime Ministers around the walls. The beers we drank were Trumans and Lewes Castle.
On the back window ledge there's a shelf of books, including a set of four that had got separated. I embarrassed the Young Man by insisting on leaning over a table of other customers, with the words: "I'm sorry - I work in a bookshop!" and putting the set back together again!

The Antigallican

Just down the road from the Woolwich Infant - and I think on the same bus route - is the Antigallican.
This was a name so unusual that I had to look it up, as well.
It seems that xenophobia is nothing new. The Anti-Gallican Society was formed around 1745 (according to the British Museum website, which holds a badge of one of the Presidents of the Society), to oppose French imports and French cultural influence in society. They also gave prizes for local products - a sort of early "I'm Backing Britain" campaign. The badge in the British Museum shows St George spearing the French flag.
A blog called Caroline's Miscellany mentions the pub, back in 2009.

The Woolwich Infant

In London recently, I was sitting in the top of a bus going through Woolwich when I noticed an old pub sign on the wall up above a row of shops near Woolwich Market. The pub had been called The Woolwich Infant, and had sold Courage beers.
It's such an unusual name that I looked it up.
The original Woolwich Infant was a 12 inch bore cannon, made at the nearby Woolwich Dockyards. It was designed to fire a 2 foot 6 inch long cartridge with 130lb of gunpowder, for a 700lb shot - but it cracked at the experimental stage. It was called the Woolwich Infant as a joke about it's great size - it weighed 35 tons.
The design of the gun was quickly improved upon, and when the Emperor of Russia was given a conducted tour of the dockyard in 1874, he was shown an entire "Infant School" of 35 ton and 25 ton guns.
The pub itself closed down in 2006, but before that it was said to be popular with the market traders.

A Pub Not to be Missed

A little while ago, I got a book called London Heritage Pubs, and amongst the top "Ten Pubs not to miss" was the Black Friar.
Last week, I finally made it there. We had a delicious meal, a mixed plate of nibbles to share, and a pleasant half of Adnams Fat Sprat (which they brew to support the Marine Conservation Society).
It's a long narrow building, which was once a corner on narrow streets - all gone now. We sat in the bar, which was impressive enough, with the frieze above the bar of cheery monks going about their business - but the Saloon was a marvel of marble and brass! There were little mottos attached to the pictures, such as "Tomorrow will be Friday" under a picture of the monks catching fish for their Friday meal, and "Don't Advertise it, Tell a Gossip".
The pub was almost lost, along with so much else in the redevelopments of the 1960s, and Sir John Betjeman the poet laureate was one of the famous people who campaigned to save it.
The reason for the name Black Friar is that there was a Priory of Dominican Friars, known as the Black Friars, in the area during the middle ages. Medieval Parliaments met there on occasion, and Henry VIII held his divorce hearing against Catherine of Aragon as a guest of the friars - and later dissolved the Priory along with all the other religious houses in Britain.

Mouse Man

Here's something else that makes me happy - traditional craftsmen in wood. I came across a mention of a man in North Yorkshire called Robert Thompson, on Archie Miles' blog. He's a photographer who went to the workshop to take pictures of some of the furniture which is still produced there. Robert Thompson was called the Mouse Man because he carved a small mouse on every piece of furniture he produced. The workshop now employs 35 craftsmen, and they still carve a mouse on every piece of furniture they make.
I've sat on some of his stools - there were several pieces of his furniture at one time in the Black Swan (or Dirty Duck) in Rugby, though I think they were sold off with a change of ownership, which was a shame. It was a lovely old pub, with stone flagged floors and a rambling floor plan, and a traditional skittle alley out the back where you threw "cheeses" at the skittles. These days, it's CAMRA listed, but only seems to offer pool as a pub game.

Hunting for Historic Pubs

There are few things nicer than sitting beside an open fire, with a glass of real ale in one hand and a good book in the other, in a historic pub.
In Hay-on-Wye, we are spoilt for choice. There's Kilverts - the bar area there looks quite different to the way it looked when I first came to Hay, but it has a constantly changing array of guest ales and an open fire. I usually spend an afternoon a week in there, while my washing is at the launderette - there's just time for an unhurried half and a chapter or so. The Blue Boar also scores highly on the real fire and real ale front, and so does the Rose and Crown. The Three Tuns has been extensively renovated after a fire, but it is one of the oldest buildings in Hay and the renovations were very sympathetic to the fabric of the building, as well as opening up areas that had never been on public view before (there's an area upstairs between the beams that used to be Lucy's bathroom - Lucy being the old landlady who ran it for many years before the fire). The Black Lion is more orientated towards food, but the building is very fine. I was once taken down into the cellar to look at their medieval flooring, and one of their guest rooms is known as the Cromwell Room, from a story that Cromwell once stayed there.

When we last went to Manchester, we visited the Shambles, or the Old Wellington - a building that was lifted four feet back in the 1970s to fit in with the design of the new Arndale Centre, and more recently was shifted bodily to nestle beside the Cathedral after the IRA bomb that prompted extensive re-building. (I've met more than one Mancunian who cheered when that IRA bomb went off; I was one of them. The original Arndale Centre design was not well loved!)

When I go down to see my Young Man, in London, he tries to take me to pubs that he thinks are particularly special. In Southwark, it was the George, now the subject of Pete Brown's latest beer-related book, Shakespeare's Local. It's a magnificent building, which might indeed have been Shakespeare's local, as well as Dickens' local - and Chaucer's pilgrims set off from another inn just down the road.
I love Southwark - there's the Borough Market huddling under the railway arches, with an exceptionally fine beer stall and a small pub called the Rake which seems to be where small brewers from all over the country end up when they're in the capital. No real fire, but more real ale than you can shake a stick at, and a pleasant little garden area. Scenes from the Doctor Who story The Talons of Weng-Chiang were filmed just outside the Clink prison, and there's the Cathedral, and the wine and whisky emporium - and the Globe, and the Golden Hind - and a sparkly pavement under a bridge that always makes me smile!

Wonderful as Southwark is, though (and there are other pubs we have visited there which are also rather fine), it's nice to venture out to other parts of London to see what's there.
So I was rather pleased to find a copy of London Heritage Pubs by Geoff Brandwood and Jane Jephcote, which is a beautifully illustrated tour of historic pubs in London. It was published by CAMRA, so there's an interest in the beers that are served in the pubs as well as the fabric of the buildings. And what fabric! The Young Man has mentioned taking me to the Black Friar at Blackfriars, but we haven't made it yet - the pictures of the interior in this book make me want to make the effort very soon!
There's polished wood, gleaming Victorian tiles, stained glass and ornate pub signs, beams and mirrors and wrought iron work.... It's going to take a long time to visit all of the pubs mentioned in the book - but there are worse ambitions in life!

How Landmarks Move Around When You're Not Looking

Manchester is my home city, but I haven't been back for an awfully long time.
In fact, the last time I went back, I got lost.
I was going to visit my sister. "This will be easy," I thought. "We get the train to Manchester Victoria, then walk down to Victoria Bus Station and get the 95 to the Swan and Cemetery."
Famous last words....
When we walked down the hill, Victoria Bus Station wasn't there.
This is what it looks like now:

So I left my ex-husband with the bags at the Shambles, and went in search of the right bus stop.
Now, the Shambles, otherwise known as the Old Wellington Inn and the Sinclair Oyster Bar, is one of the oldest buildings in Manchester, and when the Arndale Centre was built, it was raised four feet from its position to sit in the middle of the modern square at one end of the Arndale.
And then the IRA blew the Arndale Centre up.
I have to admit, my first thought when it came on the news was "Hurray!" because I'd never liked the modern buildings with their toilet block yellow tiles.
It meant that that whole area had to be rebuilt - it's a Harvey Nichols store now - and as part of the rebuilding the powers that be decided to move the Shambles to a different spot.
Actually, they've done it rather well. I was appalled at the idea when I first heard of it, but now it slots into a corner beside the Cathedral, at the top of Hanging Ditch, and it looks as if it has always been there.
We went there for breakfast, and it was really very pleasant. The Wellington is owned by Nicholson Inns now, which is a rather good chain. I've been in another pub of theirs in Southwark - the beer was very good, and the place was packed out.
So, this is what the Shambles looks like now: